One Hour
Alison Grace Bacon:
I don’t know who the masked man is or why he is trying to kill me.
I don’t remember coming to the basement. I don’t remember being put into a cell in the basement and being tied to the wall. All I remember is walking home from my friend’s house one night and falling on the sidewalk.
I was carrying my backpack and spilled out all of my markers, pens, and pencils everywhere.
I was bent over, trying to pick up all my spilled school supplies from the ground, cursing myself silently for being so klutzy. My dad had always made fun of me about it.
“We shouldn’t have named you ‘Grace’.” He would tell me with a grin whenever I dropped one of my Mom’s ancient plates or tripped over my own feet up the stairs. He had always acted more like a big brother to me then a dad anyway and loved to tease me.
As soon as I bent over to grab my pens, however, I heard deep breathing behind me. It sounded deep and husky, as if the person had been running for some time.
“As if he were chasing someone.” A voice in the back of my head whispered but I brushed it off. I had an overactive imagination and was constantly picturing people coming after me. The fact that I watched so many crime shows had not helped this habit.
I can feel the person’s heavy footsteps coming closer and closer and before I could turn around to see who this was and what his or her problem was, I felt the pain of a thousand migraines crash into my head.
And then everything went black.

I wake up in a daze with what seems like several hours later. It is pitch black and there is a ringing in my ear. I instantly try to stand up only to quickly fall down.
“Shh!” Someone hisses at me in the darkness. “You’ll wake him up.”
“Who are you?” I whisper and the voice shushes me again. I fall silent.
After a few minutes my eyes begin to adjust to the darkness and I can make out the outline of a very small room. There appears to be three, maybe four, people in the room with me. Two lying down as though sleeping, one sat in the corner, sniffing quietly, and then the last one is sitting cross legged in the corner next to me. I have no idea where I am but all I know is I have to get out of here.
“Where am I?” I question the girl next to me. The girl is silent. “Where am I? Where have you taken me?!”
The girl’s eyes widen and she quickly puts her hand over my mouth. I start screaming.
“GET ME HOME RIGHT NOW! I don’t know who you are or where we are but my dad….my dad is really tall and he will kick your butt if he finds out where you have taken me. People will notice I am missing and come looking for me! You’ll be arrested! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
The girl opens her mouth to start to explain but as the sounds of footsteps come from overhead she quickly lies down and shuts her eyes.
“Why Luna.” The light switches on and I shield my eyes quickly. “You’re being so rude. Why have you not introduced our new person to the rest of the group.”
The girl in the corner sits up and rubs her eyes, pretending to have just woken up. “Lord, I’m sorry I’ve been sleeping.”
“Don’t lie to me girl.” The man’s voice fills the room. I uncover my eyes to see him but when I open my eyes all I see is the door. A vent is attached to the door and it appears that the voice is coming through it. “I could hear you trying to hush the girl from outside. Smart but, if I recall, I had to teach you not to help the new girls last week. Must I teach you again?”
“No, Lord.” Luna pleads, her voice filled with fear. The three other girls in the room sit up in horror as they awake to The Voice.
The Voice clicks his tongue. “But Luna, if I don’t teach you, how will you ever learn to behave?”
Tears start to fall down Luna’s face and she buries her face into her hands. “Please Lord….”
“Get out here girl!” The Voice yells. “And you had better not be crying…..”
Luna shuts her eyes and stands up, her head hitting the ceiling it was so narrow. The door slowly opens and Luna is yanked out quickly. Sounds of screaming fill the air and the Voice’s heavy breathing.
“Wha- what’s going on?” I ask the other girls quietly, guilt filling my voice. It is my fault that Luna is out there getting whatever punishment this all knowing Voice has set for her. The other girl’s shake their heads, their eyes wide with fear.
It could have been minutes or it could have been hours when Luna walks back into the room, crying with her clothes rumbled and cuts down her wrists.
“What….what happened?”
Luna shakes her head and, crying silently, curls up into a ball in the corner of the room. The lights switches out instantly after.
“Good night, ladies.” The Voice hisses in.


Eight Hours
According to my watch, I have been locked inside of this room for around eight hours. I barley slept through the night, my eyes snapping open in fear with every creak and every breath taken by the other girls.
The lights flipp on at a quarter to six and the girls around me moan a little.
“Morning ladies.” The Voice fills the room.
“Good morning Lord.” The other girls moan.
“I’m sorry.” The Voice says politely. “But I could not HEAR YOU!” His scream fills the room and the other girls cower in fear.
“Good morning, Lord!” The other girls except for me chorus cheerfully, forcing smiles onto their faces.
“That’s better.” The Voice tells us and the door opens slightly. “Here’s your breakfast.”
A small piece of burnt toast is tossed into the room and then the door shuts quickly. The girls don’t move until the footsteps above us stop and then they pounce on the toast.
“Stop!” Luna shouts. The girls drop the toast.
“Is that it?” I question and the girls look at me as though I had turtles crawling out of my nose.
“This is gold.” One of the girls speaks. She had light blonde hair like mine but hers is cut into a bob and filled with beautiful curls. “We never get this much unless a new girl comes.”
“No; we once got two rolls on Christmas.” Luna tells the girl with the curls.
“Well no one but you and I have been here that long.” The girl on my right spoke up. She also had blonde hair and blue eyes with glasses. In fact, all the girls seemed to be around my age with blonde hair and blue eyes.
“Why are you guys talking?” I ask. “Last night this girl,” I nudge towards Luna, “got in trouble for talking to me.”
“He’s not here right now.” Luna tells me. “He leaves for work at breakfast and comes back a few hours later. We aren’t sure how long he’s gone…..there’s no clock in here.”
“I have a watch.” I tell them, indicating to my wrist. They stare at it in amazement.
“Oh my god!” The skinniest of the girls screech. “No one has had a watch while I’ve been here….”
“Well, now that we can talk, would any of you mind telling me where exactly I am?”
The girls stare at me solemnly. “We don’t know exactly….all we know we’ve had to guess…”
“We know we are in Mason, Ohio…” One of the girls suggests helpfully. “He changes the newspaper sometimes and sometimes we read it.”
“Newspaper?” I questioned and the girls pointed to the corner which was stacked with newspaper that appeared to be covered in…..
“Oh my god, ew!” I shriek and for the first time since I had gotten here I see the girls smile a little.
“How long you are here depends on how good you are….and how much the Lord likes you. We were all taken from our homes in the middle of the night and taken here were we live as dogs.” Luna gulps a little bit but continues. “If we speak ill of the Lord he beats us, if we disobey the Lord he rapes us…..if we try to escape he….kills us.”
This was insane. I had to be dreaming or something. But even as I slap myself I can feel the pain. I knew this was no dream.
“We don’t know who he is. No one has ever seen him. He keeps a masked covering his face at all times.”
“How do you leave?” I ask. The girls laugh, but the laughs are cynical and quiet, as though they are struggling not to cry.
“You don’t leave unless you die.” Luna answers my question. “The only way out is death. And you always die.”


Two Days
Rita Fox:
The first thing you are informed of when you become a profiler is never just one thing. Working with the FBI is no picnic and I personally had to work my a** off to get where I am today. But I remember early on in training about the child abduction rules; report after twenty-four hours.
A forty eight, me and my co-workers David Samuels, Simon Peters, Julia Dafburg, and Lacy Boyle are heading to the small and normally peaceful town of Mason, Ohio. Peaceful until about a year ago, apparently.
“Why didn’t they call us sooner?” Simon asks in the car on the way to the hotel. “I mean, they said this has been happening for almost a year….”
“Typical police denial.” Julia chuckles. “They don’t want to admit to the town that it isn’t as safe as they though. They subconsciously convince themselves that these kids simply ran away.”
“How many are missing?” I ask.
“Since last March? At least nine.” David reads from the files.
“Similarities? Any obvious connections?”
“Painfully.” David hands me the files and I flip through the nine girls.
“Blue eyes, blonde hair, blue eyes, blonde hair…” I roll me eyes. “The police really didn’t notice this?”
“They didn’t know to look out for it.” Lacy comments. “They didn’t expect to have a serial killer on their hands. Who does?”
“We don’t know for sure it’s a serial killer.” Simon emphasizes. “No bodies have turned up.
“What else would he be doing with the girls?” I ask, being careful not to say he or she yet.
“Any number of sexual violence.” Simon sighs. “He has a huge number of playmates.”
“And keep so many at a time?”
“Rita does have a point.” Julia says, solemnly. I understood. No matter how long you work for the FBI it will always get to you that such monsters live in the world. “What if they gang up on him?”
“So it seems we are looking for a man of about twenty or thirty if he is killing them…” Lacy brainstorms. Before I go further, I should explain how she is able to come up with this. Serial killers are typically male and in their twenties or thirties. Based on the ages of the girls being kidnapped, he probably isn’t more than a decade or so older than him.
“He definitely has a type. Maybe a mother or girlfriend that wronged him with blue eyes and blonde hair?” David adds. Julia nods.
“He’s white, serial killers usually kill within their own race, and if it does turn out to be the mother he may also have blue eyes, blonde hair….but that may be too early to determine.”
“Are there any other similarities?” Lacy asks and David flips through the files.
“Well….they are all in their teens.”
“Who’s the youngest?”
“Claire Belle North, age twelve. But she’s tall for her age so he may have thought she was older.”
“So looking through child molesters won’t be helpful.” I conclude.
“No….but I think he may have just moved to Mason.” David says. “All of these girls were last seen very close to the same area. He’s not comfortable here yet. The last girl though, Alison, was taken from Lebanon.”
“He’s getting more comfortable.” I say and David nods.
“So we should be looking for people who have just moved here?” Simon asks, eagerly. Julia shakes her head.
“I don’t think so….he’s too smart for that. I think he lives around, perhaps Lakota, but he wouldn’t kill right in his town. Mason isn’t that big.”
“I loathe smart serial killers.” I shake my head and Simon laughs.
“Without them, I’d be out of a job.”
“And a social life.” Lacy adds and everyone laughs while Simon pretends to look offended,
The driver pulls up to the curb and David turns to us.
“Ready to catch some bad guys?”
“You know it.” I wink.


Gage Seth Bender:
New girls always put me in a better mood.
I’ve lost count of how many at this point. I suppose some people would find this sickening but those people didn’t have to grow up with Her.
I see Her every time I close my eyes. It keeps me from sleep. I know I will not rest until She is gone. My life could have been normal without that w**** that I knocked up. I have to be such a nice guy. I should have known better then to get with her. She had blue eyes. That goddamned b**** drove me crazy. “We can get married, we can have a family.” Family. I despise the word and I hate the w**** that my father screwed. The woman that claimed to be my mother. My mother. W****.
I hate to drink. Hate losing control. Maybe just one tonight though…it’s a special occasion anyway. Tonight I get the new girl in…..

Grace:
At the sound of The Lord coming, Luna immediately silenced me. I didn’t object she knows better anyway.
“New girl!” The Lord yells through the vents. Luna’s face goes white.
“Drunk.” I see Luna mouth. From what she had told me he doesn’t drink often. I see Claire start to shake.
“Get out here, b****!” The Lord screams and pulls the door open. “Now!”
The girls give me helpless looks. If I don’t go out he will hurt all of us. I have no choice. I slowly stand up and walk to the door. The Lord grabs me and slams the door.
I close my eyes and try to think of something else, anything else. Family Guy, Young Frankenstein, Jim Carrey, something funny. But it doesn’t block out the pain. Doesn’t block out the noise. The shame…
Something funny, something funny….anything funny…
Chuck Norris doesn’t wear sunglasses. The sun wears Chuck Norris glasses
If you want to see a list of Chuck Norris’s enemies, look at the extinct species list…
How many Weasley’s does it take to light up a wand?
Ow! Ow! No! Stop! No!
Seven: Ginny to look upset and do nothing, Ron to sulk about not getting credit for lighting up the last one, Fred and George to try and blow it up, Percy to yell at Fred and George, Charlie to hold it in front of a cranky dragon, and Bill to roll his eyes at all of them.
Why did Crabbe and Goyle cross the road?
They didn’t; Draco did.
Stop!
Please….
Please…
No more!
OWWWWW!!!
Mommy….mommy…mommy….


Two Hours Later:
“Shh…shh…” Luna is holding me in her arms while I sob. The Lord fell asleep after…after. “It’s okay.”
“Don’t….off…Lord…stop.” I shake. My mind is spinning so my words don’t make any sense.
“It’s not your fault.” Luna tells me quietly. The cliché’ line does nothing for me. “Nothing could stop it…it’s okay…it hurts the worst the first few times but then-‘’
“The first few times?” I shriek and Luna quickly shushes me. The Lord is asleep but she was not wanting to take any chances.
“Shut up!” Luna begs me.
“What did I do to deserve this?” I sob and fall to the ground. “Why…why…why? Luna takes my hand and rubs my hair back.
“Shh…” I fall back onto Luna’s shoulder.
“It’s okay….it’s okay….you’re okay….”