"So. Sarah isn't it?" Sarah nodded wordlessly, her jaw aching from how tightly she was clenching it. The man's tone was as calm as before, conversational. In the context, that just made it more horrifying.
"I just killed both of your parents."
Sarah nodded again, dumbly. Vaguely she thought that he had it wrong, Karen wasn't her mother, but that was a detail that she was hard-pressed to care about right this moment.
"If you tell me where your brother is, then I'll let you live."
Sarah couldn't help herself. She started to laugh hysterically.
"Stop it. Stop laughing, or I'll shoot you." For the first time, the voice sounded irritated.
"C-can't kill me just yet, you apparently need me to tell you where Toby is," Sarah gasped, holding
her sides, trying hard to stop laughing.
"I never said I was going to kill you, I said I was going to shoot you," came the response, calm again, as though he was reading from the dictionary. "Thank you for your return to calm. I would now like you to tell me what is so funny."
Sarah snorted. "Oh please. I might not be able to see you, but I'm still a witness. There's no way in hell that you're going to let me live. Why on earth do you think I'm going to tell you where my brother is? What do you want with him anyway? He's just a kid."
"You aren't as clever as you think you are, Sarah," the calm voice drawled her name. "I would be perfectly happy to let you live, because, as you say, you can't see me. You only know my voice, and that alone would never be enough for the cops to find me." Sarah heard him step closer to her. "But if you don't tell me where your brother is, well, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to hurt you, Sarah."
"What, you're going to inflict pain on me?" Sarah didn't even bother to keep the scorn out of her voice. "Please. I'm no stranger to pain. Most mornings I wake up, and I still feel as though my legs are pinned, pulverised in the car crash. The only painkillers that work to distract me from it are ridiculously addictive, so I don't take them. It's bad enough being dependent on this," she gestured to her wheelchair, with a violent motion, "without being a drug addict as well."
Suddenly, Sarah felt as though someone had stabbed her thigh with a spear. Dimly, she realised that the man had called her bluff, and shot her in what remained of her right leg.
She didn't bother to hold back her scream. Maybe the neighbours would hear. Probably not. Either way, it was worth a try.
A sharp pain across the right side of her face, and her sunglasses flew off. Stars burst in the darkness. He'd hit her, to shut her up.
Sarah started laughing again. "Nice try. Do it again. If you get me at the right angle, my glass eyes will probably pop out."
"Jesus, what are you, some kind of masochist?"
Sarah recognised the voice of the younger goon who had first found her.
"Shut up!" hissed the other one, the one that had wheeled her out into the kitchen. "Or there will be five bodies in this house before we're done here."
Sarah's head might be swimming a little from the blow, but she could count.
"Oh I get it," she said. "You want to kill all of us. Probably some kind of statement. The message won't be complete without my brother. Need the full set of Williams', don't you. But Toby isn't here." she grinned triumphantly, "and I'm not going to tell you where he is. You cannot do anything to me that would make me tell you where he is."
There was a pause.
"Well, now you're just offending my professional pride. As are my colleagues." The calm voice now had undertones of being livid. If it hadn't been for her own situation, Sarah would have hated to be the mooks. "You're a brave girl, but given enough time, I could make you talk." His voice was disturbingly sensual, as though he was flirting with her. "First, I would cut your clothes off. Then, I would beat you bloody, until no one could possibly recognise you, even with the scars. Then, I would cut off your fingers, one by one. Then, I would rape you. And then, I would be left with so many options for what to do to you next. Eventually, you would beg me for death. But I would not let you have it, until you told me where your brother is."
"Monster." Sarah couldn't stop herself from blurting out the word.
"Yes," the man actually chuckled, and Sarah shuddered violently. "But see, I'm a little pressed for time, so I'm not going to bother with all of that. Instead, I'll just tell you that I'm going to kill you now, and then I'm going to watch, and wait, and then eventually, someone will slip up, and I'll find your brother Toby, and I'll splatter his brains across your gravestone."
Sarah was trapped. She had been willing to die for Toby, but she knew that the man was right. If her death was going to be futile anyway, then there was no point in holding back her trump card, her card that she had hoped she would never have to use.
She just hoped to the gods that this worked.
She took a deep breath, and then screamed, "Jareth! Goblin King! I wish the goblins would take Toby away!" A blinding pain to the left side of her face, but she kept yelling. "Right Now!"
Another hit, and this one threw her backwards, so that her chair fell over and her head hit the floor.
She heard steps running towards her, felt the floor shuddering under the clomping boots...
And then suddenly the world went still.
Sarah smiled, despite the throbbing headache she now had.
Even now, she was still running.
But this time, it was straight to the Goblin King.
A/N: Whew! Horrifically violent bit done with. But the drama is far from over. Tune in next time, for the Goblin King's Intervention.