Your Turn

NOTE: This story contains Abduction, psychological trauma, implied torture, and emotional abuse.

The subway car rocked gently, its fluorescent lights flickering overhead like a dying pulse. The kind of light that made everything look slightly diseased. Natalie sat alone on one end, her tote bag tucked between her knees, earbuds in—but no music played. She hadn’t listened to anything in months. Not really.

She liked to observe people, undetected.

Her reflection in the smudged window watched her back: dark eyes, shadowed from too many sleepless nights, and lips pressed together in a near-constant frown. She didn’t dress to stand out. Oversized coat, jeans, plain boots. It worked. People forgot her the second they looked away. That was the point.

At the next stop, a man boarded.

Khakis. Fleece jacket zipped to the chest. Hair neat, face clean-shaven. He looked like someone who read self-help books and watered his plants on schedule. Harmless. But something in the way he walked—measured, deliberate—made the hair on the back of her neck lift.

He sat directly across from her. Empty train car. Dozens of other seats.

A small smile. Not warm. Just… polite.

She glanced at him once. Then away. Her fingers brushed the switchblade in her coat pocket. Habit. Not fear. She always carried it. Just in case.

The train clattered forward. Two stops passed. Neither spoke.

Then he said, in a tone light enough to be a joke: “You ever get that weird feeling—like you know someone, but can’t place where from?”

Natalie pulled one earbud out slowly. “Excuse me?”

“You just look familiar,” he said with a shrug. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be weird.”

She offered a rehearsed smile. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“No?” He tilted his head. “Did you go to Lakewood High?”

Her breath caught, just slightly. She masked it with a blink. “No.”

He chuckled. “Guess I’m just fishing.”

The lights flickered again. She kept her expression still.

“Do you always ride this late?” he asked after another stop.

Natalie stood. “I have to go.”

As the doors hissed open, he stood too. “Wait—hey, sorry. You dropped this.”

He held up a folded paper.

She hadn’t dropped anything.

She hesitated. Something cold brushed her spine.

“Take it,” he said, stepping forward. “I think it’s important.”

Against her better judgment, she took it. The doors closed behind her. She didn’t look back.

Her apartment smelled like cinnamon and bleach—an odd mix that never quite faded no matter how often she cleaned. She bolted the lock, then the chain, then checked the peephole twice. The hallway outside remained empty.

Only when her heart stopped pounding did she unfold the paper.

It was a photograph.

Black and white. Grainy. A teenage girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen. Bruised. Tied to a chair in a dark room. Gagged. Terrified.

Natalie’s stomach turned.

She flipped the photo over.

Two words, written in angry block letters: “Your turn.”

She stared at the picture again.

The lighting. The pipe in the background. The shadows. They felt… familiar.

She burned the photo in her sink. Flame curled the edges until it became nothing but smoke and memory. But the memory had already clawed its way in.

The man—she started calling him Khakis in her head—showed up again.

Once, just standing across the street from her building. Motionless.

The second time, inside the café where she worked mornings. He sat in the corner with a cup of coffee he never touched. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Just stared at her like he was cataloging her every twitch.

Natalie broke. Ran a background check using the name on his receipt: Peter Lang.

Nothing.

No credit score. No driver's license. No voting record. Not even a birth certificate.

It was like he’d appeared from nowhere.

Then came the email. No text. Just a subject line: “Let’s go home.”

Attached was a Google Maps pin.

Her mother’s old house.

It took her three hours to convince herself to go. The place had been condemned for years after the electrical fire. No one lived there. She hadn’t been back since she was seventeen.

She parked a block away. Night cloaked the street in damp fog. A single streetlamp flickered above the overgrown lawn.

The house leaned, skeletal and sagging. Natalie ducked through a hole in the fence and stepped onto the porch. One board snapped beneath her boot.

The air inside smelled like mildew and burnt wood. The wallpaper peeled in wet curls. Her flashlight beam sliced through the dark, revealing forgotten furniture, scattered picture frames, mold-kissed corners.

Down the hallway. Past the room that had been her mother’s.

To the door.

The basement.

The knob turned. Unlocked.

The stairs groaned under her weight as she descended. The cold tightened around her like a noose.

At the bottom, she froze.

He was waiting. Khakis. Peter. Whatever his name really was.

And next to him—a girl.

Tied to a chair. Gagged. Barefoot. Shaking.

Natalie’s hand gripped her knife. “What the hell is this?”

Peter stepped forward. Calm. Controlled. Like this wasn’t some sick horror show.

“Thought you might want to see the past up close,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Her voice cracked.

He pulled out a second photo. Held it toward her like an offering.

It was her.

Seventeen. Smiling.

Standing in this basement.

Next to another girl, bound and bleeding. Lacey.

Her breath hitched. “That’s not—”

“Oh, it is.”

She staggered back, hitting the wall.

“I came home late that night,” Peter said. “She was still breathing. Barely. I carried her out. Through snow. Through traffic. No one helped. She made it through the night. She died two days later.”

Natalie’s hands trembled.

“She told me your name. Said you laughed when she begged for help.”

“No,” she whispered. “That was a prank. I didn’t… I didn’t know it would go that far.”

“She was my sister.”

Natalie felt something twist inside her. Not guilt—no, something worse. Recognition.

“I didn’t kill her.”

“You didn’t stop them, either.”

He stepped aside, gesturing toward the new girl. “This is Ava. Her daughter. My niece.”

Natalie’s knees gave out. She sank to the floor.

“Why?” she whispered.

“I wanted you to feel it. The fear. The confusion. The helplessness.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “You don’t have to hurt her.”

Peter tilted his head. “You mean like you did?”

She looked at Ava. She was young. Terrified. So much like Lacey.

Natalie reached into her coat.

Pulled out her blade.

Then dropped it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sobbing.

Peter’s eyes flickered. Not triumph. Not rage.

Something closer to pity.

He kicked the blade away.

“You’re not the only one who can play predator,” he said.

A week later, the police broke down the door after an anonymous tip. Inside the basement, they found the girl—Ava—alive. She’d freed herself using broken glass. Duct tape still clung to her wrists.

There were two bodies.

One male. One female.

The autopsy reports were inconclusive. Burned fingerprints. Facial trauma. No clear identification.

No signs of who killed whom.

Only one thing was left behind.

A photo. Nailed to the wall. Blood-streaked.

Natalie at seventeen. Smiling.

And in thick red ink across the top:

“You can’t trust anyone.”