Family Matters

Family, it’s the one thing that matters the most to me now and was the entire reason I gave up my old life for some 9 to 5 desk job with the FBI rather than being an agent out in the field protecting the innocent.  It’s the only reason that I even wanted to keep living after I lost Matthew in that mission.  I saw the message come back to headquarters that he had died in a conflict gone bad and, as custom with our line of work, ended up dying and being buried without a trace.  I was already pregnant with our daughter, Wendy and had taken up a position working on Intel so that I could remain out of the field.  But after seeing that, I knew that Wendy and I deserved a better life.  So I filed the paperwork and moved to a small house in New England and took up an intelligence job with the FBI.  

After a few years of living there, I enrolled Wendy in a prep school for students who were studying to be accepted into Ivy League schools.  She liked it there and made many friends and for many years, I had no problems with the school and the teachers were excellent.  That was, until very recently when my daughter’s teacher ended up being fired and a new teacher replaced her.  Wendy’s new teacher was a young male teacher by the name of Lincoln Reeves and on the surface, seemed nice.  However, something about him seemed off.  It could have been the look in his eyes, the way he shook my hand, or how close of an eye he kept on the kids.  Whatever it was that made my stomach crawl and my instincts put me on edge, it drove me to investigate him and all of his accounts.  

I know what I did seems illegal or morally apprehensible on the surface, but there was more than enough reason for me to investigate him after I found a bulletin online with a face that looked eerily similar to his.  Someone had posted a bulletin on Facebook and elsewhere looking for Lincoln.  They mentioned him by name and left a picture of him.  I ran his face through facial recognition software at work and he came back a perfect match.  He was being accused of sexually assaulting minors at a previous school.  I wanted to open a case on him, but apparently, the charges had been dropped by the time I had filed the paperwork.  Even though the charges had been dropped, I wasn’t content with just letting it go.  I continued to go through background searches, private accounts, anything I could try and find to get enough information to go after him.   But no matter what I tried, I could never seem to get anything on him.  But every time I looked at his face, I always felt like I was staring into the eyes of a cold blooded monster.  

Part of me knew there was something wrong with him, and wanted to make sure it couldn’t harm my daughter, but that was something that I couldn’t stop from happening, no matter how hard I tried.  I was stuck at work filing out paperwork on another case and had to call my daughter on her emergency phone to tell her that I would be there to pick her up a bit later.  When I drove up to the school to pick her up, I didn’t find her waiting outside.  I called her phone, but she didn’t pick up.  I went inside of the school and asked one of the employees working there if they had seen Wendy and they told me that she ended up being taken home by Mr. Reeves.  My mind was thrown into a panic as to where they could have gone.  I tried to drive home with some hope in my heart that she had made it home safely, but she was nowhere to be found.  I called her phone again, but there was no response.  I began to track her phone to the last location it had been, and my eyes began to tear up as I saw that her phone’s location indicated that she was down in a warehouse.  I sped down to the warehouse, fear and tears were in my eyes hoping that the worst hadn’t occurred, but neither Wendy or I were fortunate enough for that.

I arrived at the warehouse and found a nearby wrench to break the lock on the warehouse door and open it.  There were some window panels that allowed the evening sun to seep through and show down to the center of the floor.  I ran over to where Wendy was, having been left on the floor.  I found her gagged, bruises, cuts, and blood all over her body and blood on the floor.  I didn’t have to even ask her what happened to know what had occurred.  That damn bastard Lincoln Reeves, or whoever he was had raped Wendy and left her for dead.  I tried to grab her and wake her up, but it was no use.  Her eyes didn’t flutter when I opened them, there was no breathing when I touched her chest or had removed the gag to see if I could hear her make any noise.  Her neck had turned purple from swelling and large hand marks stretched around her neck.  She wasn’t breathing at all, and her body was beginning to feel cold.  I clutched my daughter’s body and broke down into sobbing tears.  That man, that monster took the one thing in my life that I cared about away from me.  

I tried to pick up my daughter, but couldn’t manage to carry her.  As I tried to move her, I noticed a note that was laid on the concrete floor next to Wendy.  I picked up the note and read what had been written out for me.  The letter itself was a clear message from Lincoln and was not only telling me in detail what happened but mocking me so for my inability to have come to the aid of my daughter.

“Thank you for lending Wendy to me this weekend, Ms. Blankenship.  It was quite a lovely experience being able to play with such a lovely beauty as hers.  At first, I was under the impression that she had already been tainted, but was pleasantly surprised to find that she was as innocent as she appeared.  It was so much fun ravaging her innocence away from her.”

My eyes were tearing up with tears of sadness and rage as I continued to read this note.  I despised Lincoln for what he did and for what he wrote down but needed to read what else was said.

“You know, your daughter screamed so much when she was in distress?  She cried out for you as if you could actually save her.  It made the experience all the more fun.  She was a hard one to keep down, but a few well-placed blows to the head made everything far easier.  She was so fun to slip in and out of, you know?  She was so fresh and new.  But, every good thing must come to an end, Ms. Blankenship, and unfortunately, your daughter was one of the good things in my life I had to end to ensure my safety.  I know you will not understand why I do the things that I do, and that to me makes it more fun to see you struggle to try and figure out what I do.  But you will not find me, Ms. Blankenship, no matter how hard you try.”

-Lincoln

Lincoln took the one thing I loved the most in life from me.  He showed absolutely no empathy for Wendy and took her life without a thought of remorse.  After seeing what he had done to my daughter, I went out and buried her in my backyard.  As much as I wanted to give my own daughter a proper funeral, releasing the information to the authorities that I had found her dead and the process to laying her to rest would interfere with what little time I had left to track down her killer and get my revenge.  A part of me that I always kept hidden from my daughter wanted to come out, and it wanted to make sure that there truly was no trace of Lincoln left after it was done killing him.  

As an agent for the CIA, I had my fair share of perpetrators that I had to put down, and after killing my first, I created an alter ego for myself that I would hide behind to make it easier to handle.  I referred to this alter ego as “Alli Sui” or “other self” in Latin.  I spent days tracking down Lincoln until I found out exactly where he was staying and intercepted him with an old van that a friend of mine loaned me.  I snuck into his hotel at night and knocked him out with an ether rag right as he was about to go take a shower.  I dragged his body to the van and drove off with him.  I drove to the same warehouse he had been murdering in and restrained him to a chair with handcuffs.

When he awoke, he got to see my face hidden behind my old interrogation mask.  The only difference is that there would be no investigation, only a trial by death.  

“Who the hell are you?  Why am I back in my old warehouse?”

I put my finger to his lips to silence him.  I began to speak to him in a different tone from my normal voice to mask it and explained what I planned to do.  “Shhh.  You are here to attest for your crimes.  You are guilty of several counts of rape and murder and shall be punished accordingly.”

I went over to the work desk and began to pull out tools.  I started by pulling out a box of matches and lit one on fire.

“What are you gonna really do to me, huh?  It’s not like doing anything to me is going to stop me from doing what I enjoy doing the most.”

“Oh, I have no intention of letting you free, my dear pet.  No, you shall die tonight.  The only question is when and how long it will take.  I intend to take my time, but the sooner you confess to everything, the sooner it can be over.”

He began to curse and try and scream obscenities at me to try and throw my guard off, but I was having none of it.  I took each match and pressed them into his skin, burning him in small locations one by one as I lit and extinguished the matches on his skin.  Normally I would have found such acts revolting, but I was beginning to enjoy these acts, almost as if I was beginning to enjoy the idea of murder and torture itself.  I only used my alter ego to kill when I had to, but part of me really wanted to watch him suffer.  I next pulled out a series of nails and began to slowly drive them into his legs, nail by nail, and inch by inch.  I used a wrench rather than a hammer so they would be jagged and even more painful going in.  I enjoyed hearing his blood-curdling screams as each nail jaggedly punctured through his skin and pierced his bones.  Blood began to seep through his pants as the nails were pounded in deeper.  As I continued my work, I began to hear something in my head telling me to harm him further and to become more brutal.  So I did.  

I next pulled out a pair of pliers, but rather than remove the nails, I began to twist them further in, painstakingly shifting them further inside of him.  Bones began to splinter and his face was one of pure agony.  He could not see my expression beyond my face, but it was one of pure joy and glee in response to his suffering.  I decided to ask him then if he would be willing to confess to his crimes.

“Do you confess for your actions?”

He spat at me through gritted teeth as he sneered at me for my actions.  I began to laugh at him for being so foolish in not wanting his life to end soon.  “If you are not willing to confess, then I will continue in my fun.  I next went over to the table and pulled out a small box cutter that had been lying there.  I walked over to him and began to slowly cut slices into his ear lobe, making sure every cut was jagged and drew blood.  When he tried to reach his head over to bite me, I went to the work table and came back with a rope.  I tied his neck in a noose form to the back of the chair, and the knot would tighten every time he tried to reach out to me with his teeth.  He slowly started to feel his throat tighten with the rope as I continued to mark slices across his face.  Blood was slowly pouring over his mouth and he began to gargle on his own blood.  

I asked him again if he would confess. His only response was “I’d rather choke!”

So I obliged with his request.  I walked around the inside of the warehouse looking until I found a large crowbar and walked over to one of the fuel tanks.  I started spreading the fuel around the warehouse and drenched the prying edge of the crowbar.  “You choose not to confess and say you would rather choke.  Well, Mr. Reeves, or whatever your true identity is, you shall have just that!”  I forced the crowbar down his open mouth and placed my foot on the edge of his chair so I could elevate myself and force the crowbar down his throat.  His head was contorted permanently upward and I could see the crowbar force it’s way into his body.  I took the last two matches and tossed one onto the exposed fuel and the second one down his throat.  Both caught fire almost instantaneously and I walked out of the warehouse as everything inside began to burn.  I tossed my glove inside and left the warehouse in the van.  I went and dropped the van off at my friend’s house, thanking them for allowing me to borrow it and returned home.  When I made my way inside, I took the mask I was wearing and bleached it clean of any blood and residue.  After leaving the mask to soak, I went to go and take a shower to cleanse my body of any remnants of Lincoln Reeves that I may have missed.

As I returned to my bedroom and began to dress in evening attire, I found myself going back to pick up and clean off my mask and heard a voice pop into my head.

“You can’t go back now, not after what you’ve done.”

I dropped the mask and fell back onto my bed.  The voice sounded just like the fake voice I put on for Alli Sui.  “What do you mean I can’t go back?”

“You can’t go back to a normal desk life.  Your daughter is gone now, and the only thing that made you happy after she was gone was getting vengeance on the man who took her life.  You two aren’t so different, fighting to fulfill your desires.  Why don’t you just accept yourself for who you really are?”

Alli Sui had become more than an alter ego I made up that night and as much as I wanted to deny her claims, I knew that, deep down, she was right.  “You’re right.  I can’t go back now.  What should we do?”

“Leave this house, burn it, and leave no trace.  Start a new life under a new alias and we can continue our work at night.”

I did as Alli Sui told me to and left that house for good.  Part of me wanted to stay, but I knew that I needed to make a new life for myself, one that didn’t remind me of my past.  I changed my name and moved to a different state.  It didn’t take me long before I started being able to work as a bounty hunter and at night would be able to continue the work of Alli Sui.  I already had my next target laid out.  My next targets were a couple, last name is Syversteen and the bounty that had been laid on their head by a hitman had something to do with large scale theft.  They had only one child but he had been placed in a mental asylum, likely something to do with how his parents raised him.  I wanted to write this story down as a memoir of the events that lead to this change.  I will leave no trace of my targets or of myself, so this will only be a memoir for myself.  But if by some chance someone does find this memoir, just know that you are likely a target of mine and you are likely next.  After all, you were the one who snooped into my family matters, and snoopers never last for long.  Be prepared, because if you are reading this now, it is just a matter of time before Alli Sui finds you and makes sure no trace of you is left.