The Cat and The Mouse

 

Author's note: This story follows a character that is not a good person, and has done some really, really bad things. Trigger warning for murder and stalking.

Ted watched from a distance as the raven-haired woman left the gas station.

“Oh, Heather, finally,” he muttered to himself, a twisted smile curling on his lips. “Please, do hurry. Tonight is the big night, and I can hardly wait.”

"Heather" wasn’t her real name, but he enjoyed giving his victims pet names in his twisted game of cat and mouse. Ted’s fingers traced the faded tattoos of names on his left arm—each one a former mouse. Eight in total with a spot picked out for a ninth.

Some took souvenirs, but these tattoos were his keepsake, a way to keep his victims close to his heart long after their lives had been snuffed out.

It seemed to take an eternity before Heather finished filling her gas tank and got back into her car.

“Now, you’re going to check your phone. It’ll take two minutes, then you’ll leave,” Ted whispered, having memorized her routine after weeks. Sure enough, after a moment, Heather put her phone away and started her car.

Without a word, Ted started his car and began to follow Heather, keeping a short distance between them. Before he could raise any suspicion, he turned down a side street about a quarter of a mile from her house. The streets were deserted as Ted pulled over, got out of his car, and grabbed a small duffle bag.

With a quick glance to ensure no one was around, Ted headed toward a nearby forest. Despite the darkening sky, he didn’t even need a flashlight as he made his way through the underbrush. Moving the brush aside, he pulled a pair of binoculars from his bag and settled in.

“Right on time,” he whispered as he watched Heather walk into her house. Her home, perched atop a high hill and surrounded by a dense forest, was as isolated as always. No other cars were parked in the driveway. He'd never even seen a visitor. She was alone—the perfect prey he could take his time with.

Ted remained still for hours, staring through the binoculars until the lights in the living room went out. Satisfied that Heather had gone upstairs, he tucked the binoculars back into his bag.

Ted retrieved his wire cutters, gloves, and lockpicking kit, slipping on the gloves as he navigated the path he had previously cleared through the forest which led directly to Heather’s backyard. The careful planning and preparation he put into his games is what had kept him one step ahead of the police for so long.

As quiet as a shadow, he made his way to the side of the house where the phone lines were located. He doubted she even had an operational landline, but one could never be too careful. He sliced through the line with his wire cutters. Content with his work, he placed the small device next to the severed line and pressed a few buttons.

Pulling his cellphone from his pocket, he confirmed that it had no signal. The cellphone jammer was working. It had the downside of turning his phone into nothing more than a fancy pocket watch, but he had never needed it anyway.

With his preparations complete, Ted made his way to the front door. He grasped the knob, unsurprised to find that it didn’t turn—but the door still pushed open.

“Looks like she didn’t close it all the way when she locked it. What luck,” Ted laughed to himself as he stepped inside. He closed the front door fully behind him. A quick glance revealed that it had a lock that had to be both locked and unlocked with a key.

Inside, the house was cloaked in a dense darkness, including the upstairs. The air was thick with the scent of old wood and dust, tinged with a faint mustiness that made his nose twitch.

Ted dimmed his phone’s brightness and used the faint light to carefully examine his surroundings, committing the details he couldn’t see through the windows to memory. The kitchen was to his left and her living room was to the right. A long hallway lead from the front door to the back of the house where a set of stairs led to the second level.

Ted made his way to the stairs. He made note of a door across from the stairs, that was not quite visible from the front door, dismissing it as a closet. The first stair emitted a light squeak as he stepped on it, the aged wood shifting slightly beneath his weight. Ted held his breath and waited for a moment before moving to the next stair, doing his best to disguise the squeaks as the house settling.

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His excitement grew with each step that brought him closer to his prey. When he reached the top of the stairs, he counted the doors, estimating based on the windows outside that her bedroom was the third one on the right.

His hand practically quivered with anticipation as he pushed it open. That first look—the fear, the shock when they realized he was there—was always his favorite. The room was dark, but he could make out the outline of a figure on the bed, beneath the covers. He approached, reaching out, his hand aiming for her neck.

Ted's hand closed on the soft fluff of a pillow. Confused, he pulled out his phone to illuminate the bed, only to find it empty.

“It’s just sheets bunched up beneath the blankets…she’s not here…?” Ted wondered. His eyes darted around the dimly lit room, the pillow slipping through his fingers, an empty mockery of the touch he’d been anticipating.”

There was no attached bathroom and all the furniture was against the wall, impossible to hide behind. He checked beneath the bed, but she wasn’t there. A spike of frustration twisted in his chest—she was ruining his moment.

“It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s fine. So the little mouse wasn’t hiding in this hole. That’s fine. This isn’t the first time. The chase is part of the fun, right, Elena?” Ted muttered, forcing himself to stay calm. He stroked the tattoo of her name, re-living the euphoria of catching her right as she reached her car. “Maybe I just counted wrong. It isn’t always easy to tell which room is which from the outside."

With practiced light steps, he slipped out of the bedroom. He needed to maintain his element of surprise, at least for the time being.

“Maybe she went to the bathroom,” he mused, checking the room directly across the hall. It was another bedroom, but it looked unused—every piece of furniture and the floor were covered in various articles of clothing. He closed the door quietly before moving to the next. It was a bathroom, but it was just as empty as the bedroom.

As he approached the last room at the end of the hall, he heard the soft shuffling of feet—the distinct sound of someone trying to move quickly while staying quiet.

“Seems like my little mouse has found me out. Let’s see if she can avoid the cat,” Ted thought, exaggerating his steps as he walked. If Heather already knew he was there, he might as well enjoy the chase. “I wonder if she’s figured out she can’t use her phone yet.”

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he glanced towards the front door. Closing his eyes, he focused on listening, picking up the sound of her rushed movements again. She hadn’t left. She must have realized she wouldn’t have time to escape with all the noise he made coming down. Bet she was wishing she’d changed the locks.

“Just to be safe,” Ted thought, pulling out his lock-picking kit. He removed one of the smaller picks, shoved it into the lock, and twisted. He wiggled it a little before pulling as hard as he could, jamming the pick inside. There would be no escaping through the front now. His lock-picking kit came in handy after all.

The house didn’t have a back door, but Ted knew there was one on the side. He’d never seen Heather use it, but if she was going to try, there was no time like the present. He headed towards it, moving through the living room, in the opposite direction of where he’d last heard Heather.

“That explains why she doesn’t use this one. Shame I’ll never know the story behind that,” Ted muttered, rolling his eyes as he found it. The side door was almost melded to its frame, sealed with layers of paint, rendering it nearly immovable, a TV atop a stand sitting in front of it.

“Nowhere left to run, pretty girl. Why don’t you just come out?” Ted called into the darkness. Silence met his challenge. Despite straining his ears, the noise of her footsteps had disappeared. “She must have found somewhere to hide.”

He pulled his phone from his pocket and broke one of his golden rules: he turned on the flashlight. Usually, the dark was his friend, but his prey knew the house better than he did. She couldn’t evade him forever, but the cellphone jammer had a limited battery life.

He shined the light around the walls and located a light switch. Flicking it back and forth, nothing happened. Odd. He tried one of the living room lights. It didn’t turn on either—not even a flicker.

“I didn’t cut the power,” Ted murmured, scratching under his chin. The house was old—maybe the wiring was bad. "Oh well. It will just make this hunt more interesting."

Ted lurked toward the kitchen, the last place he had heard the shuffling of Heather’s feet. He was sure she hadn’t gone back upstairs—the creaks would have tipped him off. His phone’s flashlight was his only guide as he scanned the kitchen, but she wasn’t there.

He approached one of the kitchen windows. It led out to the backyard, almost directly parallel to the entrance of the path he’d made through the woods. If he angled his head right, he could even see it. He shined his light over the window and saw that it was unlocked.

Did she go out the window? Would she have taken the time to close the window? None of his victims who made it outside had done that.

“Maybe if you’d closed the window, you’d have gotten away, Mia,” Ted whispered thoughtfully, stroking her name. Many of the mice had made careless mistakes, but so far, Heather’s only mistake had been leaving the door open. He was shaken from his thoughts by a quick, nervous shuffle echoing behind him.

“Dammit.” He whirled around, but she was already gone. Ted's face flushed red with rage as he shouted into the darkness, “YOU CAN’T RUN FOREVER, LITTLE MOUSE!”

Rushing back to the front of the house, Ted swept his phone’s light across the room. No sign of her. How could she keep evading him like this? Had she somehow found out about the cellphone jammer? They were illegal but not impossible to get.

"Are you just stalling?" he asked the darkness as he roamed back into the living room. She had to be in here. The flashlight cast long shadows of the furniture as he held his phone up high to survey the room.

"You're trapped in here with me, you know. There’s no getting out. I'll find you!" He screamed to the house. The frames of the living room windows rattled reminding him of this previous thoughts. Had she escaped through a window? Was he alone stumbling around in the dark?

Ted inspected the living room windows, upset to find them unlocked. He tried to open each of them, his palms slick with nervous sweat. They wouldn't budge.

He directed his light down to the frame to see if there was a lock he'd missed. The window was nailed shut. He’d heard of some security nuts doing that, but he didn’t have Heather pegged as one. At least she was still somewhere in the house.

The sound of footsteps graced him again, faster and louder this time, on the other side of the wall, in the hallway where the stairs were.

"I've finally got you cornered, little mouse," he snickered, turning down the hall and bringing his phone up to find… an empty hallway. There had been no noise from the squeaky stairs to indicate she’d gone up. There was only one place she could be.

Ted approached the door at the end of the hall, his hand trembling as it closed around the knob. He pushed it open and froze in his tracks. The door led to a second set of steps that descended into a cellar. The shadows here were denser than in the rest of the house, his phone’s light barely piercing them. A heavy coldness emanated from below.

But what truly brought him to a standstill was the smell. It was a smell that people like him were very familiar with—rotten meat mixed with the shallow undertones of decaying fruit. It was the distinct smell of death.

The color drained from his face, a cold sweat breaking out across his skin. He had misjudged the game, misjudged her. He wasn’t the cat. He was the mouse. She'd never been trapped with him, he was trapped with her.

"I have to get out of here. Now." His mind scrambled, clawing for an escape, for a plan, any plan. "The front door—maybe the picks could still get it open. I'll regroup and..." He turned to leave and found himself face to face with the raven-haired woman.

"Boo!" she mocked him with a demented smile, the slight glimmer of insanity behind her eyes. Her hands made contact with his chest, and pushed.

Still startled, Ted flew backward, his phone slipping from his hand as his body slammed into each of the concreate steps. His bones jarred with every impact, until he landed at the bottom in a crumpled heap. His phone hit several steps as it fell with him, its screen shattering.

Pain surged through every part of his body in waves. He had landed on something. Something sharp. Warm wetness seeped onto the floor from both his head and his back, his blood mixing with the dirt of the cellar floor. He couldn’t move, and breathing was becoming difficult.

His head lolled to the side, bumping into something cold and hard. A skull. His eyes widened as more came into focus—too many to count, enough to make the tattoos on his arm look like child's play, all staring back at him, their empty sockets mocking him.

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"I was starting to think you’d never bite. You kept me waiting for a while. You were so meticulous. I gather you’ve done this before?" Ted heard the raven-haired woman’s voice for the first time as his vision faded. Her tone was casual, as if discussing the weather or a child's baseball game.

He tried to answer her, to curse her out, to tell her how this was all wrong—that she wasn't supposed to win—but only a guttural moan escaped his lips

"Hmm...well, either way, you won’t be doing it anymore. Thanks for the fun."

The door at the top of the stairs closed, leaving Ted in the darkness as his eyes closed and his breathing faded.

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