Soubrette

"Bed time." These were the first words that had been spoken in hours. Kidnapper dude had been watching the news for the past hours, and I had been staring out the window at all the tiny pinpricks of light. I turned away from the window to do as he commanded, when my breath got caught in my throat.

Only one bed.

"But there's only --" My voice died away at the look on his face. Without a sound I climbed into the bed, curling up into a ball. My shivering hadn't stopped in the slightest bit.

"Take off your coat," he said, his voice coming from behind.

"Why?"

"Because you're goin' to get hypothermia if you don't and my boss will be very upset with me if you die." This was an actual possibilty, and as I removed the cold, damp material, I felt stupid for not doing it earlier. But something else he said caught my attention.

"Boss?"

"Yeah, boss. Do you really think that I do this for shits and giggles?"

"Yeah, well, don't quit your day job. You are going to get caught, one day soon enough."

Then he slowly leaned in, whispering in my ear. His breath brushed down the side of my face; the stench of stale whiskey and peanut butter filling my nostrils and suffocating me. "I've been doin' this for over twenty years now, and not one single time have I been caught. None of my captives have ever escaped, not alive anyways." He then forced me to roll over and look him in the eyes, holding me by the jaw. "You see, this one girl was a real chatterbox, just couldn't shut up. So one day, she's just talkin' and talkin', and bein' reeeeal sassy too. So I ask her politely to be quiet. So she does. She's so quiet, that I wonder if she fell asleep. She did. A few minutes later, I'm starting to run low on gas. No problem, there's a gas station nearby. I pull in. Now, this is the important part." His voice dropped lower than I imagined it could and I had to strain to hear it. "She's still sleeping. At first, I considered locking her in with the child safety look, maybe even handcuffin her to the seat. But she looked so serene, so... peaceful," he spat, "that I decide to leave her there. Just... leave her there. You see, she had these rings around her eyes. She looked like a racoon.

"So I get out, and I fill the tank, then go pay. With cash. Always cash. I also got a pack of cigarettes and thpught that if she behaved as well as she was so far, that I'd share a few with her, since she was a smoker and all. This all takes less than a minute. I go back outside, and she's not there."

My eyes widened. Did he slip up earlier? Was there actually one that got away? Was it her?

He read my mind and chuckled darkly. "I'm not finished." He waited a few moments, watching my face before continuing.

"I don't panic. I light a cigarette. I knew she couldn't have gone far. We were out in the middle of nowhere, for fuck's sake. So what I do is slowly drive a small distance away, only a few yards or so, and cover the ground with gasoline from one of the few pumps, bringing a thin trail near my car. Then, watching with my binoculars from the safety of my distanced car, I flick my cig into the highly flammable liquid.

"The trail ignites on contact, quickly blazing all the way to the station; so quickly that my eyes almost couldn't keep up. Almost. Right as the fire reaches the first pump, the cashier rushes out the door to see it, my 'charge' right behind him. They were just in time. Boom." He laughed openly, and the sudden change in volume makes me jump, as does the picture in my mind.

"It- it was so pretty," he said hysterically, wiping a tear from his eye. "I got just enough time to see her pretty raccoon eyes widen in shock before she became part of the foreworks display."

He leaned in one more time and whispered, "I like to call her the Gasoline Beauty Queen." The insane laughter bounced off the walls once more, although I could hear it all that night in my mind.

I didn't even attempt sleep. I knew that if I did, I'd have nightmares about charred bodies smelling of gasoline and seared flesh.