Drawing shallow breaths, paralyzed with fear the child lay as still as death on the mossy covered rocks. Raking in air through broken teeth his gasps reached her ears as his body hit the leaf bed where the impact tore his clothes eliciting a string of cuss words. Clenching her eyes shut she fought to calm her racing heart. Praying he couldn’t hear it beating like in the story by Poe The Tell Tale Heart. Metal on metal grated on fragile nerves as her sense of dread grew; the cartridge clicked into place
Meticulous planning gave him plenty of time to craft each kidnapping and death. After capturing only a few children at a time, sometimes within days or weeks of each other, their tortured screams bounced off the walls of the compound. Pleas for mercy and deliverance fell on deaf ears. The air saturated with pain, wrenched screams from the throats of the terror-stricken children, forced tears of hatred to stream from her eyes as sympathy for each tortured child became a reminder of what she would soon go through.
Hatred oozed from his pores like sweat the stench so strong it burned her nose as bile rose up the back of her throat threatening to choke her. The hair rising on the back of her neck multiplied her fear as the rage seethed with his words.
“Come out; come out, wherever you are.” He chanted