Fiction Friday

Chapter III: Pursued

Jackie and Wayne stood in the dimly lit dining room; side by side they stood frozen to the spot. Jackie’s hand slowly rose to cover her own mouth in the same manner Wayne was now standing, covering his.

Jackie’s breath caught in her throat, she felt a hard lump rising from her chest to the base of her esophagus where it threatened to choke her air off completely. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The limp body of the maid who had offered her coffee just seven hours before was now lying lifeless across the arms of Mr. Carson, the hotel concierge while one of the maintenance men cut her body down from the giant chandelier in the center of the dining room.

The moment stretched into what felt like an eternity as Jackie stood motionless, eyes unblinking, taking in the whole scene. Mr. Carson was apparently unaware of their presence, focused only on his task. He grunted under the full weight of the maid’s body as it was finally cut free and dropped into his arms.

Mr. Carson shifted his weight on the table; his heel knocked into a wine glass, which clattered against several place settings as it spun across the flat linen.

“Alright there Mr. Carson?” the maintenance man called down from his precarious perch on the chandelier.

“Just get down here and help me!” he snapped, craning his neck away from the thick dark hair that now buried his chin and mouth.

The maintenance man reached out for the girder-like metal lattice that ran over the surface of the ceiling, painted black to blend in. It must have been for changing light bulbs or, cutting down the bodies of murdered maids, Jackie thought darkly. She was still utterly frozen in place and somewhat unaware of her surroundings. All she could focus on was the pale, lifeless face of the maid.

Suddenly Jackie felt dizzy, her body rocked forward and she caught herself against a chair. As Mr. Carson whipped around at the sound, Wayne caught Jackie’s arm and jerked her behind the dining room bar, which ran the length of the wall and ended at a service window to the kitchen.

Wayne pulled Jackie onto his lap as he landed hard on the floor; the two of them froze, unable to see what happened next. A scuffling of chairs and thumping told them that Mr. Carson had managed to get off the table. There were no voices which made Jackie think that Mr. Carson was on to them. She crawled off Wayne’s lap and began silently crawling on hands and knees towards the kitchen.

Jackie’s hands stuck in patches of dried, spilled drinks and what smelled like a mixture of bourbon and maraschino cherry juice; her bare knees pressed uncomfortably on the knobby surface of the floor matt she crawled over. She was moving as stealthily as she could on all fours.

Wayne must have followed suit because Jackie suddenly felt him lean onto the heel of one of her shoes. As she pulled that leg forward, the shoe slipped from her foot and clattered off the rubber bar matt and onto the tiled floor surrounding it.

Both Jackie and Wayne froze momentarily, and then began crawling toward the kitchen again, fast.

They reached the end of the bar just as they heard someone squeak open the swinging door they had crawled under. Jackie felt two open hands on her rear end and before she could react, Wayne had shoved her through the opening into the bright kitchen.

Jackie instinctively rolled to the side, turned to pull Wayne by the arm so they were both out of eye shot of whoever was behind them. Helping each other to their feet, they leapt to the left where they could conceal themselves behind a tall shelf of food.

For a moment, they froze, both silently scanning the room for where to go next. Jackie stepped out of her other high heel. Just then they heard men’s shoes step quietly into the room. Jackie peeked out from behind a giant box of baking soda to see the back of a man’s dark grey suite moving past the very shelf they were hiding behind. Jackie forced herself not to breathe.

Suddenly Wayne nudged her. Jackie looked where Wayne was silently pointing and saw a laundry chute where piles of dirty table linens and cloth napkins waited to go down. Jackie gave Wayne her best: you gotta be kidding face but he raised his eyebrows and lifted his shoulders and Jackie got the message. She didn’t know what else they were going to do either.

Suddenly all the lights in the kitchen went out. It was so dark Jackie couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face. There was only one reason someone would have turned the lights off, Jackie thought in a panic, he already knows where we are and he doesn’t want us to see him coming.

Jackie’s blood ran cold. She reached out desperately in the pitch dark and found Wayne’s fingers doing the same. They caught hands and Jackie felt herself being pulled forward in the darkness. A clatter of pots off to the side told Jackie that Wayne had run into something, giving their position away. They ran faster. From the darkness behind her, Jackie heard footsteps pursuing them.

A sharp piece of metal hit Jackie in the thighs; she reached out and felt Wayne’s back as he lifted one knee high. She couldn’t believe he was really climbing in the laundry chute. She opened her mouth to say something but had no idea what she might say, she felt his body disappear before her hands. Without thinking, Jackie lifted her leg to climb in.

Suddenly a strong, clammy hand closed around Jackie’s bicep.

A hoarse whisper spoke directly in Jackie’s ear, “Now just a minute, Ms. LaTour.”