Writing Prompts

4 Mass Inversion

When I come to, the van is quiet. Even the steady hum of the motor has disappeared. I don’t know for how long we’ve been stopped. Is my kidnapper taking a break?

I check my phone. It’s eleven in the morning. When does this guy sleep? How much longer will he be out?

I hesitate. I could wait to listen for any obvious signs on whether he’s up and about or not, or I could hurry to try whatever I can try before he wakes. Either way it’s a gamble and I have nothing to base my decision on.

In the end, sitting here and waiting feels like I’m wasting precious time. I try the sliding side doors first. No dice. The back is also locked. I don’t know if I could break out of either even if I repeatedly threw my entire body weight at them. I check the door towards the front last. It opens without protest, briefly making me squint against the sun outside the windshield.

My kidnapper is out cold with his head resting on the steering wheel. A string of saliva trails from his open mouth onto a small wet patch on his knee. He must have been exhausted after all this driving to have passed out like this. Did he always plan to sleep in the van or is this an accident? At least he didn’t drive us off the road and into a tree. Then again, that might have hurt him more than me, letting me escape.

I carefully reach past the passenger seat and towards the glove box. Even if he’s physically stronger than me, he’s unlikely to win a knife fight. They always tell you to run away when you see someone pulling out a knife.

The glove box pops open with relatively little sound. I glance over the contents. The knife is at the top, resting on two paperbacks about . . . dog training? Maybe he stole the van. I ignore the books and take a firm grip of the knife.

“What are you doing, Lukas,” asks my kidnapper calmly. When did he wake up?

I whip around, pointing my knife at him. “Making a break for it. Don’t move.” I scoot past the passenger seat and to the passenger side door while holding the knife between us. The guy observes my actions with what I can only interpret as mild amusement.

“That can’t really hurt me,” he states matter-of-factly. I’m not surprised by the delusion. He has to be insane. I grab the door handle, but it doesn’t even move.

“Let me out. You might think you can take me, but I will hurt you and I have nothing to lose.” I keep trying to press down on the handle. It’s not even like it’s locked. The entire thing seems stuck in place.

He grabs for the blade. I swing wildly, hoping to at least slice off a couple of fingers so he’ll think twice about trying this again, but instead, he takes a hold of it, stopping my motion. He’s not bleeding. My hand erupts in pain and I let go of the knife with a surprised yelp. Two angry red lines are welling with blood where I clutched the handle.

Is this a trick knife? It’s the same one he cut my finger off with. Why is the handle suddenly sharp and the blade dull enough for him to take a firm grip? It doesn’t make sense and somehow, my mind keeps circling back to my mutilated finger with the bone on the outside and the slurry of meat and nerves and skin on the inside and there’s something that almost makes sense except it doesn’t make the least bit of sense, and it’s making my head hurt.

“I’ll have to get a new knife, now.” My kidnapper says. “That’s bad. You shouldn’t be trying to attack me, Lukas. Show me your hand.”

He’s going to make the insides come out again. I pissed him off, and he’s going to make all the little bones in there spring forth like a bunch of tiny little flowers. I swallow down yesterday’s sandwich, shaking my head. Somehow, this seems to set him off more than my escape attempt.

He gets up from his seat, encroaching on my already cramped space. I can’t back up any further. His hands grab a hold of my head before I can draw away. There’s nowhere to go. Maybe this is it. He’ll turn my entire head inside out, squishy brains decorating the ice box as my skull blooms forth like a flower. I freeze.

“I’m hungry and testy,” he says. A lazy smile forms at the words. His eyes . . . the issue isn’t that they aren’t smiling along. I’d expect that from a psychopath or whatever you call this. It’s that whatever is behind them just feels so vast. I don’t believe in souls, but whatever is staring at me doesn’t even feel real. Like nobody is home because my brain refuses to recognize whatever is in there as a person. “And I thought you’d learned to follow orders by now.”

Something deep within my subconscious is absolutely terrified of the situation, but I can’t put a finger on exactly what’s triggering it. I drop my eyes to my hand before holding it out to the man before me. “I’m sorry. I get scared.”

“The only thing that should scare you is not doing as you’re told.” He lets go of my head, voice dry again. Less like a threat and more like a law of nature. He pulls out the first aid kit before disinfecting the cuts along my palm. I hiss. “Maybe I should take another finger. That seems to matter to you. You only have the ten,” he muses. I almost flinch hard enough to pull my hand out of his grasp. My left arm snaps behind my back.

“It was a mistake. I’ll do better,” I try. I don’t really have anything else to offer, considering I still don’t know what he wants from me. “I can buy you lunch if you want,” I then add, remembering what he said a moment ago. Maybe using my credit card will help the police locate me faster, too.

The man chuckles. “You’ll get me lunch in the future. Right now, I want to make myself known. Throw them off my trail.” Oh. So he wants to get flagged by something like using a credit card to lead the investigators here and then hightail it in another direction? “I had to take a detour so they won’t know where we’re going after you made me chase you. That’s why you really mustn’t do that again. Do you understand? I’ll do worse than cut off a finger if that happens again.”

I nod, mouth dry. “Yes. I understand. Crystal clear.” Most of his words made no sense, but he’s getting the general message across at least.

“Alright. You already cut yourself. If it turns out you didn’t learn as well because I didn’t take another finger, I’ll take two to make up for it. You are improving, so you get a break. I don’t want to overwhelm your little brain. Can you drive a car?”

I’m almost too relieved to answer. Tears are burning in my eyes again. The disappointed shake of my mom’s head when I cried after falling off my first bicycle pops into my head.

“Y-yes.”

“Good. I’m . . . bored of doing all the driving. You will take over for the next bit. Take sandwiches and water. Make sure you’ve got all the nutrition you need. I’ll be back.”

And with that, he leaves through the driver side door. I stare after him, mouth slightly agape. I never heard him lock the van. The key is still in the ignition, anyway. I wait until he’s vanished into the gas station we’re parked at before trying the door. It opens. If I take the entire van, he won’t have a way to chase me down like last time. I get in the driver’s seat, push the clutch, and turn the key. Nothing happens.

He’s messing with me. He’s doing this on purpose so he can catch me in the act of doing something I’m not supposed to be doing. Or maybe he’s just taunting me. Did he leave the door open on purpose to test me? It’s not like he even ordered me to stay in the van. All he said was to have some food and water. I check the ice box and pull out a plastic-wrapped sandwich and a bottle of water. Then, I push open the door. Wouldn’t want to litter in the van, now, would I?

It’s flimsy deniability, but it might allow me to test whether he’s trying to trick me or genuinely enough of an airhead to accidentally leave the door open. The next trashcan is a good ten meters away, so I head over there and dispose of the plastic packaging. This also means my phone is outside that cursed van for a few precious minutes. I eat my lunch next to the trashcan for good measure. Before I can finish, the screaming starts.

I scan the parking lot. A streetlight near the gas station twists with a horrible metallic creak, vomiting the cables and various plastic parts from the inside onto the outside. My brain struggles to comprehend what’s happening. Another light’s metal hull pulls back from top to bottom like it’s shedding skin. A ball of slimy meat and muscle falls from the sky only a few meters away. It splatters open, revealing a cache of bloody feathers, claws, and a beak.

Don’t think of the rat in the alley. This isn’t happening.

There can’t have been many people inside the dingy old gas station. Two of them come spilling from the doors, shouting something. One of them is moving wrong. She bumps into a car, almost falling, catching herself and then trying to sprint off. Something is up with her eyes. There’s blood. When she gets closer, I see thin, fleshy strands growing out of where her pupils should be.

Her eyes are backwards.

The terrifying thought is impossible, but some deep, deep part of me is certain of it.

They’re inverted.

The man that exited right after her has his arms full of a glistening, reddish mass.

He’s carrying his organs in his arms. His esophagus has spilled from his mouth.

I vomit my entire lunch next to the trash can. I’m so busy retching, I don’t notice anything around me until a hand on my back has me recoiling. “You decided not to puke into my van,” my kidnapper says. I try to get distance between us without taking my eyes off of him. “If you’re done, get back in there. We should get going.”