Biphobia

Because she was weak, and he was upright, and he wore heavy boots while she had only the soles of her tired feet to grip on the slippery floor. He had only to stamp once to break her foot and leave her even more helpless than she already was.

Was that an excuse not to at least try? It felt like one, and Christi swallowed her heart, listened to what Bubblehead said and watched what he did. Perhaps there would be a better opportunity later, if she could trust her tired brain to spot it when it arose and her courage not to fail when the moment came.

"Each competitor shall pull out its own hair. The first competitor to be completely bald shall be the victor. Number two currently leads by one round: should number two win this round, the contest shall be over, and number one shall be forfeit. Begin."

Bubblehead turned away, stepped to the door and locked it behind him. Christi blinked to clear her dazed eyes and took a breath. She had to pull out her own hair? All of it?

"Sherie!" She hissed. Sherie lay against the wall, breathless and exhausted. Her eyes were glazed and her breath weak. Was it just emotional shock that stilled her, or something else? Could she be dying of dehydration, or were the repeated sedatives building up in her bloodstream and sapping her strength?

"Sherie! You have to pull out your hair!" Christi continued, took a lock of her own dark hair in her hands and pulled. She grimaced, gritted her teeth and tugged, but it just slipped through her dirty hands. She tried again, wrapping it around her fingers before she pulled. It hurt, a little, but nothing budged. Perhaps she was trying too much at once? She tried once more with a smaller lock wrapped around her fingers, gave it a long tug. A squeak left her mouth as she felt the hair come loose, her scalp making stomach-churning snapping, squelching sounds as the follicles came free.

She gave a long sigh of relief as the lock came fully away in her hand, brushed it onto the dirty floor and grabbed at another. Bruised and sore from the first liberated lock, her scalp screamed as she tried for a second -- she couldn't possibly pull from the same area twice. She could leave that area for later, maybe it wouldn't hurt so much once she had gone all the way around her head.

Something that had been screaming for attention in the back of her mind made itself heard, and she stopped. What was she doing? Why was she obeying Bubblehead's commands? Why was she playing his stupid game? Sherie was half-asleep, or half-dead, and wasn't in a fit state to play. If she carried on, she'd win by default -- and Sherie would die. She couldn't let that happen.

Her hands and knees slapped at the grime as she padded over to Sherie, dragged herself up on the wall against which she leant, and cradled her head in one filthy palm. "I'm sorry, Sherie." She whispered into her ear, planting a soft kiss on her cheek. "This is going to hurt, but I can't let you lose this round. I can't let you die."

Sherie mumbled something, but her words were faint and weak, and Christi couldn't understand any meaning in them. She barely moaned when Christi took a lock of her curly blonde hair, wrapped it around her fingers and tugged hard. With an all-too-familiar tearing sound, matched with shocks that travelled through Sherie's taut lock as if it were a violin string, her hair came free in Christi's hand, sagged and draped over her fingers.

Christi laid it aside and grabbed another fistful of hair, span her fingers to wind the lock around them, and pulled again. Sherie's cries were frail and distant, but the grimace of pain that washed across her face was real and hauntingly close before Christi's eyes. She closed them against a sudden wash of tears, blinked to clear them, eased her tension on Sherie's hair while she planted a delicate kiss to her grubby forehead. "I'm sorry." She whispered, pulling again, pressing her cheek to Sherie's head and trying to ignore the gristly sounds of another lock pulling free.

Something tugged gently at Christi's hair, and she glanced down to see Sherie's hand wrapped around it, pulling feebly. She'd began to wonder if Sherie might be slightly delirious, but she seemed to have grasped what was happening. She didn't seem to have the strength to pull Christi's hair free, but she was trying nonetheless.

More tears pushed at the back of Christi's eyes. Poor, beautiful Sherie, weakened by fatigue and dehydration and fear, but still with a resolve to sacrifice herself for Christi's life. What did she do to deserve her fate? What had she done, to deserve this torment at the hands of a sadistic murderer? To have her sumptuous thick curls pulled brutally free by her best friend and lover, so that she might live?

The door clattered open behind Christi and she span quickly in fright, pressed her back to the tiled wall as Bubblehead stepped in.

"Enough." He said, and again there was the sound of two voices -- one deep and electronic, one quiet and weak. "The game was not played as planned, but a winner has been decided regardless. Number One has lost more hair in the allotted timeframe. Number One wins."

Christi shut her eyes to hold back the tears. So now they were even.

"Contestants will be transferred to separate rooms for the final challenge." Bubblehead said. "There will be no chance for cheating."

Christi remained rooted to the spot, her bare bottom pressed into the corner between floor and wall, legs tight against her chest and back curved to hunch her shoulders over her knees, as Bubblehead approached Sherie, bent over slowly and grabbed her ankle.

"Leave her alone!" Christi said, but her voice didn't have the power that she had intended. It echoed faintly around the tiled room as Bubblehead ignored her, turned around to exit the room, dragging Sherie's limp body behind him.

The door clattered shut and was locked from the outside, and Bubblehead's heavy footsteps echoed a short way away, before sounds filtered back of another door being unlocked. There was some movement, the jangle of keys, some more heavy footsteps, and then Bubblehead's loud voice boomed around the space outside Christi's little tiled cell.

"The final challenge will begin. The rules for this challenge will be transmitted telepathically to the contestants. The first competitor to break the rules will fail the challenge."

Christi swallowed as the echoes of Bubblehead's voice diminished around the empty building. What did that mean? Telepathic rules? It was like a sick joke! It was worse than a sick joke, and of course, Christi realised, Bubblehead had done it on purpose: he wanted to orchestrate a challenge that they couldn't rig. If they didn't know the rules and couldn't see each other, then they couldn't fight each other to lose. It was the psychological game to end all the psychological games that he had already thrust upon them.

Soon it would all be over. Only Bubblehead could decide who would win. Christi could die, or she could live, and know that Sherie had died. Could there be a future for the one who lived? Could life go on, knowing that three others had died? Could she ever get over such a trauma, or would she shiver in her bed in the darkness of every night, reliving the pain and the fear and the sorrow?

Might death be the merciful option? A quick death and then peace, no bad memories and no demons to exorcise; no nightmares, no heartache, no crushing loneliness. Would it be a quick death? Christi found her mind racing to the end of the challenge; in her mind Bubblehead burst through the door, carrying his murder weapon. Would it be a knife? A hammer? An axe? Would he wield it above his head, let her terrified eyes fix on its bloodstained blade for more heartbeats than she could bear, before he brought it down upon her flesh and cleaved her in two? Could any human face that fate and not die twice -- once from fear, and once again from the blade?

Rene had faced it, and Danika, whatever the murder weapon was. They had faced Bubblehead's instrument of death and died. Had they felt fear as they saw it swing towards them, or had they shut their eyes and thanked their stars that it would soon be over? Did Bubblehead go for the windpipe, or the chest? Did he puncture lungs? Christi had heard no cries, no sound other than the heavy wet impact of the weapon, followed by a liquid bubbling. Neither Rene nor Dani had begged or pleaded, not that Christi had heard. Could they have been silenced or gagged, or had they been brave enough to accept their fate without a sound?

Christi took a breath. She was hyperventilating, driving damp mouldy air in and out of her lungs faster than her heart could handle it. She swallowed, tried to slow herself down; it was torture to clamp her mouth shut against her lungs, to deny her body the air it craved, but she didn't give in, forced her breaths to slow down until they were back under control. Her skin became flushed with a hot sweat, which chilled quickly in the cold air.

She was driving herself to fear with her own imagination, she realised, after her breathing had slowed down sufficiently for the clouds to clear from her head and her eyes. Don't think of death, she told herself in her thoughts. Don't think of Bubblehead's blade. Think of something else.

Not so long ago (was it a few days? How long had she been locked in this old building, anyway..?) Not so long ago, Christi had been looking forward to going home to start a new loving relationship with her best friend. Any new relationship was exciting, but this was something special: she already knew Sherie better than almost anyone, and there was nothing in Sherie that frightened her or warned her away. There would be no skeletons to uncover, no secret third partner or troublesome ex, no long-standing emotional issues or insecurities projected upon her. And they were compatible -- they knew how to work each other's bodies, and that counted for a lot, in Christi's opinion. She already loved Sherie as a friend, and had looked forward to falling in love with her as a lover also.

Now that could never happen. One would live while the other died. One would suffer Bubblehead's instrument of death, while the other lived on in loneliness, always wondering about what might have been, about the future that they could have had together, if they weren't so brutally separated.

It might have only been a quick fling, or a relationship that ran out of steam after a few months, maybe a year -- but maybe it would have lasted longer, if it had the chance. Maybe it would have been Christi's true calling, her fate and her future. Maybe one day she would have gone to her parents and said: "Mum, Dad, I've got some news. I know it's not what you expected, and it's not what I expected either, but my best friend Sherie… Well, she's more than just a friend, and… She's the one. You don't have to say anything right now, but maybe when you've had time to think, you'll be able to give us your blessing, because… Well, it would make us both proud."

Could that have been her future, if Bubblehead hadn't smashed into her life like a runaway train and snatched everything from her? She would never know. She would die, or she would live on alone: perhaps, in time, she might find love elsewhere, with another woman, or with a man, but she'd never find out whether Sherie was the one for her.

Christi put her head on her knees, let her shoulders sag, and let flow the tears that she had been holding back for so long. She sobbed and sobbed until her eyes ran dry, and as the tears poured down her legs so they seemed to take her emotion away, as if her sorrow and her fear and her anger and her hatred for Bubblehead and his vile games had poured out of her body and onto the filthy floor at her buttocks and feet.

When her tears were gone there were only long, slow breaths: in, out, in, out, with the rhythm of passing tides. Seconds, or minutes, or hours, or even days could be passing outside of Christi's little room, but in her head time stood still. She had no idea how long she'd been sat there, cold and naked in her own puddle of tears, empty of emotion and of everything else, when finally a noise woke her from her void of emptiness.

She blinked. Her eyes must have drooped closed; perhaps she'd even been to sleep, although she couldn't remember it. Bubblehead was speaking.

"The final challenge is over. Competitor two is the victor. Number two is now free to leave."

Keys jangled in the lock. The door swung slowly open, and Bubblehead's heavy footsteps walked away.

Christi sat motionless for a moment. She was free? She was sure she should be sad, or perhaps happy, even angry, but she was empty. Perhaps she really had cried out all her emotion: perhaps she was nothing but a shell, never to feel again. Perhaps that was what Bubblehead did to his victims: turned them from real people into emotionless husks. Should she dare leave, and live the rest of her life like this, or should she stay where she was, until death of starvation and dehydration took her, or Bubblehead tired of her presence and slashed at her throat with whatever blade he favoured?

She pushed herself shakily to her feet, her aching knees cracking and wobbling. Her ankles had gone numb and her back complained after being bent over for so long: she hadn't even noticed how much agony she was in until she tried to stand. But she was free.

She could taste freedom in the air that blew in through the open door. Sherie would die, and perhaps that was a mercy, but Christi would live. She would carry Sherie's memory forever, and she would live. She had to live. People had to know what had happened in this old building.

Christi's knees cracked as she stepped out of the small room and into a large hall that housed a swimming pool, and from there into a corridor. A number of doors led from it, but all were locked with chains and padlocks around the handles, except for two that had been smashed open, their frames bent and broken. It was the corridor where she had first escaped, the broken doors the ones she had smashed to free first herself and Sherie. At the far end of the corridor shone reflected daylight.

The floor was caked with footprints. Christi recognised her own, and Sherie's, from where they had first escaped. There were other footprints -- boot-prints, dark in the grime. Most were dried but some were still wet, where Bubblehead had unlocked Christi's door and then retreated to some inner sanctum while she vacated his building. She followed the footprints, since they led to the exit, and passed them as they climbed a set of stairs.

At the end of the corridor she found the main entrance where she had first left the building, unlocked and open. Cool air blew in and tickled her skin. She walked slowly towards it, uncertain but unafraid of what she might find outside. It seemed like aeons had passed; she wouldn't be surprised to step out into the sunshine to see that the world was covered with the blinding sheets of the next ice-age, or the skies scorched by some global war that was long-lost in history. She found neither, only an overcast sky and a rain-flecked parking lot. Rene's car, battered and dented but still serviceable, was parked up against the open entrance, the driver's door open.

Christi approached. The keys gleamed in the ignition switch. The car had been left for her to leave in.

She stopped. Something wasn't right. She had been too afraid, or too tired, or maybe just too stupid to realise it before, but Bubblehead wasn't going to let her escape. She would go straight to the police. She'd drive until she found the nearest town and come back with reinforcements. She might not be quick enough to save Sherie, if Sherie was still alive, but she would bring the police back to Bubblehead's lair and show them where everything had happened. There would be enough forensic evidence in the building to track him down, surely. He couldn't possibly hope to get away for long, once his building had been uncovered.

What had Bubblehead done to the car? He'd already tricked her once into drinking from a drugged bottle -- she wouldn't fall for that again. Perhaps one of those sleeping gas canisters? A fatal dose, maybe, or just something to knock her out until he could come and finish her off?

A rusty noise sounded from above, and Christi looked up at the canopy over the entrance as some debris clattered from it. Had Bubblehead opened a window? Was he going to watch her escape, to see that whatever he had planned went without a hitch?

If so, she thought, she would let him see her escape. The canopy stretched far enough over the tarmac that the car was slightly underneath it, so Bubblehead wouldn't be able to see her climb inside, she hoped. She hoped he wouldn't see her as she reached under the driver's seat and groped around until her hand found the heavy shaft of Brett's crowbar. Thank you, Brett, she mumbled in her head as she hefted it free and slung it over her shoulder.

Now to let Bubblehead see her escape. She turned the key, listened to the engine purr into life. She reached across the column and stuck it into drive, released the brake and turned the wheel until it was pointing out towards the road. Finally she turned up the cruise control and flipped it on, slamming the door as the old car pulled briskly away.

It turned for the road, the steering wheel unwinding as the tyres pulled at the asphalt, straightening its curve. It picked up speed, heading towards the exit, until there was a sound like condensed thunder and the door glass blew outwards. Flames quickly engulfed the interior of the car, licking up out of the broken windows and curling at the blackening paint on the roof. Within seconds the cabin of the old sedan was a blazing fireball, still accelerating, tearing down the old fence and finally coming to a halt against a concrete post, crackling and billowing black smoke even as the engine died.

Christi turned, her spine cold like ice. If she had been in that car, then she would have been burned alive.

What now? If Sherie was still alive then she was half-dead from exhaustion, so it was just Christi and Bubblehead. He was a killer, but he wasn't expecting her. Maybe he would make a mistake.

Christi moved on tip-toes back into the building, retraced her steps to the stairs. She stopped as she heard heavy boot-steps rolling down them, backed up quickly and pressed herself into the shadows of a locked doorway. Slow boot-steps echoed in the corridor, overpowering the sound of her racing heart. They reached the bottom of the stairs, then began to grow fainter as Bubblehead moved along the passage towards the swimming pool.

Christi peered around the corner of her hiding place, saw Bubblehead's inflated bulk carrying a blood-stained fire-axe in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other. With his back to Christi he reached out, grasped the handle and began to pull.

She moved quickly, drawing the crowbar up over her shoulder. Her bare feet made little noise on the tiles but they grew in volume as she picked up speed, from soft pats to louder slaps, but perhaps Bubblehead's helmet was too thick to let in the sound, and his peripheral vision limited behind his mask; he appeared not to notice until Christi's fast-moving crowbar swung into the back of his neck, where inflated helmet met torso and the gap between rubber and flesh was smallest.

Christi felt iron connect with bone through the heavy shaft. The sharp fork of the crowbar punctured rubber and flesh, and a mist of blood was blown out as Bubblehead deflated, dropping to the floor as his air escaped.

He lay motionless, sprawled on his belly as his suit lowered itself around him. His body was slender and lithe. Maybe it was a trick of perspective or of Christi's guilt, evident even though she had attacked a killer, but he looked smaller than she expected. Maybe everyone looked smaller when they were lying prone on the floor after a blow from a weapon in her hand.