The Truthful Lie -- Chapter 1

THE TRUTHFUL LIE
By: Darkinyron

Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership over the 'Jeepers Creepers' movies, or the characters, settings, plots, etc. It all belongs to Victor Salva. This is simply story that I am writing for fun. However, I do own the original characters that appear in this story, so if you wish to use them, you must ask me first.

Please review if you find yourself reading! I cannot possibly know how anyone feels about this if they just up and leave. If you like the story, but feel there are problem areas, please let me know! I want to do better in my writing, so criticism is welcome! However, if you do not like the story, do not flame me. Tell me why if you want, then move along and we can both be happy that way.

Chapter 1 -- Captive

“Hey mom, come listen to this!” Jetseta called from the family living room, her green eyes fixing themselves to the wide-screen television; evening news played an update on the day’s important events while others were being repeated from the earlier afternoon.

“What is it?” Jetseta’s mom replied loudly, her voice echoing from the kitchen over the crank of the dishwasher starting.

“On the news, mom! I think they found the neighbor’s kid—the one that mysteriously disappeared from his bed a few nights ago.”

The woman stepped into the room, focusing on the female news reporter who was outlining a vicious crime scene. Slight trepidation crossed her daughter’s face, but Trisha—the mother—felt her features become outlined with horror at the words trailing into her ears.

“Five hours ago, investigators found a body suspected to be young Kaila Zene, badly mutilated in the abdomen and stitched back together along the 9 East. The police have contacted her parents to come confirm identification; in the mean time, the body has been taken to the Poho County morgue for later examination....”

“Mom?”

“...Found the body stitched up crudely down the torso with a surprising little to no decomposition. Forensic investigators suspect a quick escape by the killer...”

“Mother! Are you alright?” Jetseta snapped with irritation, grabbing her mother’s arm lightly and tugging. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Trisha’s eyes wavered and her lips clenched as she stared blankly at her daughter’s face. “It’s back,” she whispered. “It’s back and it’s going to hurt even more innocent people...” Her soft voice trailed off along with her vision that seemed to narrow and isolate only the memories of her past.

“What’s back? Who? What are you talking about?” Jetseta stood up now, and blocked her mother’s vision of the television, her face cross and confused.

“Every twenty-three years, Jetseta, for twenty-three days, it comes out of its slumber and...it eats.”

“This again? The Boogeyman?”

“I... I don’t know what it is,” Trisha muttered. “But it’s back. Back to eat people.”

“Mother!” Anger flew into her as she took Trisha’s face in her hands and tilting it to meet her eyes. She yelled at her harshly, like she would to a child afraid of the dark for the first time. “Get over your brother, mom! Get over him and the demon creature you said killed him...It’s not real! You were in shock when he died...There is no such thing as Batman or demons or aliens or even witches!”

“Jetseta!”

“No mother...It’s time for you to face reality. You know this murderer is just another fucked up human like you and I. Those bodies you spoke of are long gone by now. Just because someone sews up their victim’s body doesn’t mean they are any different from any other cannibal.”

“Jetseta...”

“I’m leaving. I have a date with Jeff and I’m not about to let this ruin my night. You take your pills and go to bed. I’m so sick of your wild imagination!”

“Jetseta, wait!” Trisha called as her daughter yanked herself away.

“I said I’m leaving!” Jetseta shouted, emphasizing the whirl of her body with a flip of her bright red hair. “Don’t try and stop me with the excuse that Batman is going to kidnap me.”

Trisha sighed as tears streamed down her face, watching her daughter with pleading eyes. “Jetseta, just, be careful,” she sniffed, wiping her nose in her sleeve, a habit she had kept since childhood. “Don’t do anything stupid. I won’t lose another one I love to that beast.”

A simple wave off, and the girl was gone, the screen door groaning shut with a painful screech behind her. Jetseta walked to her car with an angry strut, dialing a number on her portable Motorola. She didn’t even notice the shadow that briefly crossed over her as she sat herself down in the driver’s seat....

* * * *

It was raining enough to flood basements at the restaurant that Jeff and Jetseta had chosen for their date. Thunder crashed above them as they dined on steak and various delicious side dishes, threatening to cut the power at any moment. They worried not; the flashes of lightning would give them enough time to find the food on their plates.

“What’s the matter, Jetseta?” asked Jeff softly. “You’ve been kind of quiet this evening.”

“Oh, it’s my mother,” she replied, picking at the pile of rice with her decorated fork. “I think she’s about to have another nervous breakdown.”

“Why? What has she been doing?” he asked through a mouthful of steak. He looked up at her to take a sip of his soda.

“Talking about her brother’s death again,” she sighed, her voice distant and distracted. “I’m worried about her, really. These past few months it’s gotten worse. The psychiatrist can’t figure out why she keeps having these odd visions, or why she is so afraid to go outside. When she last went to the doctor’s office they said that they assumed it was post traumatic stress, but, she’s never been soldier in a war or experienced anything serious enough to cause it.” She brushed a thick lock of red hair out of her face as a tear trickled down her suntanned skin. “I’m worried about her, Jeff. I really am. She’s never told me the full story about her brother’s death, but I know it was something terrible. I don’t want her condition to get any worse, but even when I do have the patience to try and talk to her, she just rants about that...thing that kidnapped him.”

“Has she been taking her medication?” Jeff asked. He was only mildly interested, but looked up with the hopes that his girlfriend would feel otherwise.

“I think so,” she replied through crunches of toast, though tears were still trickling down her face, smearing bits of her makeup. “I just wish she could put the past behind her. The pills aren’t going to do it for her.”

“I know,” Jeff said. “But there are a lot of people with mental problems. She’s just one of the unfortunate lot.”

Jetseta sat back, letting out a defeated breath. She stared at her food with empty eyes. “I just wish I could do something to take her pain away. My brothers are never around to keep her company...My father is always at work...”

“Just let it go, babe. Why don’t you go wash your face, and we’ll get dessert? You deserve something sweet after a rough day.” He winked at her; she couldn’t help but smile and choke out a tearful laugh.

She set her purse on the mimic marble sink in the lady’s room, which was not nearly as elegant as she had expected for such an expensive restaurant. The walls were painted only an attenuated shade of green to cover up what looked to be an older layer of white. One of the four stalls was missing a door while there was a large leak stain in a ceiling tile. Disgusted, Jetseta fumbled through the large pocket of her purse and found a tube of mascara. She grabbed a paper towel, wet it, and cleaned her cheeks of the black streaks mixed with her salty tears.

Jetseta didn’t notice that the window was open, the curtains used to block out the view of the bathroom being sifted through by the wind. She continued to dab at her face, wiping off the makeup and drying it so she could apply a more appropriate layer. The screen opened, so quietly that she didn’t even notice. She looked down to uncap the bottle of mascara...

But Jetseta never got the cap off.

Next thing she knew, Jetseta was on the smelly, tiled floor, pinned face-first against it, panting hard and trying to scream in a panic. Something heavy and strong was on top of her, and the hot stench of bloody breath was pulled into her nose as she gasped.

She found her nerves and flailed her arms violently against the tiles, trying desperately to slap and scratch at the man pinning her to the floor. She brushed his skin with her fingertip—probably an arm—breaking one of her fake nails in the process. The man didn’t care, he only sniffed her further, sticking his nose wildly into her strawberry scented hair and down over her ear to her neck, where he snorted and moved to the other side of her face.

“Jeffrey! Jeffrey help me! Somebody I—!”

“Shut up,” the man growled, slapping a leathery claw over her mouth, his voice so deep and guttural it didn’t even sound human. She looked down, not even trying to free her mouth from his grip; the sight of his hand itself had froze her in a dimension of fear. She heard footsteps, coming closer to the bathroom and her hope rose with the knowledge that someone, hopefully Jeff, had heard her cries. The man—thing—hoisted her up violently by her hair, her eyelids pulling back with her scalp right when she begged them to close.

He threw himself against the push-open door and continued sniffing, seeming to search for something in her head like a doctor checking a kid for lice. His breath was hot and muggy, smelling of rot like the harvested cabbage fields on a mid-summer day. His claws raked through that red head of hers, splitting open the skin of her scalp and sniffing the blood that leaked forward. She began to cry, her shock mixing with her fear of realization that she most likely wasn’t going to get out of this. There was pounding of fists at the door; the owners of those fists probably heard her muffled whimpers.

“Jetseta! Open up!” Jeff called against the wood barrier; now he threw himself against the door in a last attempt to force it open. It wouldn’t budge against the man’s weight against it.

“What’s going on in there?” another male voice called from further back.

“Call the police!” someone else shouted.

The man growled again as his deadly hands raked down her arm, getting tangled a bit in her hair. He ripped the nails out, taking strands with them as he kept hurting her. He snorted again upon the sight of more blood that he himself had summoned, causing Jetseta to wonder just what his intentions were.

The he whipped her around to face him.

The first thing she saw were the teeth—blood stained fangs as sharp as needles, dripping with a thick, silver saliva that longed for the taste of flesh. Her eyes, which now bulged halfway out of their sockets, shifted up, over the extra flap of tarry skin covering his cheeks, with long crevesses cutting through them. She looked over his pointy nose containing an extra nostril, his glazed eyes—the only part of his face that seemed remarkably human—and over his skull, from his hairless eyebrows to the skinny horns that clung to that goopy black skin. Her mouth dropped and her voice box seemed to fail as her brain kept commanding it to scream itself out. Her breathing hitched and hissed with each passing second, trying to keep up with her rapidly beating heart that had no idea just how lucky it was to still be in her chest.

He glared and shrieked the sound of a pestered animal, the cry so loud it snapped her out of her state of pathetic shock, bringing her larynx back to life. She screamed, no words in particular, but would not stop until she was heard by someone that could actually get to her to help her. The people on the other side of the door banged, throwing themselves against the door in desperate attempts to throw the Creeper from his position.

He pushed his face closer to hers; she pulled away, afraid of what he may do. But all he did was sniff some more, blinking and looking over her features, ignoring her tears and noises.

“Please let me go...” she whispered, but it fell on deff ears. He continued to examine her body, persisting in his sniffing, especially around her breasts and abdomen, as if he was searching for something inside of her like a cancer-sniffing dog.

My mother really wasn’t lying. She really isn’t crazy....This has to be the creature that killed her brother, twenty-three years ago. This must be the Boogeyman, or whatever...This...demon...

His eyes shot up as she completed the thought, bat wings flaring out of nowhere. She screamed again, seeming to irritate the being further as he simply rolled his eyes. He flapped those large wings, which weren’t even extended to their full length, and unexpected to her, pushed himself off of the door, holding her around the waist and shot through the window.

The last thing Jetseta heard was Jeff screaming her name into the evening breeze, and then the earpounding pressure from being in the air, and the beating of those large wings carrying her into oblivion.

* * * *

A throbbing migraine was raging behind Jetseta’s eyes when she awoke. What had it been caused by? Trauma? Stress? Shock? Fear? The possibilities raced through her tired mind, never ending it seemed as she pushed herself up onto her knees and elbows. She opened her eyes, despite the pain that resulted just from shifting their position in her head to look around. It was dark, thankfully for her, so she had to squint to make out shapes and shadows. The room smelled like rot, worse than the breath of the creature that had abducted her that evening.

Or was it still the same day, even? There was no light, no evidence of sun or moonshine. The surface she was rested on—a thin steel it seemed—was cold and wet with dirty water. Her clothes were soiled and sticky, and but at least she didn’t feel any serious wounds on herself that would indicate the liquid to be blood. There was no sound, other than her faint breathing, rain, and the ticking of a clock somewhere on the other side of the room.

Where am I? she asked herself, mentally. Her eyes adjusted slightly and she looked around. The place was dank, dripping water from the ceilings which explaining the pitter-patter of rain she had heard. The table she was on seemed like some sort of examination table, sort of like the kind used for autopsies. There were machines—lots of them that gave the impression that a lot of slaughtering had taken place here.

Sitting up, Jetseta held her forehead and gazed around again to observe her surroundings. Cool water trickled over her head; had it not been for the headache she would have been desperate to find a dry spot, but the leak was keeping her temperature low. She stepped off the table and onto the floor, realizing that she had been stripped of shoes and was standing in a puddle on a cold, stone floor.

Now what? I have to get out of here!

Jetseta turned and looked for a hallway, or anything, that could give her hope of escape before that thing found her. But right as she neared the corner, she head that raspy breathing, faint as it may have been, coming from down the hall. The creature apparently hadn’t left at all, but what was he doing? She looked down and through a row of machines to find him sitting on a high stool, carving into something white with a dagger.

He had taken all his robes off, and his back was to her for the most part, his wings hugged against his back with a tail of stringy, white hair between them. He grumbled quietly as he worked, focusing fully on his task to prevent any error to whatever project he was working on. Even the raining ceiling water didn’t seem to bother him, despite how drenched his skin was.

Jetseta’s lip curled and she snuck into the room, tiptoeing along the wall behind her captor. She tried to see past the numerous junky pieces of metal and tables that littered the floor, but from what she could tell, the only other exit was all the way on the other side. Could she make it, if she possibly stayed low and quiet behind objects or in shadows?

Her question was answered when the creature stood up and turned, noticing her. His head tilted to the side a bit, as if wondering where she had come from, and all three of his nostrils flared to catch her scent. Fear rose up the girl’s esaphagus, along with bile, at the site of her captor. He grinned.

“Who...who are you?” she asked dumbly. The question didn’t just seem stupid, it was stupid.

He snorted and turned around to grab a dagger from his table. It was a hand-carved knife made of bone, decorated to his liking and painted over with a shiny sealing chemical. Jetseta eyed it cautiously.

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice the whisper of a child. “You’re going to murder me and eat a part of me and stitch me back together, aren’t you? Aren’t you?!”

“Child, you speak too much,” the Creeper answered tonelessly.

“Just answer me, you worthless piece of shit!”

“I want something from you.”

“Well no shit.” Jetseta snapped now, anger overriding her fear, but not completely destroying it. The Creeper raised a hairless eyebrow, amused. He twisted the knife between his fingers with the expert dexterity of a ninja and walked up to her.

But against all odds, he set the knife down beside him, just out of her reach. He was teasing her, and she knew it.

“Please, just...just do it fast. I don’t want to suffer anymore than your other victims have.”

“Human, you will not die...yet,” he murmured, his breathing picking up as if he were exercising. He was searching for her fear, trying to pick it out in the haze of anger and any other emotional barriers she may have set up. “I have another use for you.”

“Excuse me, demon, but I am not your slave!”

“Quite a temper you have, little one.” The Creeper smirked and wiped a sticky substance from his chin, which Jetseta noticed to be blood in the dim light coming from a ceiling crack. “Just like your mother...”

Jetseta glared; if looks could kill, she wondered if this thing would die. “Yes, maybe that is where I get my resistance from, but don’t think I don’t know what you’re getting at. I’m not stupid!”

“I know, child. You are strong...That is why I picked you for this.”

“For what?”

The Creeper pressed against her, his breath hot and erratic. His notorious nasal examination began, starting in her hair as usual as he bent over her. She froze, afraid of both trying to escape and remaining against the wall at the same time. The door seemed so close, yet so far away. Just a quick break for it and she would be in the other room in the back—a room which possibly held an escape into the outside world. Yet it would take so long to get there, those several meters against the Creeper’s split-second reactions.

“Please, leave me alone,” Jetseta begged, her voice as frail as settled snow under feet. “I’ve done nothing to you...Leave my family and I alone!”

A snort escaped him, but other than that he paid her voice no attention. His eyes fluttered shut and he sucked in her scent as if he had been intoxicated by a drug. His hands traveled up her arms to her shoulders where he gripped her roughly with his nails digging into her flesh, summoning a bit of blood beneath them. She pushed against his chest with her hands, hoping to get at least the reek out of her face. It did nothing; if anything, the Creeper liked it, and pressed against her further.

“Get...off of me!” Jetseta’s voice had returned, as well as her strength as she squirmed between the Creeper and the wall. She thrashed as if there was no tomorrow, trying to get under his grip to run.

He was too strong. Worse yet, he seemed to like it.

The Creeper held her there, and licked a cold trail down the side of her face with the tip of his slimy, filthy tongue. He savored her taste, taking his time as he moved down her neck, following his hands that traveled down her breasts and over her abdomen, and back up again. His eyes snapped open, glazed with not only cataracts but the overpowering clout of lust.

Her eyes begged him to stop. His eyes begged her to relax and let him.

The Creeper tore at his victim’s jeans, easily slicing through the thick fabric with those sharp talons. He looked down; Jetseta’s eyes followed him.

Jetseta noticed her captor’s obvious need as his sickening member nudged her; the Creeper noticed the shaking and the fear of his new slave, but also...another power that seemed to be taking over her mind. They both froze. Their eyes met.

Yes, he had chosen his slave well. She was a strong female in her peak, unable to control her body’s needs and wishes.

Lust filled Jetseta’s eyes, while her mind was screaming at her to fight. Then again, she thought that now, perhaps at the point that only survival mattered, only her animal instincts may get her through this...as safe as it could possibly be.

Complete opposites stared at each other. The mortal and the immortal, the slave and the master, the prey and the predator...

They always said opposites attract...

And now it’s mating season....