Trapped

         TRAPPED

A man, nameless, was once happy in a family. He had both a mother and a father, he also had great company with his 3 siblings, 2 of them were younger. He also had an older brother named Boris. Boris’ life may be even more tragic than this story, and most, if not all, other stories you have read. But this story is about a man, and his life completely changed on December 23rd, the year unknown. His entire family perished in their town while he was on vacation.

When the man heard this news he was astonished. He had never heard a murder case, as it was such a friendly rural area. He decided to take a break and escape to Europe where he spent a few years recovering from his terrible loss.

He slipped into what he thought was an endless loop of depression, as a result of this, he found a hobby for himself, based around making traps. After he had started, he couldn’t stop. He spent all of his free time making traps because that is what made him happy. He had made any kind of trap you could imagine, and on the very special occasion he had not made it before, he was able to make it for you. He started creating them when he was around the age his friends, if he had any at the time, would be having children. Although he had made a couple of simple traps when he was in his adolescence, he was much more into the craft now.

He felt the need to honor his father, as he was a great man with a great occupation in which the man enjoyed as well. This is why he had started making traps. His father had owned a trap shop in a small town in France. It was very successful, he had made thousands of dollars a day. That is until his shop burned down, all of his remaining fortune that had not burned in this terrible act of arson was stolen, and he was only left with a couple dollars. He did not know the fact that someone had burned down his building, but it was a man named Ensio McGowan. A tall man with rather far apart eyes and remarkably red hair. The man's father was left with just enough money to feed him and his family a mere sack of potatoes.

When his shop was up and running he only made traps upon request, but on particular occasions, such as thanksgiving, he would make traps for his family. When the man was just a boy, his father had made him a machine that could tell if someone was lying. He rarely used it, as it could give away all of his secrets, but at certain points of time, he would use it when he suspected his siblings of stealing his sweets.

The man had rebuilt his dad's trap shop up again, shortly after his father had died. He has never had a customer before, besides one or two who didn’t end up buying anything. He always wondered why his business wasn’t skyrocketing, because he made traps for any situation, and his fathers shop was very successful.

He hadn’t had any customers in about 25 years, and he was growing old. One day a young woman walked in. 

***

A woman in a small town was walking around, with a frantic expression on her face. She was pacing up and down the sidewalk, mumbling to herself. Her hands were running through her rather naughted hair, and she was on her phone, vigorously typing and occasionally shaking her head.

One of her old friends saw her and pulled their car into a parking lot between a cheese shop and an ice cream parlor. He hopped out of her car with a little pep-in-his-step.

“What?” The woman sensed her friend behind her. The man replied with “Woah why are you so snappy? Did you get fired again, another break-up, oh wait- did you pass your exam?”

“No,” the woman snapped. “I cannot find a store that sells anything that resembles even the slightest what I am looking for”

“Well, what are you looking for?” The man asked. She replied with a whisper to his ear, his face had a surprised look when he had heard what she had said, but he had a solution for her. 

“Well, try 1252 Washington Road.” He suggested. And with that her friend went off to go eat at a local seafood restaurant.

The lady was shocked, as she did not know that there was still a shop there. She had thought they had closed a long time ago. However, she did not hesitate and headed straight towards Washington Road.

***

“Hello? Is someone there” An old man asked. “Yes, what do you sell here?” The young woman questioned.“I sell a variety of traps, anything you want I have.”said the man. He hopped out of the back room eager to once again have a customer. When he walked out and saw her he was astonished. She had the most beautiful brown eyes he had ever seen, she was very tall for a woman her age, and had the most stunning red hair.

The woman was intrigued, but confused because he said he had any kind of trap she was looking for. The store made her feel as though she would never leave. The man also seemed oddly familiar, but she ignored that as it was such a silly child-like thing to feel.

She started asking for ridiculous kinds of traps, and surprisingly, he had all of them. 

“Okay then, I have raccoons in my backyard and they are scared of water, can you help me with that?” The woman asked. “Why yes of course madam.” he said.

He handed her a rather round trap with a single spike at the bottom. He handed it to her and said “This is the Porbearnine, it should help you with that.” 

She was pleasantly surprised that he had this trap, and she started looking around. She saw many traps including a one that was square and on top,  it also had glass and metal spikes that you could barely see. She had turned it around and saw a tag on it. She took a closer look and it had said Colstineme.

She asked him “What does this one do?”, and she pointed at the one she had just looked at. He said, “This is one that you catch sharks with, I have tested it out, and it is very efficient.”

He had lied that he had tested it, but he was sure it had worked. He only had so much time until he had to sleep. His candle had almost burnt out. The way he made sure he went to bed on time, because he did not have any clocks, was by burning a large candle. When that candle went out, he shut off the furnace, which was heating the place up, and also providing light for the shop, flipped the sign, and closed the windows. At the time he was not aware of modern technology such as light fixtures and phones in your own home, because since his family had died he had never left that trap shop.

He did however have a typewriter he would use to write down all the traps he had made. The back room was filled with papers, each paper containing about 100 trap names. The woman started looking around more and she had ended up looking at around 1,352 traps. Although she had not been counting.

She was looking for a trap to eliminate someone that had been following her for quite some time but he was deathly afraid of heights. She was afraid to ask the man, as it was an odd question. She figured she would never see the old man again so she asked anyway.

She said “I need a trap to eliminate someone who has been following me for some time, but he is deathly afraid of heights. Would you happen to have that?” The man said “ Why of course we do, it’s in the aisle 604 rows down from the back door. It has a tag on it that said “Pupcubion”. Would you like some help to get there?”

The woman said “No”, as she was quite confident she could find it herself. She counted down 464 aisles and suddenly she had lost her track of thought. She thought it would take too long to backtrack and count again. She started to panic a bit and was trying to recall what aisle she was in. She tried looking for the old man, but he was nowhere in sight. And of course, it did not help that the man had not put the number of aisles on the wooden boards at the end of each row. And she didn’t know that he was installing them just that next day. So, if she had come in just a day later, her tragic fate may not have been the same.

She kept walking down the aisles, looking for something that looked even the faintest amount familiar. She did not recognize anything, as there were so many intricate things for her to concentrate on.

This woman was not the sharpest tool in the shed, so when she saw this extravagant trap with a label on it that said “burparture”, she was very tempted to touch it. All of a sudden the man heard a very faint scream and he thought he was hearing things, as he had been losing hearing lately.

She struggled to get out of the trap but. She grabbed onto another trap trying to get out, but she ended up getting stuck in that one as well. She was in distress as her instincts told her to relax.

She ended up dying there a few days later of thirst and starvation. The man had assumed that she had silently left the store to not hurt his feelings.

The sad truth is that the man has not known that he had a dead woman in his shop, and he may never know. He is so old in the current day and age that he can barely walk around for a couple of minutes without tiring himself out. The body is so far away he can not smell it. And since he has his list of traps he does not have to walk around the shop to take inventory because he had a bad back. And he was so worn out he decided against putting signs up, labeling the aisles. Or so he said in the courtroom, when questioned about her disappearance.

This was of course not true, as the man had killed her on purpose. You may wonder why he had murdered this poor girl. But, he had a great reason to kill this despicable woman.

***

The woman had been just a child when “the incident” happened. She knew her father was not mentally well, so she gave him the idea to burn the old trap shop down the road.

She had told her father that the shop had been plotting this extravagant plan, this plan was to kill him. Her father became infuriated, believing his “perfect” daughter. He didn’t even question how she knew of this.

He sprung into action, and next thing the town knew, there was no longer a trap shop on 1252 Washington Road. The townspeople would never know who would have done this, but the owner did.

He had been trying to convince them that it was the girl's father, but none of them believed him, he and his family were sentenced to public execution, to never be talked about again. Then a man came back to town, but left shortly after. No one seemed to remember who that family was, even a couple days later.