Harlequin

Her pulse throbbed. The Harlequin killer. No one had ever seen his face; not anyone living, anyway. He had her. Twenty-four hours. Her head spun. Nausea overcame her and she sat down hard on the floor.



She closed her eyes. I can\'t get sick. I have to get out. Meagan stood and looked around the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a green blotch in the colorless room; the phone? She mastered the nausea for a moment and stood, then crossed the room, her heart pounding, to the color.



Yes, it was the phone. She picked it up. Two bars. Enough for the calls he\'d allowed her. She slipped it into her pocket and looked for a door out of the room; it was on the far wall. She cautiously tiptoed across to the side of the room and pushed open the door.



Meagan screamed as she watched the door push its way through a puddle of blood lit up to crimson red against the brilliant white light of the hall outside and into a still corpse. “Oh, god, oh god, oh, no!” She stepped back and looked around to see what had happened to the remainder of the person on the floor. Meagan looked up.



A tile was slightly ajar above the body. She looked down at the corpse; it was riddled with sharp shrapnel and draped with a trash bag with a giant rip in the center. Meagan stepped out into the hall just as the phone in her pocket rang.



She fumbled with the oversize buttons and held it up to her ear. “Hello?”



“Hello. Don’t you feel lucky that wasn’t you?”



"Wh--wh--how can you say that? Look at him! He\'s--"



"Dead, I know. Go on, answer the question. Do you feel lucky that that wasn\'t you?"



"Yes. I feel lucky. Who was that?"



"Does it matter? It\'s no one you know. If you didn\'t see his body, you wouldn\'t care one bit, would you? People die every day. Just be thankful that you\'re alive, at least for now, and talk to me for a moment. Not too long, since you don\'t have much in the way of battery life on that phone."



"Maybe not on this one," said Meagan, "but--" she gingerly put a hnd inside the body\'s pocket and pulled out a sky-blue phone spattered with blood "--this one has batteries, too."



An impressed chuckle came through the phone. "Now, you\'re going to be fun. I can tell. Clever, clever. I like it."



"So. Stay with me, then. Where do I go next?"



"Hmmmmm. If you ask me for a clue, I think it should count as one of your calls for help."



"Fine. Then, um, what kind of music do you listen to?"



"What the hell kind of question is that?"



"Just answer the question!"



"Fine. Fine. I like a lot of music, actually. I like jazz. And metal. And classical. Anything made with a synthesizer and a PC."



"Oh, no country? Somehow I\'m not surprised."



"Yeah, I\'m sure you\'re not."



"You know, I like jazz, too."



"Great! Maybe we should have dinner some time. If you survive, which is less and less likely, because you\'re wasting your battery and you\'re diverting your attention from the traps. Why are you still talking to me?"



"Because. It calms me down to talk to someone. It\'s worth the batteries. Besides, I have another."



"Maybe I won\'t take your calls."



"You promised in the note."



"I\'ll take your calls. I don\'t know why you want to talk to me."



"No one else looking to talk, is there?"



Meagan imagined she heard a mumbled "what the hell?" on the other end. "This is not worth your life."



Looking carefully, she mimicked a nervous voice. “Oh, my God! What is that? It’s--why, it’s absolutely nothing--” She shrieked as a set of doors opened in her face and let out a huge Doberman wearing a metal collar. Meagan stuffed the phone in her pocket and tried to back up on one of the tiny sills of the windows inlaid into the doors, but the dog slashed a piece of her sweater out and settled down to chew it; once it finished with that chew toy, it would be drawn to the bigger piece, a fly to a carcass. She reached gently around its tree-trunk neck and looked at the collar; it was a shock collar. Searching the dog, she found the remote for the collar and gave the dog a good, long buzz. Her hands shaking, she lowered the remote as she watched the dog jerk and twitch. Once bitten, she mashed the button again as she walked away, and shut the door.



She picked up the phone. “Are you there?”



“Are you convinced now that you should get off the phone now and pay attention?”



“Well, a bit, but I’m not sure I want to be by myself.”



“This is technically cheating. You’re supposed to be alone.”



“But I’m not getting any help!”



“Too bad. Still cheating. Talk to you later.” He hung up the phone with a snap. Meagan was alone.