The police investigation into the discovery made at the abandoned warehouse twisted and turned past aliases and cash purchases, through shadowy sightings and false addresses, until law enforcement authorities finally stood in the North Side apartment of the perpetrator viewing a sociopath's psychosis. The methodical efforts to track down a woman he knew only from pictures in a magazine, the rational planning and preparation to entrap her, and the ingenious method employed to achieve her demise, belied the lunatic mind of a stalker focused on his prey. Like a roadmap, the evidence demonstrated how he had learned her address, determined her routine, and induced her into his clutches. Why he had done so was much less obvious. Of course, it could be surmised he was captivated by her photographic image although his choice of her over any other woman in hundreds of magazines was subjective. Perhaps the obscurity of the magazine made the models seem more available, or perhaps the mention in the editor's column that she hailed from his hometown had played a role in his choice. Whatever the reasons for his selection, once in the predator's sights, Alina Aguilar barely stood a chance as she proceeded with her daily life on a rare trip home to the city oblivious to the looming threat. By the time the danger was fully revealed to her, it was almost the end. "This is the last time..." The import of his words echoing like a drumbeat in her head, Alina had tried to control her breathing, hoping her captor would make a mistake and remove her from the deathtrap before she lost consciousness. The expressionless mask on his face hid his thoughts from her. She could only see his cold, dark eyes watching as time slipped away. Lost in the blackness, she could hear a distant moaning and was startled to realize that she was in motion, the pressure under her armpits a sign that she was being manhandled. Through blurred vision, she saw the outline of her glass prison from outside its confines. Only as she got closer and closer to the transparent box did she comprehend that she was not being removed from the trap but was being placed back inside. Alina's heart sank as she realized she had been unsuccessful in fighting off the gas-induced sleep, but she was a fighter, she was awake, and she was no longer imprisoned! The scream of pain in her ear when she slammed her fist into the groin of her tormentor reminded her she was not dead yet! Alina wobbled on unsteady legs, barely able to support her own weight as her captor released his grip on her body to double over in pain. Now was her chance to escape, but her body could not respond. The enraged kidney punch to her back sent her crashing into the glass before her and down to the floor. Lifted by her hair onto her knees, she futilely struggled to get free but her movements were like swimming in sand. She was thrown again into the glass and, when the door clicked shut behind her, she knew that her bid for freedom had failed. Battling to fully regain her senses, she sensed her foe was screaming at her with a mixture of triumph and anger but his words remained unintelligible gibberish in her clouded thoughts. As her mind cleared, the desperateness of her situation left her pounding on the glass begging for mercy. His laugh as he hit a switch on a remote control answered her plea. She heard the fan above her spring to life and felt the flow of air being pulled from the chamber. Once the oxygen was gone, she would have only minutes to live, but she had faced death before and, with the exit of the air in the chamber came the exit of the gas making her meek. Stunning her captor, she crawled up her cage by wedging her naked body againt its walls, her moist flesh adhering to the glass. At the top, she pounded on the metal vent until her knuckles were bloody and the twisted piece of metal could be pulled away from its moorings. The screach as she jammed the vent into the fan blades and the whining of the fan's engines overheating from the stress was a precursor to the return of fresh air down the duct. Revitalized, Alina snatched the mangled vent cover from above and, dropping back to the floor, used the metal to gouge the glass before her. Her executioner had never considered the fan as a weak point of his device, and he stood stunned, contemplating his error and her exploitation of it, as she delivered a vicious jiu jitsu punch to the weakened wall! The shattering glass sent shards flying through the room and before he could defend himself, she was upon him in a physical attack he was unprepared to withstand. It had taken weeks to track down his residence. When the police allowed her to view the secured apartment, she found answers to many of her questions and many more questions to be pondered. What couldn't be answered with certainty, even by the man now sitting in jail awaiting trial for her kidnaping and attempted murder, was what caused him to become so inhuman! Previous Page Back to Alina Stories

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