CH 2

Dead silence roared in his ears. QiLeren’s eyes glued themselves onto the ghostly figure, the figure likewise staring back at him blankly. Malicious darkness pierced through the white fog that surrounded the silhouette of what looked like an old woman, her empty, pupiless gaze sending QiLeren’s heart into wild overdrive.

Neither of them moved.

QiLeren took a tentative step back. Still the ghost did not move. The only thing louder than static to QiLeren at that moment was the beating of his own heart as he found it harder and harder to breathe. He slowly made his way to the side in an attempt to avoid the ghost’s field of vision, only to have first her eyes then the creaky turning of her head follow his movements. As it reached ninety-degrees, she ceased all movement and stalled silently on the metal chair.

The tapping of footsteps quickened. Heaving out a sigh, QiLeren stopped behind the ghost. His head whipped up at a large crack that interrupted his thoughts; the ghost turned her head around to one-eighty-degrees with one final, noiseless push, surveilling him from her position on the chair.

QiLeren drew in a sharp breath, unconsciously stepping back. The ghost followed suit, pushing herself into a standing position with both her back and face towards QiLeren before stumbling towards him with small, twisted steps.

Where could he go? The doors that served as the exit were locked shut, so that leaves…

QiLeren frantically looked around for a hard object to break the glass with. A scream rang out from the corridor at that very moment, followed by the sound of frenzied footsteps. “Please don’t kill me! Please don’t- who the hell are you? I don’t even know who you are! Why are you trying to kill me when I’ve never even seen you in my life?” Something – possibly somebody’s head – rammed into the glass doors with a loud thump. QiLeren scrambled behind the counter and tucked himself under the desk.

The cramped space brought a peculiar form of security but offered little in ways of shelter from the slaughter occurring mere steps away. The sound of the man’s hysterical struggling permeated the infusion hall but seemed to have no effect on his soon-to-be-murderer as the chainsaw ripped through skin and bone with a dull squelch that did nothing to cover the roar of machinery. A series of thumps hammered at the glass doors with the desperation of a man about to be buried alive in his casket, screams reaching a bloody crescendo before something heavy landed on the floor and ended the chainsaw’s murderous dance. In the deafening silence, QiLeren could only hear pained moans that grew weaker, weaker and weaker still until there was nothing left.

A live, breathing human had just been murdered with a chainsaw not metres away from him.

Somehow, this realisation hit QiLeren harder than the nearby ghost did. He could see the way a chainsaw would effortlessly rip into the body. The way it would render what was once human into a mass of blood and flesh.

The way the murderer would watch his own gruesome handiwork with cold, detached eyes.

“Useless thing.”

The man outside spoke to himself in a low tone. There was the sound of an attempt at opening the glass door followed retreating footsteps when he found they were locked. QiLeren let out a breath that he hadn’t realised he was holding, pulse calming as he hugged his trembling body. The murderer was gone, he was safe…

With a splintering crash, the glass door shattered. QiLeren sat up with a start – the murderer didn’t leave after all! He just went to find something to smash the glass with!

Footsteps drew nearer, bringing with it the crunching of broken glass underfoot.

The air was thick with terror and QiLeren was drowning in it. His body froze, curling in on itself as he attempted to make himself smaller. There was now nothing but a thin wooden board that stood between the two men.

The footsteps stilled.

With a torturous groan, the chainsaw revved to life.

No! He couldn’t have known that he was here- How did he know that he was here?!

QiLeren could feel himself growing faint; how was an unarmed man supposed to go up against a chainsaw-wielding psychopath? The high-pitched screaming of gears hovered close by, able to end his life in a single, gentle swing.

Run, or wait for death? QiLeren forced his fear-ridden mind to think; the door was less than three metres away and had been smashed open already, what’s the probability of him getting away alive if he made a run for it?

“Get out of my way, old hag!”

The murderer yelled, waving the chainsaw in an elaborate dance of death and eliciting a series of inhumane screeching from the ghost. Blood from his previous victim sprayed all over the walls, leaving crimson tear tracks in their wake. A drop flew into QiLeren’s eye.

Should he run? QiLeren struggled with himself; the ghost didn’t seem like a match for the murderer, its screams fading quickly that this’d be the best opportunity for him to run if he was going to at all. But if he were to take the chance, the murderer would know that there was a person hiding and without a shadow of doubt pursue him, and then…

No, there was no need to run. The murderer had stopped for the ghost and would likely leave after disposing of her. QiLeren didn’t have to take the risk. Taking a gamble with his self-reassuring reasoning, he sat still and waited for the murderer to leave.

Sure enough, the chainsaw ceased when the ghost died. So this is the power of true evil, QiLeren thought to himself. The fact that he shut off the chainsaw meant that he wasn’t aware of the other presence in the room, yes?

The thrill of survival had not yet left QiLeren’s system when the footsteps picked up once again and…walked behind the service counter.

QiLeren’s brain was immediately overridden with the white static of terror.

The furthest drawer on the left was pulled out with a swish. The murderer rummaged around roughly for a moment before slamming it closed and moving on to the next one. QiLeren forced himself to concentrate after a short period of blanking out; this service counter was quite large and had six drawers, if he remembered correctly, each of which was separated on the bottom with planks of wood. He had hidden in the one furthest away out of instinct; there should be no way to see through the drawer to what was underneath it if one was standing up!

The murderer had moved onto the fourth drawer, only two away from his. He could almost smell the thick, metallic scent of blood on the chainsaw.

QiLeren noticed the murderer’s shoes as the fifth drawer was drawn out. They were of unusual and quite frankly old-fashioned design, dark blue with a strange logo. Under the logo was a line of text that read Bureau of Prison Management and Surveillance.

These were shoes of an inmate!

QiLeren’s gaze slid up the man’s pants, the corner of the open drawer catching his attention and spelling his death; the insides of each drawer was made of transparent plastic! He rigidly forced himself to study the drawer above him, plastic walls baring its contents of a few pens, some memo pads and a box of paperclips to the world. As soon as the murderer opens it, he’d be able to see through the plastic bottom and straight at QiLeren, helplessly and pathetically waiting for his end.

In the face of certain death, time seemed to stretch on infinitely. The sounds of rummaging grew distant and faint; fear, bitterness, hate…many, many emotions threatened to overwhelm QiLeren as he so resented his own weakness and indecision for the first time. If he had seized the chance before while the murderer was distracted by the ghost, maybe he would’ve lived to see another day.

The sound of a plastic wrapper tearing took QiLeren by surprise for a few moments until he finally pieced together the sounds and smell to form a motive; the man had found a small cake inside the nurse’s drawer and was now happily washing it down with the still steaming water on the table. He hummed a few lines of indiscernible lyrics with no trace of remorse for what he had done.

This short break had bought QiLeren the time to strategize. Run – he had to run. His only advantage right now was that his opponent didn’t know of his presence; even murderers had to double take at a person appearing out of nowhere. This one second of inaction would serve as QiLeren’s last chance.

He mustn’t let this chance slip by.

Wrapper now discarded on the floor, the murderer took a step forward to stand directly before QiLeren’s hiding place. He reached out a hand to grasp the drawer and pulled it open…