Shannon's Story

      In the Intensive Care Unit of the Sweetwater Memorial Hospital, a twenty-two year woman lies fighting for her life.  She has injuries too numerous to mention and has been beaten several times in the last few days.  I was requested by her to tell the story so that others can hear it and know what they all chose to overlook.  I am a new reporter for the Global News in Sweetwater and I had arrived two days ago.  Perhaps that is why she wanted to see me.  I was a fresh face in a town that had her written off as a young troublemaker and I had unbiased viewpoint.  Here is her story as she told me during our interview.

“My name is Shannon Tolliver and I have just escaped from the living hell of a real life torture chamber.  How I managed to escape that darkness is beyond me but I am here and the murderous bastard that tortured me and four others, one of them in front of me, is now dead.  The authorities didn’t believe me until they raided St Dominica’s Asylum, a place that had been deserted out about three miles from town.  Glenn Abers, unknown to all of us, had been holding the other four girls there for at least a week.  I knew three of those girls.  We went to school together here in town. No one had any idea of what Glenn was up to out there.  At least, not until four of us disappeared over the course of two weeks.  I hope he rots in hell!  The wounds and damage that he has inflicted on all of us killed four of us and the doctors say that I'll be lucky to make it much longer.  I want someone to know what happened there, so that we can tear that living monument to torture down and give the rest of this area some peace of mind.”

    “Take your time and tell me what happened,in your words and we can rest whenever you need to.”

“Okay, I had gone out dancing last Friday and decided to catch a cab home since it was after midnight and raining.  After getting into the cab I gave my address to the driver and wearily leaned back to rest.  The scent of sweet patchouli and sandalwood relaxed me and I guess I fell asleep.  I woke up in a room that was empty but for a bed that I was strapped down on by wrist and ankle and wearing only a hospital gown that was only folded over in the front.  I struggled to get loose but only managed to make the gown fall open in the process.  I tried to look around but there was also a strap across my chest, holding my shoulders down as well.  I was alone and scared.  There was nothing in the room but me, the bed and silence.  I tried to stay calm and shouted out to have someone come and help me.  Then I heard the giggling.  A man was giggling at me over the speaker on the ceiling.  I shouted at him demanding to know what he wanted and for him to let me go.  All I got was more giggling and then this singsong voice said, “Welcome home, my pretty new toy”.

    “That doesn’t sound like something that I would want to hear.”

“No, it isn’t and wasn’t what I wanted to hear.  I didn’t know where I was or what was going to happen and here this bastard is scaring the hell out of me, calling me his new toy!  God, I hope he burns in hell!”

    There was a slight pause here for her to rest and compose her tears and anger in order to go on.

“I struggled harder than ever to get loose.  But the leather straps just cut deeper into my wrists.  Then I heard the door open behind me.  I heard footsteps and then he showed up to the side of me.  All I could focus on were his eyes.  They hated me.  I didn’t even know the man and he hated me!  I have never seen such hatred from anyone like that!  I knew then that I was going to die at this man’s hands and I started screaming for help.  That’s when he started hitting me.  He kept punching my body, and choking me until I was almost passed out and then he began to touch me.  The whole time he was doing this, he kept telling me that I was a good toy for screaming.  I was begging for him to stop but he wouldn’t listen!  The more I screamed and begged the more he laughed and hit me.  Then he…. he….”

    “Take your time.  I am in no hurry and you are safe here.”

“I… I … know.” 

    Her tears of fear and pain told me more than she ever would of the pain and torture that she had gone through at the hands of this monster.  I had already spoken with the authorities and gotten the basics of what had happened.  But nothing could come close to what this woman was about to tell me.

“He raped me, over and over again while he beat me.  It got him off having me tied down and unable to fight back.  The odd thing to me was that he never once hit my face.  Not once.  Every blow was to my body.  The same thing happened with the other girls as well.  He wanted us to see him and what he was doing.  He wanted to make sure that we were well aware of what was going on to ourselves and each other!”

    A few deep breaths were taken and I could see that she was losing her strength but she would not let me leave. 

“Once he was done raping me, he hit me some more and then stroked himself while lighting a cigarette.  I remember calling him a bastard and trying to struggle but the pain was so intense that I don’t think I did much.  When I called him a bastard, he calmly blew on the cigarette tip and then giggling again he slowly broke off the cherry so that it would land on my nipple.  God I have never felt that kind of pain ever!  I screamed and screamed!  Then he did the same thing to the other one!  I couldn’t do anything but scream in pain! He deliberately left some of the wrapper paper on there so that they would stay burning!  I don’t remember anything after that for a while.”

    “Jesus! How can someone do that to someone else?!”

    The thoughts and chaos in my head had my stomach churning.  My lunch was about to reenter into the sink.  Her low voice shook with the memories and fear of what had transpired and I could see the terror in her eyes as she took a deep breath and started talking once more.

“I came to, choking and gasping for air, soaking wet.  The icy water actually helped on the burns and to take some of the pain away momentarily.  I also found that he had move the bed and placed me in front of one window that actually looked like one of the mirrors in a cop station in the movies.  I could see through it and what I saw brought tears to my eyes.  One of the girls from my school was in there.  Alice.  She and I had taken several classes together but had not really been friends.  Now she was here and from the look of her had been since she had disappeared about four days before I arrived.  Chryssa, she was in bad shape.  He had not only beaten her but I watched him flick on the overhead speakers so that I could hear them! I could hear her crying and begging him to let her go and to not hurt her anymore. She was chained up with her hands over her head and hung with only her toes touching the floor!  All he did was grab her by the hair and brutally kiss her!  He was enjoying what he was doing to us both!  It was turning him on sexually! Then, giggling, he walked over to a table in the corner and took a stick from it.  Christ! I could see her struggling weakly to get away but it was no use!  Using the stick, he raped her ass and then her front.  Then he shoved it in her mouth and gagged her with it.”

    “Oh my God!”

      My mind had gone numb by this time and it was a good thing I was recording this as we spoke.  My lunch had already been given to the sink.  Shannon’s numb, wooden tone continued.

“After he was done with that, he went back to the table and picked up a whip.  Alice’s screams went into overload!  Blow after blow, he just kept going!  I could only watch and scream for him to stop.  But it went on and on.  After he had made her body into a striped mass of bleeding wounds, he grabbed her hair, kissed her again and told her that she now bored him.  She seemed to be either unconscious or unable to do anything but hang limply.  This seemed to piss him off more.  I saw a bottle of something liquid on the table while he was standing there deciding what to use next.  I watched as he ran his hands over the different things on the table.  I could see her breathing and knew that she was alive still but she was almost too far gone to really know what was happening.  I watched as he walked around her, grinning and giggling insanely.  Then he walked to the window and waved at me!  The bastard!  I started struggling as hard as I could, pain or no pain, but what happened next took my breath away.  That son of a bitch took a blow torch and I gagged and threw up everything as I watched helplessly to what he did to her.  Starting at her feet, he began to burn her body.  I could hear the bones and joints snap as she was tortured to death.  He would burn and then back away until she stilled.  Then attack again.
Her screams started fading rapidly and then she was gone.  Alice had never hurt anyone but that bastard taught us both the meaning of pain.  Only for me, it was only beginning.”

      It was at this point that the nurse came to tell me that it was time for Shannon to rest.  Promising to come back the next day to hear the rest of her story, I left the hospital and went to the police station to talk with some of them there.  What I found there were officers that were shocked and muted by what they had found at the Asylum. After trying to talk with a few of them, I was finally brought to Captain Eric Stonard and from him, able find out some of what he was able to tell about the crime scene.  His eyes betrayed the horror that his deadpan voice could not of what he had seen there.

“Shannon was the lucky one” he told me.  “There were three others besides Alice.  The girls that we found were Annette Johnson, Amy Grenfield, and one other body that we have yet to identify in order for us to tell next of kin.”

      “Can you tell me any of the details from the crime scene without breaking confidentiality?”

“Lady, I will do better than that.  You now have an exclusive, come with me.  I want this known so that Shannon will be remembered as a heroine rather than a down and out, druggy runaway.”

      With his words he strode out of his office and told two of his other officers to come with him.  Determination replaced their shock and they immediately followed us out to the vehicles.  As we drove out to the Asylum, he gave me a few details, but nothing could have prepared me for what I found in the different rooms. 

In Room 304, where Alice was tortured to death, I took photos of the blow torch and the flesh left hanging on the manacles that hung from the ceiling.  The table still had the whips and knives that Glenn had used on her. 

Room 306 – Shannon’s cell of torture, blood spatters on the walls and dead rats on the floor.  I could only guess at what she had not been able to tell me about before the nurse came in.  There must have been 30 dead rat carcasses there that the CSI team was still bagging for evidence.  More pictures of the bed where the leather manacles had been chewed through while others ate on her body.

Level 2, Room 108 – Annette’s room.  Blood spatters, knives and fluid in vials with needles beside them waiting for the next round.  There were more manacles in the shower, manacles that without being told, were used to imprison Annette while she was tortured.  Beside the shower area, a generator with sponge covered paddles waited.  Looking at the captain, I saw him nod at me.  The bastard had used water torture on her to make her scream for him.

    “That’s not all.  When we found her body, her head was covered in a burlap sack and there were two dead rats still in the bag.  Apparently they killed each other while fighting over her flesh. By the look of the animals, he had tortured, starved and then enraged the rats before putting the sack over her head as she hung upside down by her ankles.”

    “Oh my God!” were the only words uttered before I lost the coffee and muffin I had had at the station right there on the floor.  Thankfully this particular room had already been processed and I luckily did not contaminate the scene.  The captain was kind enough to hand me his own water bottle to rinse my mouth out before taking me to the final room.

From there, we went down the hall to the final room of hell.  It was in this room that Glenn Abers began all of his painful torment of others. Level 2 – Room 104 - Amy’s room.  Only it was also the room in which the first body had been stored.  Blood marked the walls and I was told not to go near the vent which seemed to buzz.  A raised eyebrow brought an answer.

“Killer bees.”

      Recoiling in horror, I could only take a final look at this living hell of five women.  Amy had been chained to a wall spread eagled and naked.  Her skin had been peeled off one slice at a time and she had been left there.  Her screams, unknown to herself, had already begun to bother the bees.  My imagination could paint the rest of the scene.  Glenn giggling as he walked out the door and somehow opening the vent, releasing the angry bees and watching in delight as they slowly killed Amy, the same way they had killed the unknown body.

      Sick to my stomach from the stench of the scene as well as my own thoughts,  I told the Captain that I had seen enough and that he had his story on the condition that Shannon’s story be told first.  He was agreeable and we left the scene.  Going back to the crime lab, I quickly developed the photos and the two of us decided which pictures to use in the article. While we were discussing the pictures, the phone rang. Captain Stonard’s face fell and tears ran down his now haggard face. I knew instantly that Shannon Tolliver was gone. Now it was up to me to make sure that the public knew what had happened at that place. Placing my hand on his, I told him that I would make this story hit the headlines the next day. Rising to my feet, I heard his quiet thank you. With my hand on the doorknob, he said something that shook me to the core. 

“Shannon Tolliver is/was my niece.  Glenn Abers was her step-father and my brother-in-law. How could I have not seen what was happening?  It’s my job to help others, but I could not see the evil my brother-in-law?”

    My only reply was “Those that we love the most are most often the ones that we truly look at the least when it comes to evil being in their lives.” Then I left his office and headed to mine in order to write this story. All that I can say in ending is may we always look closest at those we take for granted the most.