Grueberfest '06 "The Mirror is a Reflection of the Soul" (1426 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 21 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Bigmike (View user info) at 2006-10-01 01:49:44 EDT
Barbara sat in front of the mirrored vanity brushing her hair with long, even strokes. It was a mahogany vanity with carved edges and a custom grooved frame around the mirror. She didn't know how long she had been sitting there, but she was on stroke five hundred and seventy two. Her hair was long and needed to be brushed everyday to keep from becoming snarled and unruly. The dampness in her room didn't help and, as she felt the cold concrete floor with the balls of her feet, she wondered what it would be like if she could get outside, if she could feel the breeze in her hair, if she could feel the heat of the sun as it reflected off her golden brown locks.
She studied her face in the mirror. She could see lines beginning to form in the corners of her eyes. She had read in a magazine that these were called "smile" lines. She couldn't imagine that people got those lines from smiling because she had forgotten how to smile. She imagined that she did smile though. She imagined she smiled in her dreams.
Her eyes traveled from her "smile" lines down to the middle of her left cheek. There was a scar there that ran from just below her ear to the corner of her mouth. She stopped brushing her hair, set the brush down on the vanity, and then reached up and touched the scar, gently caressing its length. She could feel the texture of the healed skin and remembered how it had happened.
...........
"What a beautiful day," Barbara thought as she left the safety and comfort of her house and began the three block walk to school. As she walked, she concentrated on the homework that she had stuffed into her backpack. It was her first real essay and she had written on a subject near and dear to her heart. The essay had taken her two whole days to write and she felt every word was perfect. She couldn't wait for her teacher to read it. The assignment was to pick a very favorite something from her everyday routine and describe, in detail, how that thing affected her life. Barbara had picked her collection of Barbie dolls to write about. As she was skipping along to school, she was very pleased with herself and thought that she had done a fine job of writing. Especially for a third grader.
Barbara woke up on the cold floor of a very dark room. She was very confused and, for a moment thought that her walk to school had been a dream. She must have fallen out of bed and that had woken her up. It didn't feel like the floor in her room though. Her floor was carpeted and nice. This floor was hard and not so nice. She reached up to where her bed should be and found that nothing was there. She sat there on the hard floor, wondering what had happened to her. Then she felt the pain on her cheek. She reached up with her left hand and felt the swelling that had formed on the left side of her face. She also felt a cut there. A cut running from just below her ear to the corner of her mouth. Barbara became very worried.
................
As she felt the texture of the scar and remembered what had caused it, a shiver ran up her spine. That was her first day here, her first day in captivity. Her teacher never saw her essay, her mother never saw her return home, her sanity had seemed to slip away.
Her hand moved from the scar on her left cheek over to her mouth. Barbara parted her lips to reveal a mouthful of rotten teeth. In the middle of the top row of teeth was a gaping hole where two of her teeth were missing. Barbara felt the hole with the index finger of her left hand. Felt the sides of the teeth that surrounded that hole; felt the nub of tooth that was left recessing into her gums. She let her mind wander.
...............
She didn't know how long she had been in the room. She didn't have any semblance of day or of date. She thought that it might be early fall because the wind seemed to be kicking up more at night, and the floor and walls of her room had seemed to become colder. He hadn't spent much time with her. Her captor would just come to the room and slide a plate of food through the small, hinged hatch he had built into the bottom of her door. The hatch would swing up, and a plate would appear and slide through. He never said anything to her, just sliding the food through and then leaving. It was mostly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches although sometimes it was ham or turkey with mayonaisse. She didn't like having sandwiches all the time, but she didn't have a choice.
When she was first there, she spent the initial three or four days not eating anything. She would watch the food slide into the room, and an hour or so later she would watch him reach in and take the plate back, food uneaten. She didn't eat because she was scared and lonely and all she could think of was home.
On the fourth day, she met the man. Instead of sliding a plate through the hatch in the door, he opened the door and came in, plate in hand. As he did, she jumped up from lying on the bed and pressed herself against the cool stone of the concrete wall. Her first impression of him was that he was unremarkable. He was short and squat and had on overalls and a red flannel shirt like the ones her father liked to wear in the winter. His eyes were beady and close set, and he had a sparse growth of black stubble on his face as if he hadn't shaved in a few days. The man shut the door behind him and locked it. Then he advanced to her, holding the plate out like an offering.
"If you don't start eating, you will die," was all he said to her. Then he reached into his back pocket with his free hand, pulled out a short but heavy length of pipe and hit her directly in the mouth. She fell to the floor and immediately started to cry. He stood over her and as she looked up at him through her haze of tears, she thought she saw pity in his eyes tinged with a bit of regret. Again he spoke to her, a bit more softly this time as he set the plate down on the floor at her feet.
"If you don't eat, you will die," he said again. "I will be back down here in an hour to get this plate. Leave it by the hatch with a bit of the sandwich left on the plate. I want to see that you have eaten some."
With that, he turned and left the room. Barbara cried for awhile more and then decided that she better eat some of the sandwich. As she sat up, she looked down at the floor and noticed that there was a pool of her blood where her head had just been. In the middle of this pool of blood were her two front teeth.
She broke a piece of the sandwich off, put it in her mouth, and started to chew. She could taste the peanut butter and jelly. She could also taste a heavy flavor of copper mixed in. It was painful, but she managed to eat half the sandwich before leaving the plate by the hatch in the door.
A little while later, the hatch swung open and he reached in and grabbed the plate.
"Good girl," she could hear him say as he walked away.
...............
Barbara had stopped touching the space where her two front teeth had been. She studied her face intently in the mirror. She tried very hard to see the young girl that had first come to this place, the innocent being that had somehow been transformed into the nightmare staring back at her. She was older now, much older. In the time that she had been here, she had gotten her first period, developed breasts, gone through a stage of facial acne, realized her first orgasm by her own hand, and had sex unwillingly maybe a thousand times. The light in her eyes was fading. The tone of her skin was pasty and grey. Her lips were wrinkled and her nose was crooked. As she studied her face, her hand moved from her mouth to the hollow of her neck. There was a scar that ran the width of her neck from one side of her collarbone to the other. It was a big, thick scar that had taken stitches to close up. She started to think.
...............
"No, stop!" Barbara said as the man forcibly entered her from behind. In all the time she was in the room, he had never came at her like this. Yes, she was getting older. For sure she was sprouting into a young woman, but he never had been this rough with her before. Certainly she didn't like being his object for sex, but she had learned to live with his three minute grindings and his drunken sweat. This time was different though, this time he was going at her other hole and she felt like she was ripping apart.
With each thrust she let out a yell. As he thrust harder she started to scream. When she did, he finally stopped and pulled out of her. He quickly got up off of her, went over to his pants and pulled a knife out of the front pocket. Then he went back to her and looked down, right into her eyes. She was terrified at the way his face seethed with rage and it made her scream even louder. He shut her up in mid scream by slitting her throat with the knife. She looked up at him as she brought her hands instinctively to her throat. Blood was pouring out through her fingers and when she looked into his eyes, she saw his rage subside and a look of concern come over him. He immediately left the room only to come back a few minutes later. She was wounded badly, but not mortally. He set a box down on the floor, opened it up, and pulled out three or four leather straps. he grabbed her right hand and quickly secured it to the post of her bed. He did the same with her other hand and both her legs. She was squirming with pain as she thought that this was her end, her last few minutes before death. Then she watched as he started to thread a needle. It confused her at first until she figured out what he had meant to do. He looked down at her once the needle was threaded.
"Do not scream while I do this or I will go to your house and kill your family," he said. She saw that his eyes were dead serious and she knew that he could do it if he wanted to.
She didn't make a sound as he put fifty one stitches into her neck with that needle and thread. She passed out when he was only halfway through.
She remembered thinking what a pretty shade of blue he had used when she saw it in the mirror for the first time.
..............
Barbara wondered if her mother was still alive as she moved her hand from the scar on her neck, down the front of her shirt to the part of her that was between her legs. She remembered the first time she bled there because of him. She remembered the first time she bled there of nature's will. She remembered the time he tore her apart with the handle of a hammer. She had experienced an orgasm from that, but she didn't know what it was until later. She remembered feeling confused because the pain was suddenly mixed with pleasure. She knew it was a mistake when her hips started to respond to his thrusts, and that mistake had resulted in an overwhelming anger in him. An anger that cost her exactly one nipple and a portion of her left thigh which were both horribly removed by the claw end of that hammer. Her hand moved from between her legs to her right breast. She could feel through the shirt where her nipple used to be and now there was only a lump of scar tissue. She didn't have to move her hand down to the indentation in her thigh. She had felt it plenty of times, wondering how the hammer had excised exactly that much skin without doing any really serious damage.
..............
Barbara still looked in the mirror, but her mind was on other things. She opened the drawer to her right and pulled out the makeup kit he had gotten her. It seemed that the older she got, the more he liked her to "pretty up" as he called it. She put the makeup kit on the vanity in front of her and opened it up. Pulling out the lipstick, she pulled off the top and held the bottom, rolling it ever so slightly clockwise. A tube of magenta lipstick came twisting out of the top, and she looked at it intently. Looking back to the mirror, she placed the lipstick to the corner of her mouth and traced her upper lip with it, slowly making sure that she did it just right. She wanted to look her best.
When she was done tracing her upper lip, she pressed her lips together to spread the deep magenta color evenly on both lips. She was pleased with the effect. She placed the lipstick back in the kit and removed the eye shadow compact. She flipped it open, grabbed the applicator and rubbed it into the violet pigment that the compact held. She then proceeded to apply the shadow to both her eyelids evenly. When she was done, she placed the eye shadow back into the kit, removed the rouge that she had there, and applied some color to her cheeks.
When she was done, she put the kit back and studied her face in the mirror.
"It'll have to do," she said to her reflection.
She sat there for a long time, looking at her reflection. Then she heard his heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. It had been awhile for him, maybe four or five days. She anticipated that he would be especially brutal with her because of the time elapsed between sessions. Her body stiffened as she heard him unlock the door, step inside the room and close the door, locking it behind him. She looked in the mirror and saw him standing by the door. She could see that he had been drinking and he looked directly into the mirror to lock his stare with hers. As she was watching him in the mirror, she casually reached down between her legs until she felt something hard, something wooden. He took two steps towards her and her whole body became rigid. He took a third step and she raised her hands slightly, bringing the piece of bedpost up between her legs. He took a fourth step and she stood up, swinging the piece of wood around so that it was pointed directly at him. It had taken her the better part of three days to sharpen the piece of wood on the concrete floor, and before he could take his fifth step, she shoved the sharpened piece of wood into his stomach so hard that it came out through his back.
He looked at her, a mix of shock and surprise on his face. How thought to himself that this couldn't be happening, that she couldn't have been so resourceful, that she couldn't be so evil. He looked her right in the eyes as he grasped the piece of wood that was sticking out of his midsection. They both had a death grip on that piece of wood, his grip trying to remove the offending weapon, hers pushing with all her might. He looked from her eyes to the wood and then back to her eyes and then he smiled as if with relief. He watched as tears welled up in her eyes and she started to cry. Then, with all the energy he had left, he let go of his grip and reached into the left pocket of his pants, pulling out a key. She continued to push him back with her grip on the bedpost and they both started to slip in the massive pool of blood that had formed on the floor. She pushed him so hard, that he moved backwards extremely quickly, both of them coming to a jarring stop as the part of the wood extending out through his back banged up against the concrete wall. She let go of her grip and he fell to his knees.
He looked up at her with a crooked smile on his face. She didn't quite understand until he started to raise his left hand to his mouth. he opened his mouth and she watched as he inserted the key between his lips and closed his mouth around it. Then he shut his eyes and fell forward, the portion of the bedpost sticking out of his midsection banging on the floor and causing him to fall on his side.
Barbara stood over him and watched as he died. She knelt down beside him, wondering how she had raised the courage to do what she had done. When she was sure he was dead, she reached down with both hands and opened his mouth. It was empty, he had swallowed the key.
She stood up and went over to the door. She turned the doorknob both ways, but he had engaged the lock and the door held fast. She stood there for a moment and then decided that there were worse things than merely killing a man, a tormenter, a monster.
She briefly looked over at the vanity mirror, not recognizing the woman staring back at her, before she tore his body apart, looking for the key.
User Reviews
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-10-13 10:07:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks ahumblefool, I appreciate the feedback.
Submitted by ahumblefool (user info) at 2006-10-10 18:36:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You did ten times more with this title than I could have hoped for. Sorry for having to forfeit, life got in the way.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-10-04 22:10:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Babs is rippin' his innards out....
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-10-04 21:51:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
My favorite review:
Submitted by Anansie (user info) at 2006-10-04 19:03:32 (#)
Ranking: 2
I almost missed this. Fucking A. I hope she rips his guts out trying to find that thing.
She does. With her bare hands. She has no choice.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-10-04 20:11:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Jesus Fucking Christ.
This was amazing.
Submitted by Anansie (user info) at 2006-10-04 19:03:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I almost missed this. Fucking A. I hope she rips his guts out trying to find that thing.
Submitted by forensicgirl3 (user info) at 2006-10-04 16:13:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm done for
*sigh*
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2006-10-04 15:41:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You rock all over the place.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-10-04 15:06:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You are one fucked up muchacho.
And I likes it. Oh how I loves it.
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-10-03 09:05:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Exceptional
Submitted by MouthSore (user info) at 2006-10-02 13:58:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-10-02 03:29:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
**seething with a jealous rage**
Submitted by VelvetElvis (user info) at 2006-10-02 01:57:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
They both had a death grip on that piece of wood, his grip trying to remove the offending weapon, hers pushing with all her might. He looked from her eyes to the wood and then back to her eyes and then he smiled as if with relief.
//
Jesus. I remember the John Saul review i mentioned. Keep it up, Mike. THIS is your forte.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2006-10-01 22:30:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-10-01 22:07:24 (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm guessing this is too long for anybody to read.
----
I don't think it's too long.
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-10-01 22:07:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm guessing this is too long for anybody to read.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-10-01 12:59:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice story, Mike. Looks like you win the match.
http://www.ubersite.com/m/93382#2160678
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2006-10-01 02:47:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
4 consecutive posts with an avg rating of +2 on 50 total reviews?
Buh?
Submitted by AsshOly (user info) at 2006-10-01 02:13:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i liked it. i really need to get crackin on mine.
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2006-10-01 02:13:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 grueber memories
Submitted by coley (user info) at 2006-10-01 02:12:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
pimptastic.
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-10-01 01:51:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
http://www.ubersite.com/m/93382
For Grueberfest, Round one.