Chapter Four: Jerry

How he'd managed to do it this time, Jerry had no idea. He was used to escaping near-death situations without a scratch, but he had really prepared himself to die this time. In fact, he had almost been hoping for it. He really did get tired of all these games he played. But if he didn't play them, life wouldn't seem to have a purpose.

Jerry had just conducted another hostage situation, this time in a bank instead of a hotel. It had gone according to plan, for the most part. There were about fifty people inside, customers and employees alike, and he'd managed to steal almost one hundred million dollars. The only flaw was that one of his assistants, Red (he now referred to them by colors instead of numbers, to keep things interesting), had prematurely detonated the bomb that wasn't supposed to go off until Jerry was safely outside the building. But it had, and Jerry had really thought that it was the end. Until he was facedown on the pavement, the police too preoccupied with the innocent victims to look through the rubble to find him. Jerry felt like a cat with nine lives, but couldn't remember how many he had left.

Now, he was back at his base, a small office that could only be entered through a secret door in one of Port Charles's abandoned warehouses. He was turning on his laptop in order to keep track of the money he had stolen while it was transferred into one of his offshore accounts. As he sat and waited for the computer to load completely, an icon at the bottom of his screen caught his eye. He had never seen it before. It was just a bright red circle sitting at the bottom right-hand corner. He double clicked on it, and what came up almost gave him a heart attack.

Claudia's smirking face glared at him from the screen, while the line at the bottom with the dot moving along it indicated it was a video. Jerry hastily checked the DVD drive on his computer. It was empty.

"I can only imagine the look on your face right now," said Claudia from the computer. Jerry just watched in shock. "I'm supposed to be dead, right?" She laughed menacingly. "You were supposed to be dead, too, lots of times. But you still got those DVDs to me. You made my life an even bigger living hell than it already was. I jumped at every small noise. I spent my whole day looking for those frigging videos. I slept with one eye open every night, in case Sonny found one instead and decided to kill me in my sleep. So now, I get to let you feel the same way. You don't know if I'm alive or dead, do you? And if I'm alive, you don't know where I am. I could be anywhere. I could be in Milan. I could be in the city. Or I could be in Port Charles. You never know."

After all of those stunts that Jerry had pulled in his life, he had never felt more scared than he did now. While he had never let Claudia get the best of him, and while he always had tried to think one step ahead of her, he wasn't playing by his rules anymore. The Claudia on his laptop was right. He didn't know if she was really dead. If she was, how could this have gotten on his computer? And if she was alive, which he was starting to believe, even though he couldn't fathom how, where was she? Was she close, watching him as he sat in terror at this very moment? Or was she far away, laughing at how scared he must be at something that couldn't hurt him right now? He may have gotten her involved with Ian, stabbed her, and tortured her for those long months with his DVDs, but Jerry never thought he would underestimate the power of Claudia Zacchara.

"I want you to know that your DVDs did end up being the death of me, but not in the way you think. As far as I know, neither Sonny nor Jason ever saw one. But they had made Jason suspicious. They made him dig and find Ian's tapes. So, whether you wanted to or not, you killed me, Jerry. You probably don't care, but I do. And I'm not gonna let you get away with it."

Jerry couldn't take this madness anymore. He slammed his laptop closed and shot out of his chair faster than a rocket. He shoved by his desk and bookcases, knocking things to the ground as he went, and pulled open the door with an almighty heave. But he couldn't escape. Claudia wouldn't let him.

"How's it feel, Jerry?" the real Claudia asked him maliciously, walking towards him with purpose in her step. "This is kind of like how I died. I couldn't escape. I was in this little corner with nowhere to go. And that's how you're gonna die. You're gonna see exactly what it's like to be tortured until the very end. And you hear that?" Claudia stopped, holding a hand up to her ear in a mocking way. "That's the sound of nobody caring. That's the last thing I heard before I died." Without warning, Claudia pulled a pocketknife out of her back pocket and sunk it into Jerry's stomach.

*

Jerry awoke with a start. He was in his little secret office, slumped over his desk in exhaustion. He never had nightmares. He usually was the nightmare. But now he knew how it felt, and he didn't like it.

Even though it was just a dream, Jerry couldn't help wondering if Claudia was still alive. From what he had heard, it was pretty much guaranteed that she was dead, but no one should ever put anything past her. She was as dangerous as they come, and never gave up without a fight.

Jerry turned to his laptop, which had still been open when he had fallen asleep. He checked the DVD drive. Nothing. He looked at the bottom right-hand corner of his screen. No mysterious red icon. He went through all of his files, especially his videos. Nothing seemed to be there that wasn't supposed to be.

But as he searched for something from Claudia, he couldn't help but delete the videos that had caused her death.

Because you can never be too certain when someone will come back to haunt you.