He recovered and crawled up the stairs on all fours.
She continued, “You may know how to evade the reach of the law, but I promise you, you will not escape me.”
She grabbed a cuff of his trousers, planted a foot into the stairs, and pulled hard to yank him back. He regained his footing and tried to scramble upstairs. He kicked back at her. Betty easily dodged the desperate jabs of his heels. She yanked again and his pants slid off.
She laughed. If this was the extent of his defensive capabilities, he was done for.
He ran as fast as he could upstairs. She marched after him. At the top he tripped over the body of a chambermaid. He screamed again and scrambled into his bedroom. He tried to slam the door but Betty had already reached him.
“Get out of here!” He screamed.
They fought over control of the door. Finally, Betty let him have it and kicked it in. It popped at him and the force sent him flying into the room.
Betty entered. He seemed so small now cowering in the corner. From the waist up he still retained his banker’s veneer. He wore a suit coat and vest. The red drops that dripped from his nose now bloodied his crisp white shirt. From the waist down, he was in his underpants and black socks. Betty had him cornered in the bedroom. There was nowhere else to turn. He was trapped. His panic intensified.
He didn’t want to fight her but had no choice.
He came right at Betty in a last ditch attempt to overpower her. As he entered her personal space Betty grabbed the lapels of his suit and twirled her body. She used his momentum against him. She threw him into the wall. His impact cracked the plaster. Who could have guessed such a tiny woman could generate so much power?
The blow took the last of the fight out of him. He slid down the wall as he begged and groveled.
“Please! Let me go! I’ll do anything you want! Please I have so much money!” He cried.
She leaned into to him like she was insulted. “You can’t negotiate your way out of this problem. You know, you're like a piggy bank. You're only worth something when you're stuffed full of money. Without it you're just a hollow shell that's easily broken.”
She had an unflappable force of will. There was no escape from this wraith.
He cried, "Please! Please don’t kill me! Have pity!"
Betty said, "No."
He howled, "God have mercy. It’s my birthday!"
She laughed at his desperation. She had reduced him from a business tycoon, to a vulnerable little boy. She took all his power away. She beat him.
She leaned in and kissed him on the lips.
"Goodbye Carson."
Once the sun went down, Betty pulled her car into the carriage port that arched from the mansion. She dragged Carson’s dead weight down the stairs, through the house and removed it from the premises for good. She stuffed him into the big black car. Anyone watching the scene may have suspected she was a mortician on her first assignment, loading a body into a hearse.
She sped away into the night to deliver him to his final resting place.
It would take a day before the effect of Betty's sleep-darts wore off Carson's family and servants. They were confused at the situation and puzzled by the mess that was all around them. His oldest son wondered if the house had been hit by lightning and they were shocked unconscious while waiting for his father to return. Or perhaps there was a gas leak?
They realized that the king of the manor wasn't home yet.
When the police interviewed the family members at the mansion, they could tell there was foul play afoot. The police knew Carson was an upstanding citizen who was connected to the Citadel elite. Plus, if he was from this part of town, he was one of the good people. They figured it was just vermin after property. This kind of thing happened all the time in Citadel City. They expected to receive a ransom note and told the family to sit tight until one came, but it never arrived.
They never saw or heard from Carson again.
After Betty delivered Carson to his final resting place, she headed out of the city. She assured herself, “The world was a better place without monsters like him.”
The night air was pleasant and Betty drove with the window down.
“I had power and could get money as I needed it. Anonymity was my freedom.”
“I was fully formed. I had all the tools and a method that worked. I turned the monsters' tricks against them. I could put bad money to good use. I could transform deception into justice. I could help those who couldn’t help themselves and I hoped I could make the Citadel a better place for the rest of us. Carson was just one example of what lurked out there, but I would get them all one at a time.”
The moon seemed to follow her as she turned the mysterious black car down an old country road. A trail of dust wrapped around it and in through the window. She quickly cranked it back up as the car glided though the dirty cloud.
“I floated in a sea of moral ambiguity, clinging to my hope.”
“Little about life in the Citadel made sense. It was chaotic, but it could be influenced. Maybe I could take the helm of the chaos, and steer it. Maybe I could become its pilot, like some kind of chaos driver…”
“…I could be the Pandora Driver.”
EPILOGUE
Carson, the President of the Citadel Bank, laid facedown on a dirt floor.
He awoke with a deep breath that sucked in a mouth full of cool dirt. He gagged and hacked and spit it back. As he wiped the muddy saliva from his lips and teeth, he assessed his strange environment.
“Where the hell am I?”
It was dark. He was inside a closet sized room. A black heavy metal door towered over him. It had no handle but there was a small window. Light flickered through it. Carson wobbled to his feet and peered through the bars into a long black tunnel. It was empty except for the torches mounted along the walls.
In his former life Carson had power over people. He manipulated others with his money and his station. Now he was buried alone inside the Earth. There was no one to control.
He was defeated.
He slid down the solid metal door, to the floor. He pulled out a heavy gold pocket watch and read the time. The numbers were meaningless without the sky. He couldn’t tell if it was AM or PM. He wasn’t sure if it was today or tomorrow or the day after. He didn’t have enough information to do the math.
In the vault, time was relative. It didn’t connect him with the past. All he could do was count forward from the first day of his life in captivity and hope for human contact.
It would feel like an eternity.
John Picha
John Picha was born on St. Patrick's Day 1968 in Joliet, Illinois. He was raised in Frankfort, a suburb of Chicago, but his mind always seemed to be elsewhere. The little Midwesterner was captivated by comic books, cartoons and animation, mythology and all things imagined. He made the world around him more exciting by pretending. A bicycle was a spacecraft, a bush became a dinosaur, and, of course, there was always a bath towel hidden away for a quick change into a super hero.
John is also the inventor of Thumbtraps for iPad and tablet gaming.
www.thumbtraps.com
If you’d like to learn more about John or to see his other work, you can visit him on the web.
www.takejohn.com
www.youtube.com/johnpicha
If you like to read more adventures of Pandora Driver, simply do a search for her in your favorite eBookstore or visit her on the web.
www.pandoradriver.com
