Missing Pieces, Part Two
This is the second excerpt of a four-part short horror series entitled Missing Pieces. Read part one here. Please be advised that this short story contains subject matter that might be disturbing. TW: Mentions of assault.
I woke up in the wee hours of the morning on Daisy’s bedroom floor, severe pain wrapping around my neck and knees from laying in the fetal position against the door all night.
The girls continued to sleep as I crept downstairs and started breakfast. Something happy, something silly. Build your own pancake face. No shadow. No hood. No smiling eyes.
Everything was in place.
My thoughts had betrayed me countless times during the span of my life. I thought he was flirting. I thought the light was green. I thought you hated me. I thought they were right next to me, holding my hands.
It’s a strange feeling when one’s own body works so hard against itself. I couldn’t distinguish wild omen from realistic foreboding. What was that last night?
As I mused, I burned the first round of pancakes. Smoke had filled the kitchen and I didn’t notice. The detector beeped so loudly I thought the ringing in my ears would never stop.
Dahlia stepped into the room.
“That’s not good,” she said with a tiny yawn.
I opened windows, trashed the charred pancakes, and began again, with the assistance of Dahlia.
We enjoyed our breakfast. Daisy was irritated we didn’t wake her, but her mood subsided after making a grandpa pancake face with a rainbow jelly bean moustache and whipped cream toupee.
Sarah and Charles arrived as we washed the dishes and cleaned up our breakfast mess - the terror of the previous night just a blip in my hazy memory.
Charles went directly to his office. Sarah smothered the kids with kisses.
“You’re the best,” Sarah said to me as she got out her checkbook, “I hope they behaved themselves?”
“They were amazing, as usual,” I said, picking at my thumb until I felt the sting of skin breaking.
If I bring it up now, hours after her children were potentially in grave danger, what will she think of me?
“I did hear some troubling sounds last night after the girls had gone to bed,” I said, folding my hands behind my back, not wanting to broadcast the great level at which my anxiety sat.
Sarah glanced towards Charles’ office.
“Probably just the construction night crew doing work down the road,” she said while stroking Dahlia’s silky hair, “They’re filling in potholes and other routine stuff, but our HOA complained about the roads being blocked during the day since it slows down people’s morning commute to work.”.
The length of her response would eventually keep me up at night, much after I realized it was a red flag waving in my face.
Life was improving in a way I had never experienced. In a way I didn’t know was possible, especially for someone like me. Unremarkable. Unexciting. Undeserving.
I had extra income to do things like buy makeup, start cooking for myself again, and begin dreaming about things beyond my survival. I was thriving. And the Rainwaters allowed me that opportunity.
Sarah nurtured me in a way I can only describe as beautiful. She was a deeply understanding person, who actively listened and prioritized my wellness more than I did.
She put me on a special daily regiment of the vitamins from their company - a line up specifically suited to my health needs. I was never a follower of the trendy wellness movements that popped up. I usually wasn’t even aware of them, so when Sarah recommended trying her product, I assumed it was her way of meeting a quota or roping me into her pyramid scheme.
But the pills worked. My hair grew back in droves. My skin glowed. I looked like a completely different woman. Classmates asked me what my secret was. People who, up until this point, had ignored my existence entirely were suddenly smiling and waving as I passed them on campus.
“I don’t want to pressure you into anything you aren’t comfortable with,” Sarah said one afternoon as we unloaded boxes of Vitamental Clarity into their garage, “If you’re not into this idea, just shut me up, but I think you’d be an incredible VC rep. I mean, you’re a walking before and after ad, and I mean that in the best way possible.”
If anyone else said something so vapid and condescending to me, I’d melt into a puddle of tears, but coming from Sarah, it rang out as a compliment.
“I’ll consider it.”
I had 10 new clients by the end of the week. Students, professors, random people in the grocery store who couldn’t help but to ask how my hair was so shiny. They all wanted the secret.
And Sarah was right. I would pull out my phone and show them what I looked like just three months earlier. They were astonished. I tried to let the gasps roll off my back.
The Rainwaters hosted these elegant, lavish dinner parties, complete with catered hors d'oeuvres and cutesy icebreaker games. My former self would gag at the idea of not only attending, but actively participating.
Charles could often be found surrounded by an intimate group of his cronies. When I walked too close to them, I felt their voices shift and their body language twitched into a more defensive position.
I avoided their stunning eyes. Every single person who surrounded the Rainwaters was drop dead gorgeous.
Sarah gave these ceremonious, but sincere speeches about the importance of community and communication. She could recite the 500 ingredients of a processed granola bar box and I would listen with bated breath.
The dinner parties became segues into Vitamental Clarity sales meetings and pitch practice until we skipped the fancy escapades altogether and dove straight into onboarding tactics.
This wasn’t your run of the mill pyramid scheme. The product worked, the customers were eager to become sellers, and there was something about the VC brand that had people hooked. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I couldn’t get enough of the Rainwaters or their glimmering little pills.
After another routine school pick up, Dahlia, Daisy, and I worked on a large Georgia O’Keefe puzzle at the kitchen table. We were a focused bunch.
The banging started, more muted this time. Thump. Thump. Thump. Above our heads. I watched the girls for any signs they heard the banging as well.
“I can’t find this corner piece,” Daisy said, tugging at my shirt sleeve.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“I wish Dad would call the architect like he said he was going to,” Dahlia said in her usual casual tone, “That noise is really irksome.”
“Nice vocab usage, nerd,” Daisy said, a true supporter of linguistics.
They heard the sound too. It wasn’t in my head. It wasn’t in my head.
The summer semester began and I took to my usual first day of class ritual - blending into the wall. It was day three of Social Entrepreneurships and I was doing my best not to check out mentally when I noticed him.
I could feel him looking at me, so I looked up and met his eyes. He smiled briefly before turning his attention back to the professor.
While leaving class, I felt a presence behind me. I turned and he was there.
“Hey, I think you dropped this,” he said while extending his hand, “I thought I saw it fall out of your bag...Plus it has your face all over it.”
It was a Vitamental Clarity ad proof. One with my before and after photos slapped on the front. Joy.
“That’s officially the most embarrassing thing to happen to me this year,” I said while snatching the ad.
“Well, if that’s true, I’ve got you beat.”
“Oh, yeah?”
He pointed down to a brace around his ankle.
“I cannonballed into the shallow end of a pool, breaking my ankle in three different spots.”
Why did he smell so good?
“Yikes. Were you perhaps under the influence of alcohol or did you lose a bet?”
“Neither,” he said, suddenly very intrigued by a pebble on the floor, “I was trying to impress a lady.”
“A lady?” I asked while moving the conversation down the hallway, “Were you courting said lady in exchange for a healthy pig or fertile acreage?”
He walked beside me and laughed.
“If only… I’m John,” he said while extending his hand, once again.
I dropped the bottle I was holding, spewing water everywhere.
“I do not recommend cannonballing into that amount of water,” John said.
We laughed. We stared. We wondered.
The entire Rainwater family took a trip to Chicago for five days. I agreed to house sit and stay the night so that deliveries could be made as usual and I could help sort VC orders in the garage.
The banging had become background noise in my head, so it took me awhile to realize it had started up again while I was brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed.
I opted to sleep on the living room sofa. I avoided going upstairs as much as humanly possible.
The banging woke me up around 2 a.m. It was heavier. Not just louder, but more forceful. I crept up the stairs, avoiding the squeaky spots, doing my best to turn invisible, fearing the presence of masked eyes.
I walked down the long hallway, my hand against the wall, guiding me through the dark. The banging stopped. I held my breath. Heartbeat fused with ear drums.
The banging started up again directly above my head, much like someone jumping in metal boots. I was terrified the hooded shadow figure would come crashing through the ceiling. I couldn’t bring myself to pull the attic door drawstring and let the wooden ladder come tumbling down.
There are much scarier things than encountering death in this world. I knew that first-hand.
I didn’t sleep much. The banging persisted, off and on. Always from the attic.
The next morning, I texted John, asking what he was doing that day. He agreed to come over and scope it out with me.
I found a large mallet in the garage and mentally prepared myself for what was going to happen.
We stood in the hallway on the second floor.
“Just listen,” I said, clutching the mallet.
John did his best to take my paranoia seriously.
Silence, of course. The affirmation that all of this fuss was living inside the walls of my head was resurfacing.
John reached up to grab the attic door drawstring. I slapped his arm down.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought we were going to investigate,” he said, holding his hands up, “Let’s go all Ghost Hunters in this house.”
I breathed deeply, “I don’t know if we should do this.”
“Look, I get it, you don’t want to snoop. But if there’s something weird happening in this house, you need to know about it.”
He held such sincerity in his eyes and tone.
I stood on my tip toes and yanked the drawstring down as hard as I could. The ladder came tumbling out.
We made our way up. I held the mallet firmly, fully prepared to use it.
It was a normal attic, filled with dusty boxes, old toys, holiday decorations, and trinkets that have long been forgotten.
We shifted boxes around and looked for signs of anything spooky. It was an entirely run of the mill attic.
I moved a box to get a better look at the back corner when I saw a blue light peeking through a raised floorboard. It was twisted upward an inch or so, allowing light from below to pierce through. I got on my knees to investigate.
John handed me his phone, flash light on. I tried pulling the floorboard up further, but it was reinforced from below. I shined the light and attempted to make out what was beneath us, praying a pair of eyes nestled behind a hooded mask would not be waiting for me.
As I strained to see, John continued shifting boxes.
“You need to see this.”
He found a small, square shaped door with a large, metal latch. We stared at it for what felt like hours.
“Open it,” I said finally, shaking from head to toe.
He looked at me. It seemed as if he was holding his breath, mulling over his response.
“Something isn’t right,” I continued, “And I have a right to know, like you said.”
He nodded, reached down, and pulled up on the latch. A small, descending wooden staircase greeted us.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
John stepped down and I followed. The blue light was coming from a computer monitor sitting on the floor in the corner of a tiny room, no bigger than an average hallway.
The walls were lined with a variety of tools. Hammers, wrenches, pliers, and a couple of hand saws surrounded us, like some Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired art installation.
A small, metal table sat folded in the far corner, directly under the bent floorboard.
“What in the hell did we just walk in to?”
Chills radiated across my skin as I thought of the figure in the mask.
“Worst case scenario,” John started, sweeping the tools with his finger tips, “This is a weird sex dungeon that we should leave immediately.”
I couldn’t move.
“Hey,” he said, reaching an arm out, but thinking twice about touching me, “This looks creepy, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.”
“I can feel the terror that’s passed through this room.”
He breathed heavily, processing. My eyes were drawn to a device on the wall that looked eerily similar to an ice cream scoop, but with jagged edges, sharp enough to pierce skin.
We climbed out of the mysterious room and put everything back in its proper place.
As I walked John to the front door, he stopped and his shoulders dropped.
“I really think you need to confront this situation with them in a safe way,” he said, his eyes locked on me, filled to the brim with concern, “If that room is more sinister than just a bizarre man cave, you don’t need to be around them when you ask them about it.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said, my nails digging into the palms of my hands, “What if I ask them about it and they immediately fire me for snooping? I can’t lose this job right now. I can’t go back to where I’ve been.”
A flash of auburn hair, where I’ve been.
Chained legs in a room with no windows, where I’ve been.
I didn’t stick around to see the Rainwaters arrive home. I let Sarah know all was well and I’d collect payment the next time I saw her. I needed to escape from their world for awhile. I needed any kind of semblance of normalcy, so I bought a box of LemonHeads on the way home and let myself be consumed by nature documentaries the rest of the weekend.
I tried to hone in on my Business Management textbook Sunday morning, but Sarah Rainwater was blowing up my phone with an impromptu invitation to a last-minute VC dinner party.
Every fiber in my being told me to decline the invitation, but I wondered if bringing up my unpleasant discovery in front of witnesses would be the safer route.
“Whatever you do,” John said as I walked him to his car days before, “Don’t underestimate anyone’s will to keep secrets hidden.”
It was nice to have someone concerned about my well-being. Someone who had nothing to lose or gain from me being around. He wasn’t interested in VC and couldn’t care less about how shiny his hair was or wasn’t. He just was. It was a comfort.
I answered Sarah’s text with an abundance of caution swimming in my belly.
“See you at 7.”
The party was more crowded than previous gatherings. New, beautiful faces and lots of VC chit chat.
“I know this has zero scientific backing, but I truly believe the vitamins have improved my love life,” a random stranger gabbed at me as I searched for Sarah in the midst of such a crowd, “I haven’t been hit on like this in my entire life.”
I smiled and nodded, backing away from the conversation as discreetly as possible, knocking myself directly into Charles and his tall drink.
“I’m so sorry. Let me grab a rag.”
“You do have a way with fluids, don’t you?”
We stared.
“I, uh,” I started, no idea how to respond to such a statement.
“That sounded a lot better in my head than saying it out loud,” he cut in, saving me from completing a thought.
He smiled, a first for us. Until this point, I wasn’t sure if his lips moved in that direction.
He motioned for one of the wait staff to come over.
“I’m actually looking for Sarah,” I said, trying to control my breathing, “Have you seen her?”
The waiter handed me and Charles a glass.
“Actually, she told me she’s not feeling well tonight, so she’s resting in our room for a bit,” he said, focused on something happening across the room, “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you checked in on her.”
He returned his gaze to me and clinked my glass with his.
And with that, he walked across the room into his office. Three men followed suit. Someone closed the door.
I sipped the bubbly, beige drink, wondering how boring their little meetings must be.
I reached the top of the landing and huffed loudly. The stairs didn’t usually take my breath away. My anxiety was getting the better of me. My hands and knees shook, my eyes were getting cloudy, and I felt my throat closing.
I noticed the attic door was open just a tad. I wouldn’t have noticed had I not been aware of what lurked beyond the boxes.
I knocked softly on Sarah’s door. I didn’t hear anything. I tapped again. This time, I heard a voice, mostly indistinguishable.
I opened the door. The light was on. The bed was made. I turned the corner to check the bathroom and was met by the hooded figure.
Smaller in person. Not as supernatural as I remembered, but just as terrifying.
As he charged towards me, I told my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. I begged my legs to move, but they were frozen in place, exactly what nightmares are made of.
Before everything went black, I saw his arms wrapped around me. Tan, muscular, navy blue braided fabric bracelet.
Silence. Stillness. Nothing.
I stood on a bustling street corner. Veronica on one side, Jenny on the other. They were being defiant, refusing to hold my hands as we crossed the street.
I was 16 years old and the last thing I wanted to do was follow my baby sisters around, perpetually at their beck and call.
As I sat with my own Cinderella daydreams, Jenny slipped. Veronica followed. It took a second for my eyes to catch up to the sounds I was hearing.
Horns blaring. Metal colliding with bodies. Screaming.
Someone won’t stop screaming. Why is she still screaming?
I looked down. I had been transplanted next to Veronica and Jenny in the middle of the street, in the way that no one really walks in dreams - they just show up. Their hair. Their perfect auburn hair. Tiny, precious braids.
I was the one screaming. I couldn’t stop screaming.
I woke up in my bed, drenched in sweat, dressed in pajamas, aching all over. The sun was out. I looked at my phone - Monday morning, 6 am.
I tried to stand up and immediately collapsed onto the floor.
I reached for my phone and called Sarah.
She answered, groggy, “Hello?”
“What the hell happened last night?” I screamed into the phone, “What did you do to me?”
“What are you talking about? Are you ok?”
“No! I’m not! Thank you very much!” I said, managing to get to my knees, willing myself to stand up to have this conversation, “I don’t know what the hell you and your creepy husband are playing at, but I’m calling the cops.”
“You have to calm down. Please. Just talk to me and tell me what is going on,” she said, calm and attentive as ever.
“I was drugged and attacked at your little party last night, Sarah.”
Silence.
“I don’t understand,” she said, so gently that I could barely hear her.
“Your husband handed me a spiked drink then I was assaulted by some man in your bedroom after he told me to go find you upstairs.”
“You were at the party for maybe five minutes, then you drove yourself home,” she said softly, remaining neutral, “We have it on camera. I can show you.”
All I could do was stutter.
I thought I was doing better. I thought I had control of things. I thought it was real.
“Come over. We’ll sort this out,” Sarah said, ever the fixer.
“I can’t,” I managed to gasp before hanging up.
I needed out. I had to leave. I wanted to breathe fresh air and ground myself. I had never felt more sore in my life, but I pushed through the pain. I grabbed a journal and headed towards the park across the street.
I sat beneath a large Magnolia tree and walked through the events of the previous night. I started writing, walking through each moment of the last 24 hours. I bumped into him. He smiled. He never smiles. People were waiting for him. He signaled the wait staff. I drank something fizzy. Hood. Eyes. Veronica. Jenny.
My body, constantly betraying me. Where did this hurt come from if none of it happened?
I lost track of time under the tree. I wrote and wrote and wrote until a blister formed on my ring finger. I was still trying to make sense of it all when I felt someone approaching out of the corner of my eye. I stiffened my body, ready to jump up and run.
“So, you ditched class to come spend time in nature,” John said, plopping down next to me, “I like your style.”
I couldn’t meet his eyeline. I tried to be safe.
“Hey, what happened? Are you ok?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, tears finally making their way down my cheeks, “Something really bad happened last night, but I don’t remember what.”
John sighed. I could feel him longing to help me, but not knowing where to begin. He reached over to place his hand on mine when I saw it.
A navy blue braided fabric bracelet.
I swallowed my own vomit as I sprang up and grabbed my stuff.
“I’m going to be sick,” I said, walking away quickly, “I have to go.”
He followed suit.
“Let me take you home. You shouldn’t be by yourself right now.”
“No, please. Please, I don’t want you to see me sick. Please don’t follow me.”
I held my hands up with an earnest plea.
“Please let me go by myself. I need to be alone.” I couldn’t look at him.
“Ok. I’ll check in on you later today,” he said, slowing down and eventually stopping.
I reached my apartment complex gate and turned as discreetly as I could to see where he was. Gone.
I managed to unlock my door and throw my belongings before dropping to my knees in fits of sobs. Please work with me, brain. Tell me what the truth is.
As I tried to comfort myself by swaying and rocking, I felt the back of my neck.
Everything stopped.
My hair was missing.
I stood and found two mirrors. I raised my hair and a guttural gasp in disbelief escaped me. The bottom half of my hair had been shaved. It was gone.
As I raised my hair, I noticed a red welp peeking out from under my armpit. I took off my shirt and examined closer in the mirror. I couldn’t make it to the toilet in time and puked all over my bathroom sink.
Three large, circular portions of my flesh had been removed from my side, under my arm.
Shaped exactly like a perfect scoop of ice cream.
Read part three of Missing Pieces. Bethany Swoveland is a poet and digital artist in Texas. She’s available for freelance work and can be reached at bethanyswoveland@gmail.com. Sign up for Bethany’s monthly email newsletter here.