Blackwake Falls: Fermata Hotel part 3
By atfirstdawn

*Mature content warning for bondage and torture
*© Keira Morrison/ atfirstdawn 2012


Another message and another address…

The machine’s inbox had been inundated with calls during my time at the Fermata Hotel… all from the same person and by this point, without meeting him and without him leaving a name; I knew exactly who it was; the same person who had led me to Charlotte’s corpse and the Fermata Hotel…

It took twenty minutes to listen to every message.

Most of the messages were the indecipherable laments of a heartbroken young man. The rest were a drunken man’s pleas for redemption and forgiveness.

I hadn’t realised it until the last message had played that I was clutching Charlotte’s blood-stained hand-made ball gag as tightly as I could inside my coat pocket.

Crowley had asked for it, Property of the hotel she had said.

Just like its bug problem I had thought. Either way, I had kept it.

I turned back to the door of my office and unlocked it, ready to leave for the address that had been left for me. The caller had wanted me to find Charlotte first, and to know that what had happened at the Fermata Hotel had only been the beginning. I pulled the door open as the phone rang, I stood and listened… the sound of sickeningly distraught sobs filled the room. I left; not waiting for the message to end.

I had only listened for a moment or two but nevertheless the sobs had somehow managed to stay with me, repeating over and over in my mind until I reached their source where they were born anew…

The Easter Bunny’s home was part of a rundown council estate that hadn’t quite recovered from the earthquake three years ago. For all intents and purposes, the estate had been forgotten. Most of the surrounding semi-detached houses were boarded up in unison and those which weren’t were barely standing. The door was open, a light shone at the far end of the ground floor and his sobbing became clearer as I stalked through the dark hallway which led to the generously spacious kitchen at the back of the house.

I hadn’t given much attention to the state of the other rooms as I had passed through them in the darkness but the kitchen was an appalling state. Broken dishes lined the laminate flooring, food and vomit staining both the ground and the shattered china. The same was true of the plates and cutlery stacked in and around the sink… the fridge-freezer combo stood a burnt out husk, its doors hanging open, sweating meat and curdled dairy products had begun to attract insects. The Easter Bunny, with a mask of coagulated crimson, sitting at a small round wooden table built for four, chuckled through his sobs as I entered the room. The table, once a dark mahogany brown was lost under dried orange-yellow bile, so too was the design on The Easter Bunny’s shirt. Numerous cans and bottles of beer took pride of place on top of the table within arm’s reach… The Easter Bunny continued to sob, his shoulders jerking up and down with the rushed and trembling breaths of his chest.

He drained the bottle, threw it to the floor where it shattered, and reached for can.

The Easter Bunny stared at me from over the top of his can as he drank. Fresh tears welled up behind his brutally bloodshot eyes and silently rushed down his face following the clear veins of skin through the red to his blood-stained and tear-soaked dark and matted stubble.

There was nothing I could have said that wouldn’t have made him want to kill himself, but he had been expecting me… so I started at the deep end, with her name.

He placed his can on the table, his hand sliding down to the table, covering his arm in his own vomit. He looked away, chuckled to himself, and wiped his mouth with his vomit stained arm. Slowly, he turned to me.

“I loved her y’know, I really… really… did…”

He seemed to choke on every word while answering and in my gut I knew that he was going to take longer than Crowley had to reach any kind of point…

“How much… did Crowley tell you?”

“Everything: she told me about you, about your friends; the stocky M.D and the depressed old man. Everything that you have wanted me to know up until this point, I know. I know that your friends like to play with scalpels, meat hooks, ice picks, acids and needle laced whips. You may not have asked her to, but Crowley did exactly what you had wanted her to do…”

I had answered almost immediately after The Easter Bunny had finished speaking, it took him a while to process my voice and the meanings to my words. Eventually he spoke again.

“She watched…”

I nodded my head and took a step further into the room from the doorway where I had stood, kicking the broken crockery to the side as I advanced towards the table in the middle of the room and stood no less than two feet away from him. His gaze followed me but I could see in his eyes that he hadn’t processed my movements.

“I didn’t kill her…”

“Not at the hotel, Crowley saw you and the M.D walking off into the sunset together with her. She was barely able to stand…”

I crouched down in front of The Easter Bunny, his head lolled on his shoulders as his distant eyes followed me down.

“Your BDSM party was over two weeks ago now. Charlotte didn’t die at the hotel, she died recently. You called me tonight so that I could find her body before anyone else. You wanted me to find the note, so that it would lead me to the hotel. You wanted Crowley to tell me what you couldn’t stomach to say, and you called me here to tell me a name. Tell me that name.”

“He isn’t real… he can’t be real…”

I stared back at The Easter Bunny; I had heard weirder responses in the past but rarely so much conviction.

“I loved her…” he said again.

Crowley had already exhausted my patience…

Grabbing The Easter Bunny’s shirt collar, I dragged him from his chair and backed him up against the closest wall with a thud.

“She didn’t love you! She had a steady stream of men come and go from her room at the hotel. It was only ever you who failed to satisfy her, she wanted something you couldn’t give her didn’t she?! Something the others could give her without batting an eyelid. I’ve figured out for myself that she was willing to play your blood sport and pain games. If she wasn’t she would have left the hotel but that was the only reason why she was there wasn’t it!”

“I… couldn’t… hurt her, I wouldn’t, I didn’t want to!”

“But you loved her, so you promised her that you’d give her everything she wanted; all the pain in the world…”

“They… needed her… to survive.”

“Who are they? Give me a name!”

“I can’t… he isn’t…”

The Easter Bunny started to retch and convulse, his eyes rolled uncontrollably in their sockets, threatening to disappear into his skull, I spun him on the spot and pushed him towards the sink. He stumbled but managed to stay upright before collapsing over the dishes in the sink with a hellish and annoyingly long series of clatters. One of The Easter Bunny’s arms disappeared into the sink through the spaces in between the plates, dishes and cutlery as he tried to right himself to avoid falling over on limp legs. With each thick stream of the orange-yellow liquid that escaped his mouth, The Easter Bunny’s torso drew closer to the sink until his chest was completely rested on top of the formless heap of china and glass.

Twenty minutes later, The Easter Bunny had come to something of a stop. He hadn’t moved from the heap of dishes which were supporting him and it didn’t appear as if he had the strength to do so.

“They told me about you…” he said after a long breath, his voice sounded more like a hiss than actual words.

“What did they tell you?”

“You turned the black water white… when I heard that... I knew you’d understand. You’d understand what he is… No one else in the world would believe… what he is. But you would. The things you’ve seen…”

“You know about White Water?!”

“Everyone knows about White Water… but I didn’t know it was you. You changed your name… you changed… everything about you. Why did you come back?”

There was a silence, a silence I didn’t appreciate; a silence I couldn’t end.

“I didn’t kill her…”

“I know.” I replied only half listening, my thoughts racing.

“There was nothing else… nothing else that she ever wanted. Nothing else made her happy… I wanted to make her happy, I wanted her to be happy for forever… her body was so cold and white and hard… like a plate. But I could do that for her, I could leave her there and she could always be happy… and no one will ever find her there… they won’t… they can’t and I won’t tell anyone else…”

I could feel the rising heat of my body under my coat, the room was hot. I was sweating. I heard The Easter Bunny move in the background, I paid no attention as I stared out into nothing with wide eyes… feeling a pulsating panic engulf my body.

We spoke together…

“He isn’t real…”

“Who told you about White Water?”

Another silence filled the room, a long and familiar silence… Fucking idiot! How hadn’t I seen this coming!

The debris of broken dishes cracked under my feet as I lurched across the room to The Easter Bunny, grabbed his shoulders and pulled him away from the sink. The Easter Bunny’s dark alcohol laced blood had already flooded the sink and splattered over the dried bile and broken dishes on the floor creating a pool of rushing darkness under our feet. The Easter Bunny fell limp in my arms as I held him from behind against my chest, unable to stand on his own weak, drunken and numbing legs and eventually, we were on the floor, the constant stream of his blood bathing my lap in a wet and sickening heat; The Easter Bunny’s left hand still clutching the handle of the knife that he had sunk into his throat.


The Easter Bunny was facing a slow death. He had missed his arteries and most major veins but had cut deep enough to seal his fate. The first panicked and remorseful gurgles escaped from his lips and froze my stomach as he stared up at me with his bulging tear wrapped eyes. His lips moved again hissing an unintelligible whisper…

I felt the first spasm of his muscles through my embrace of him, and then another. His expression had grown frustrated through the pain and panic of his actions, he whispered again but made no sound. The hand clutching the handle of the knife fell to the floor with a heavy force and an audible clank of china. His head began to roll around over my arm, his expression still frustrated but slowly turning to regret, eventually, he hissed her name in a heart-broken rage.

Without thinking I shuffled my body on the spot, still holding onto him as best I could, dug into the pocket of my coat and dragged out Charlotte’s blood-stained hand-made harness gag. Reaching over and finding The Easter Bunny’s limp hand in the sea of blood, bile and broken china, I wrapped the chain straps of the gag around his wrist, placed the ball in his palm and raised his arm up to his face for him so that he could see it.

The Easter Bunny smiled.

“Who told you about White Water? Where are they?”

The Easter Bunny was still, his smile slowly fading as the muscles in his face became slack and lifeless. His eyes dropped their tears and dried themselves within seconds. I silently cursed myself and untangled the chain straps from his wrist and held Charlotte’s gag tightly in my hand, letting The Easter Bunny’s arm fall back to the pool of dark filth on the floor.

The silence was thick and heavy. My mind raced, slowly losing itself to a blinding, rising rage.