I’m all recovered.
Today was my first day out after yet another traumatic experience. I don’t know whether I’m still safe or not. However, I know I can’t stay hiding forever. If these people were still after me and were absolutely determined to erase my existence because their sexually repressed asshole of a king is afraid of scandal, then they’ll find me no matter where I go. I’m not afraid anymore. I’ve been through a lot already.
Walking down the street, I came across a huge poster hung on a bookstore’s window featuring a woman I recognized through the book’s title: Girl, Abducted: How A Small Town Girl Survived Captivity. Her face looked different, almost totally healed. Heather Austin not only survived being held captive by a maniac, she survived the terrible bite of a brown recluse spider that almost caused her to lose eyesight in her left eye. When that happened, half her face had a lesion, and her skin began to rot. A local Iowa website interviewed her after her surgery in which she stated the terrible symptoms that occurred such as fever, shivering, nausea and vomiting. She was hospitalized for four nights and five days, hooked up to IV drips putting vital steroids into her body. A spider bite expert who was working on duty the night she was taken into the emergency room said that the effect would’ve been way worse had the spider been mature. She got lucky, again. Now she looks way prettier than she did, not to mention on the road to success. All of that thanks to me. Everything I’ve done to this girl somehow managed to give her more publicity. The poster listed a book signing date. I almost considered attending, but decided not to. Instead, I stormed inside the store, walked to the table where dozens of copies of her book were set up. I grabbed one and went through it. A few pages in was a dedication to her husband:
“Thank you for being there for me when I needed you the most.”
It doesn’t get any cheesier than this. I’ve spent hours helping her recount the incidents that led to our escape in sequential order, all that while trying to figure out a way to make it all about her and keep me out of the story. Her writing was painful to read, and what made it worse were the grandiose delusions of herself that made her look nothing but a narcissistic, attention-seeking bitch. I roughly put the book down, and wondered what to do next. I grabbed a couple of her books and walked to a secluded corner. I took my pen out of my bag, and wrote in uppercase:
“HEATHER AUSTIN IS AN ATTENTION-SEEKING LYING WHORE”
In other copies, I wrote:
“FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING PLAGIARIST”
I ended up managing to write this in twenty-three copies before leaving the store, dissatisfied regardless. I don’t even care if she finds out it was me. I just don’t want to end up in jail. The book is out there for the whole world to read, and Heather Austin will forever be sole survivor who succeeded in overcoming the extreme and violent circumstances leading up to the killing of her kidnapper. Feminists around the world must be so proud.
I’ve never wanted to be known for my kidnapping and refused to be involved in Heather’s story because of the double life I was leading at the time that would’ve been discovered had I agreed to be interrogated by the police. Heather was lucky because although she traveled to Aurora to get paid in return of sexual favors, her reputation as a simple, loved-by-all college girl helped her cover up the real reason behind her disappearance. I never thought she would go ahead and write a book about her experience, that’s why I preferred to stay out of the equation. I didn’t mind her taking the credit for being a hero, but she doesn’t get to make money off of it.
Felix Eberstark 