Disclaimer: This story was written for entertainment only and is not for profit. It's written purely out of my love for the show, the characters and all who contributed to making it so utterly unforgettable. There is no intention, whatsoever, to step on the toes of any of those whom hold the rights to Starsky and Hutch.
Description: "The Messenger" is a thrilling and fun ride, but it does contain some dark scenes of physical and psychological abuse. Some blood loss. Occasional mild language, but nothing gratuitous. Introduces an original, female character. Not a "love interest" for either of the guys. (But, she is mine... all mine.)
The events in "The Messenger" take place a few months after Hutch's bloody-knuckled, just-in-the-nick-of-time rescue of Starsky in "Bloodbath".
Beaucoup grâce à proxilius5! ~ My Beta. (Any typos are mine.)
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it.
I welcome, encourage and eternally appreciate it if you would leave reviews!
*I have updated Chapter 1 (on 11/20/09).
THE MESSENGER
By: SFSK8rGrrl
Sunrise... early morning. The cool blanket of night was once again resigned to the inevitable transformation... relenting and tentatively receding - bit by jealous bit - to the coming dawn. The echoing stillness being replaced by chaotic energy - the buzz, hum and activity of the new day. The usually blinding brilliance of the morning sun as it rose in colorless skies was, these days, tempered by the damp, cool air and general haziness which always accompanies the return of Autumn. Before too long, the fog-filtered sunlight had warmed the roof of the dew-covered Bay City Greyhound Station enough for steam to be seen rising from it, as yet another stainless steel, exhaust-expelling behemoth lumbers into it.
Having once again reached his destination, for the umpteenth time, in an endless string of years, the bus's operator deftly maneuvers the hulking, diesel-run machine into it's appointed slot. I could do this in my sleep! the operator tells himself. He yawns, only briefly closing his eyes. But, it was long enough. Upon opening them, the first thing he sees is the low overhang of the building coming up on the top of his bus, fast. He hits the vehicle's air brakes, causing the passenger-filled cabin to lurch forward before coming to a complete stop. The operator shakily lets out the breath that he had been holding, lifts the brim of his cap and wipes away the beads of perspiration that had just appeared on his brow.
Whew! That was darn close. he thinks, chastising himself. He looks skyward, "I owe you one. Thanks.". Then, over the PA system, he announces, "This is our final destination, folks. Bay City, California. Please look around you before exiting the bus and make sure that you don't leave any of your personal belongings behind. If you checked any luggage, please wait outside, on the right side of the bus where the porters will be unloading your luggage. Please have your checked luggage receipt in hand, you will need that in order to claim your luggage. Thank you for going Greyhound, and have a pleasant day." And with that, the operator opened the front door, walked down the few steps off the bus and waited there to assist passengers as they departed.
Angel had just started to nod off in her seat when the bus lurched forward. Suddenly, she found herself unceremoniously ejected from that state of limbo that is midway between uneventful, non-REM sleep and dream-filled sleep and flung back to consciousness. But, she wasn't complaining. She hadn't wanted to fall asleep and she was actually very relieved that she hadn't made it to the point that she'd started dreaming... especially on a bus full of people.
Angel had been on her own for a while now and - with the exception of the occasional really bad choice for a boyfriend - she had a certain level of self-confidence and a toughness about her that one has to develop in order to survive on the streets. In fact, there are very few things that actually affect her and to the casual observer - especially when on her skateboard - she appears to be fearless, if not reckless to the point of being mistaken for suicidal.
But, what those casual observers are unaware of is that, recently anyway, there are exactly two things that strike a considerably sharp chord of fear in Angel.
The first is the group of crazy cult members that she had the misfortune of accepting a ride from when she was hitchhiking outside of Los Angeles several months back. California being a magnet for bohemian flower children, Angel had, understandably, mistaken the group for your garden-variety hippies.
Come on, Angel... She had cajoled herself.
They're hippies... and hippies are all Peace, Love and Patchouli, right?
So, if anyone's harmless... hippies are harmless.
And with that, Angel had convinced herself to stop being so damn defensive and then go ahead and accept their smiling, friendly invitation to hop into the van with them. After all, she'd been walking along the road for what seemed, to her, like hours with no other good prospects for a ride - at least not until the 'flower children' pulled over ahead of her and onto the shoulder of the road. And, no, it wasn't just that she was tired of walking, but she was also out of water.
If this isn't a 'Sign', then I don't know what is... she'd told herself.
To Angel, at that moment anyway, their arrival seemed to be a Godsend.
What it turned out to be, though, was something else entirely, something nearly-fatal for her... her own personal 10.0 earthquake.
Soon, Angel found herself reviewing and reconsidering what she had mistakenly believed to be 'good fortune', her decision to accept the ride and everything associated with it.
Of course, suddenly finding yourself - as Angel did then - abducted, drugged, bound and beaten can have that effect on a person. Such an eye-opening experience will give you pause - as well as just cause - to go over all kinds of things in your head... immediately.
No... Their arrival was no Godsend. God wouldn't have sent them to her. God wouldn't have sent them for her.
Not any God that Angel believed in, anyway.
God...?
To Angel, trapped in a very dark and very sinister place - it was painfully obvious that God... had left the building.
Eventually though, she found herself waking up in a hospital. And, as soon as she was able to, Angel didn't hesitate to make tracks to leave the cracked cult members and their off-the-scale level of insanity back in Los Angeles - hopefully rendering them just so much I'll-bury-that-in-the-deepest-and-darkest-corner-of-my-mind history.
Which brings us to the second thing: Dreams. Well... Nightmares. Night Terrors, to be more accurate.
To her credit, Angel had done a bang-up job of blocking out much of her ordeal at the hands of the cult members from her conscious memory.
Unfortunately, her inability to take a trip down Memory Lane extends beyond what they did to her. Much her life before they crossed paths is missing, too. Though, the credit for that must be given to the serious skull fracture the freaks had given her as one of several parting gifts.
Anyway, whether you call it 'selective amnesia' or true memory loss, whatever it is... sadly, it isn't airtight. It isn't leak-proof. And stuff frequently slips out... really unpleasant stuff. Although, thankfully, that usually only happens when she falls asleep.
And, on the occasion when that occurs - despite Angel going without sleep for several days in a row, or at least until she feels she's too exhausted to dream - even with no memory of nightmares, waking up can be an experience - for her and for anyone unfortunate enough to be around her.
When Angel wakes up and in those first fuzzy and disoriented moments that follow, she will - more often than not - be overwhelmed with the horrifying belief that she's still trapped somewhere in the outskirts of Los Angeles... that she's still in that dark, dirty basement... that she's still being tortured by psychopaths.
She wakes up believing that... quelle horreur!... she's been dreaming all this other stuff up and that she never actually got away.
It's not only that her sociopath captors were enamored of reminding her that she could never and would never escape... But, after Angel actually made her one good escape attempt, failed to escape and was then severely punished for the attempt, she reluctantly began to believe their taunts.
Just before her escape attempt, she'd done what she thought to be an objective overview of herself, her situation and the odds of her being rescued:
* Being rather anti-social, I know lots of people, but I don't let any get too close. So, there are no 'good friends' getting concerned about my disappearance.
* I dumped the ex-, Jeremy, months ago and did a very effective job of convincing the abusive jerk to quit stalking me. So, he's not coming.
* No day job. So, no boss and co-workers to declare, in their chorus of perky morning voices, "Angel didn't show up, again, today. Something's wrong! We're calling the Police!".
* No Missing Persons Report will be filed with the L.A.P.D.
* No search parties will be organized and sent out to find out what happened to me.
Hell... Angel realized, bitterly, I'm utterly alone in the world. No one's even gonna notice that I'm missing.
By nature, Angel may be a cynic, but she's no pessimist. Yet, even in the best light - if there even was a 'best light' - her situation looked bleak.
Okay... In all honesty... she'd acknowledged, things look really... bad.
And so, feeling quite certain that it was highly unlikely that anyone would notice that she'd disappeared, that anyone was looking for her - let alone coming to rescue her - when she saw what she thought was an opportunity to escape, she didn't hesitate.
It turned out to be a mistake, though, because the whole escape attempt was just a big game to the cult members.
They'd set her up. They wanted her to try to escape and they wanted her to to fail. And, that's exactly what she did.
All of their games were just a means to and end, though. Their eyes were on the prize.
What they really wanted to do was to break her... to break her heart... to break her spirit... to break her will.
And, as Angel discovered, they were highly-skilled, quite creative and unrelenting when it came to coming up with methods of inducing acute and prolonged physical and/or psychological pain.
So, as difficult as it was to do - as normally, for Angel, surrender is not an option - she'd started giving up hope of escaping and began resigning herself to her fate... an ugly one that was no less than a waking nightmare.
So, even now, with her former captors many miles behind her - in another city - when Angel finally gives in to sleep or unintentionally falls asleep, she undoubtedly wakes up in a state of terror...
What if...
I didn't get away from them?
What if... they still have me?
What if... he still has me?
And, those heart-breaking and soul-crushing thoughts are enough to rip blood-curdling screams from her throat.
... But, thankfully, not today.
Angel rubs the sleep from her eyes, pleased to find herself at her destination. Still somewhat drowsy, she sits upright in the seat and glances around at the other passengers. Some of them are already up, out of their seats and in the aisle - slowly making their way towards the front door, pulling their belongings along with them. A few other passengers were still fast asleep in their seats, oblivious to the noise and commotion. Angel then glances at the middle-aged man seated across the aisle from her. Still asleep. His eyes are closed and she can just hear the low gurgling of his snoring. Angel smiled. Then something caught her eye and she stopped smiling. There were a few clear, sticky and slender strands of saliva strung from his chin down to his chest... where it formed a damp pool on his shirt. Ewww! She quickly returns to face forward. How embarrassing. Then, a horrible thought strikes Angel. I was asleep like that a few minutes ago. She turns away from the aisle towards the window and raises the fingertips of both hands to check her own face and chin. Then she checks the front of her shirt for any dampness. She's relieved to find it all dry and drool-free.
She sighed and smiled, Whew!
One of Angel's general rules is to avoid public humiliation, at all costs - particularly humiliations of the messy kind that involved bodily fluids - like drooling.
Angel makes a mental note: Don't fall asleep in public.
But, to be honest, she knows that avoiding ever doing that is rather unrealistic.
So, she amends it: If one must fall asleep in public, don't fall asleep in full-view of the public.
Angel extends her legs as far as she can - pointing and flexing her feet - while raising her arms above her, extending her fingers and stretches - alternating side to side - at least as far as the unyielding seat will allow. She yawns contentedly, then realizes that a few of her fingers are throbbing and feeling like icicles. She holds both hands in front of her and compares all of her fingers - palms up, then palms down. She repeats the motion a few times and then slowly curls and then extends her fingers. She examines the three fingers that had been broken not too long ago - another parting gift from the same psychos that had also given her the skull fracture. At least they're relatively straight, now.
To Angel, in stark contrast to the healthy color and tone of the rest, these three are often a startling, bloodless white.
They look like a mannequin's fingers. she muses. But, unlike the mannequin's, my fingers ache.
She shakes both of her hands, violently, trying to get blood to flow into the three that appear starved for it. The silver I.D. bracelet on her left wrist - with one word, "ANGEL", engraved into it - flips and spins around her wrist. She pulls her gloves out of her pocket and begins to put them on. As she does this, her thoughts began to wander from her healing fingers... to their mangled appearance when first broken... to the hospital room she woke up in... to how Angel, herself, looked when...
And, then, her memory flashes on him...
No matter the memory, be it a flashback, a dream or a nightmare... whether it is a complete memory or only a fragment...
He is there...
Always there...
Back at the hospital, in Los Angeles, whenever the medical staff or the L.A.P.D. detectives assigned to her kidnapping and assault case asked Angel about her kidnappers or her captivity, she would sarcastically refer to him as "My Number One Fan" and then laugh, bitterly. But, the brave smile that she produced couldn't hide the pain, the distant look in her eyes nor could it stop the tears that would undoubtedly fill them. And then, if the attempts at interrogation continued and they pressed her for more details, she would simply shut down, turn away from whomever was in the room and refuse to say another word.
Sure, Detective... Since you've asked so nicely, I'd be happy to personally rip open all of the wounds in my psyche - just for you. And, while I do that, if you would be so kind as to see to it that a padded room is reserved and waiting for me in the Psych Unit, I'd really appreciate it...
What none of them knew at the time was that as soon as they left the room Angel would immediately stumble out of bed... barely reaching the bathroom before a fit of vomiting or dry-heaving overtook her - depending upon whether they'd gotten her to eat anything or not.
Her "Number One Fan", as she referred to him, had been her primary tormentor. "You are my favorite, Angel. You are mine. Always mine.", he would often tell her throughout her ordeal. And, when he wasn't there, the other one - his second - would continue the mantra. Before, during and/or after they tortured her. His second was the ringleader of the L.A. group. He was only a lieutenant, though, not the general.
In her current flashback, Angel's Number One Fan had a fistful of her hair and was using it to lift her chin up off of her chest. His second had been working on her face - so to speak - slugging her, and he wanted to check out his handiwork... either that or he wanted to...
No! Angel caught herself at that point.
She screwed her eyes shut, tightly and shook her head, sharply.
Stop it, Angel. Don't go there. Don't do this to yourself.
She already felt the lump rising in her throat as her eyes involuntarily welled up. Suddenly, her skin felt so hot that she expected to see transparent waves radiating from it.
That was on the outside.
On the inside, she had the all-too-familiar, yet always unnerving sensation of being in free-fall.
The fact that she could feel the seat beneath her simply wasn't enough to overcome the panic.
On the outside, yes, she could see that she was still secure in her seat.
But, on the inside... the feeling was unmistakable. On the inside Angel was falling.
It was as if the outer "Angel" and the inner "Angel" were two completely separate beings.
And, at times like this, the inner Angel felt like she was sliding... free-falling through the hollow shell of the outer one.
Then, Angel's stubborn streak kicked in. That, and being awake helped, too. She knew that she was in a new city, that she was safe. She knew that she had gotten away and she refused to give in and allow herself to become an emotional train-wreck, especially now. She pounded her fists together on the window and shouted defiantly in her head, "No!".
At least, Angel had meant to say it only to herself.
Then, she heard a woman's voice from behind her ask, "Excuse me, Miss? Miss? Are you okay?"
The Good Samaritan's concern was unsolicited and - in most other circumstances - would have been unwelcome.
But, in this particular instance, the unexpected interruption brought Angel's anxiety attack to an instant halt and helped her to give herself a much-needed reality check.
She opened her eyes, took a deep breath and turned slightly towards the Good Samaritan - just far enough to acknowledge her politely without making actual eye contact. "I'm... uh... I'm fine, thank you. I just realized that I left something in back in Los Angeles. Like my worst nightmares... I apologize for worrying you."
Angel listened to herself speaking the words. Sounds appropriately sheepish and sincere. Heck, I'd believe me.
Unsurprisingly, the Good Samaritan believed her, too. "Oh... That's too bad. Well, okay, dear. I just wanted to make sure you were alright.", the woman said.
That's sweet. Just like someone's Grandmother. Angel thought. "Yes, ma'am. I'm fine. Thank you for your concern.", Angel replied.
After the woman departed and moved up the aisle to exit the bus, Angel heaved a sigh of relief and looked out the window beside her. All she could see outside were a handful of uniformed Greyhound Bus employees, a group of passengers milling about who were probably waiting to retrieve their luggage from the cargo hold underneath the bus and, beyond them, only the billboard-sized chassis of the bus that had pulled up alongside them - which succeeded in blocking any view she might have had of what might lay beyond.
Bay City, California huh? It sure doesn't look like much.
She sat back, took a deep breath and sighed, audibly. Well, Angel, look on the bright side... It ain't Los Angeles. she told herself.
Then she gave herself some more encouragement, "Look, you're in a new city. Nobody knows you. You left no forwarding anything in L.A.. It's just you and your Dogtown.", she smiled thinking of her recently acquired skateboard - a gift from some wild and crazy boys she'd met in Los Angeles who were skateboarding in neighbors empty backyard swimming pools.
She paused, thinking of more items to add to 'the bright side' list.
"Oh yeah... No more abusive, jerk of a boyfriend hanging around in the shadows... stalking me."
Angel took a deep breath, held it and then glanced out the window once more - checking the entire perimeter. After verifying that the proverbial coast was clear - she blew out the breath she was holding and relaxed.
"And the icing on the cake... no more hippie-looking, but-so-not-hippie, psychotic, bloodthirsty, Partridge Family freaks!"
She smiled.
"Bay City, California... What's not to love?!"
And with this last exhortation, Angel zipped her leather jacket shut, grabbed her skateboard from under the seat and her backpack and headed for the exit and her new home.
(*To Be Continued...)