Cam woke up feeling pleasantly spent, tired in a good way. His limbs were a little heavy, and he felt emptied out, which he supposed he was. The play had really drained him emotionally, and finally being with Penelope had drained him physically.

He'd never had such a satisfying physical relationship in his life, he reflected; it fulfilled him in every way. When he went a whole day without being with Penelope, which wasn't that often, given their current schedules, his senses cried out for her, he longed to look at her, to smell her, to feel her with his hands, to experience her with all of his senses.

He actually missed her with all of him, to paraphrase John Legend's incredible song.

He rolled over to tell her of his incredible epiphany, and was disappointed to find that she wasn't next to him. Carol Channing, who was sleeping in her place, opened her amber eyes and meowed, as if asking what he wanted.

"Good morning, moggie," he rumbled in his gravelly, just woke up voice.

Carol just yawned and went back to sleep.

Cameron listened to hear if Pen was in the shower or making coffee in the kitchen, but the entire apartment was silent with that level that bespoke complete emptiness.

Penelope must have forced herself to get up and go to yoga, then.

Cam was impressed.

He rolled out of bed, thinking it would be nice if he had some brunch made for Penny when she came home. She always came home from yoga starving, for some reason, though as far as he could see it was a relatively low impact form of exercise.

He took a quick shower and headed for the kitchen, thinking about what to make. He himself was in the mood for a quiche, and he knew Penny liked them, so he began assembling the ingredients after checking to see that he had the time. After he'd begun slicing the vegetables and made himself a cup of coffee, he realized he didn't have cheese or cream, and would have to run out to the market.

"Luckily, there's a shop on the corner, eh, C-chan?" he said to the cat, who sat on the counter, supervising.

She yawned and began to wash.

"Exactly," he answered, dropping a kiss on her nose as he grabbed his wallet and keys out of the dish by the door and headed out.

It was another hot and sultry day, unseasonably so for September in New York. Penny was going to come home dehydrated and thirsty also, then, because for some sadistic, masochistic reason unknown to Cam, the yoga class was conducted in an un air-conditioned space over a bodega.

He threw in a bottle of Penny's favorite Oolong Tea at the store, paid for his purchases and headed home, feeling happy, feeling good about life.

Cam waved to Jillian, the pretty, redheaded banker who lived on the first floor, who was heading out to the dog park with her shepherd mix Bilbo.

"You'd better take extra water," he advised her. "It's hot."

"Got it," she answered, lifting two bottles to show him.

When he got to his floor, he saw a large, blondish man in a heavy coat unlocking the door to Rosa Contreras' door down the hall, but he didn't know him, so he didn't call over or say hello, but merely pulled out his keys to open his door.

As he got his door open, finally, alarm bells began to go off.

Rosa had just broken up with her boyfriend, Rudy Banuelos, a couple weeks before, and there was no other man in her life at the moment who would have access to her apartment, certainly no one with blond hair.

He, Cameron, recognized that particular shade of blond hair, that hulking, bulky presence.

It was blazing hot today. Why was the man wearing a fucking coat?

Rosa's apartment had been completely renovated last year, and her door opened with a key-card, so why was the man fiddling with keys?

When you heard someone walking toward you down the hall, you at least looked up to see who it was, but the man at Rosa's door hadn't even looked up, as though he knew it was Cam already.

All these thoughts raced through his head as he got his door unlocked, even as he heard the heavy footsteps heading towards him, as he finally got his door open and pushed it as quickly as he could.

He got through it and turned quickly, trying to push it closed, but he wasn't quite fast enough, and Frederick's bulk smashed into it from the other side, sending Cameron flying backwards to land on the floor. The bag containing the cheese, cream and tea landed with a crash, the glass bottles smashing to smithereens on the concrete floor. He scrambled to his feet and ran toward the kitchen, to where he knew he'd left his phone on the counter.

He reached it just as Frederick grabbed his pony tail and viciously yanked his head back, hard enough to crack his neck. Cam saw his phone go clattering into the sink as the vegetables, eggs and pie pan, all the accoutrements for making a quiche, seemed to mock him from their place on the counter.

Then, just as Cam was getting ready to strong arm his way out of this, he felt something new: His shirt was lifted, and he felt cold round steel pressing against his ribs.

A gun? Could Frederick actually have a gun?

"What's the matter? You don't believe I could have a gun?" Frederick asked, almost as if he'd read Cam's mind. "Do you know how easy it is to get a gun in this city?" He slid the barrel along Cam's skin for emphasis, chuckling, and Cameron, who knew something about firearms because of his background and upbringing, guessed that it was a small caliber pistol.

"Is Penny at yoga?" Frederick breathed into Cameron's ear, and Cam could smell the liquor on his breath, even at this hour of the morning. He could also smell Frederick himself, a gamey, unbathed odor, the smell of a desperate man with no options left. "Well, Your Highness, that's both good and bad, I think, because I wanted to see her, too, you know? But this way we can have some fun ourselves before she gets home in what, an hour and a half? Do I have her schedule right?"

Cameron shook his head as best he could. "She's not coming home, she's going to Yoko's after yoga. We had a fight."

"You're a terrible liar," Frederick noted, pulling on his pony tail again, making Cam grimace from the pain. "You're making enough food for two people, you think I can't see that?"

Cam closed his eyes.

"So, Your Worship, let's get you all ready for Penny, shall we?" Frederick said, again with the same, spine chilling chuckle.

And then he did something that made Cam's blood run cold, that frightened him more than the presence of the little gun ever could. He reached around Cameron's tense body and grabbed up the little paring knife from the counter, the knife Cam used for cutting the smaller vegetables into cute shapes, because it pleased Penny so.

The knife glinted in the morning sun as Frederick swished it through the air, turning it this way and that.

"Okay, your princely highness, why don't you sit in that kitchen chair right there, and we'll get down to business?"

"No."

"What?" Frederick looked owlishly at Cameron.

"You're going to do what you're going to do, anyway, so why should I make it easier for you?" Cam swallowed. "How about this? You leave Penny alone, leave her out of this, and I'll do anything you want. How about that?"

Frederick looked around, as though he were considering Cam's words, all the while keeping the small pistol pointed at Cam's midsection. "How about you do anything I want, and maybe I'll consider the possibility of making things a little easier on our little Penelope, what do you think? Though I don't know why I should, considering what you two have done to my career." He shook his head. "You come waltzing in out of nowhere, some empty headed model, steal my role, steal my girl, start fucking her, and wreck my life, all in the space of a few months."

Incredibly, Frederick started to cry. "You stole my girl and started pronging her, you asshole," he said again, as though this were the greatest of Cameron's crimes against him.

"Now you get your stupid, insipid Euro-trash ass in that chair or I promise that you'll not only still be alive, you'll be awake when Penelope walks through that door, and you'll have to watch and hear every single thing I do to her with this knife. Do. You. Understand."

Cameron sat and was stoically silent while Frederick tied him up using rope which he had wrapped around his belly. "So glad I was a sailor in my youth," Frederick said to him. "Hated the sailing, but I learned all these cool knots, you know?"

Cam said nothing.

"And here we go," Frederick said, smiling. "Finally." He approached Cam, hand held out, as if he were going to caress his cheek, and it was only at the last second that Cam saw he had the small paring knife in his hand. He casually slashed Cam's cheek, leaving a cut that began to bleed immediately, dripping on to his bright yellow t-shirt.

Cam winced at the pain.

"So how much longer until our girl gets home?"

💥💥💥💥💥

Penny slid her key in the door, both hoping Cam was awake and that he was sleeping. If he were awake, he might have made some food, which would be great, because she was famished, but if he were still in bed, they might have a repeat of last night, which would be really fun as well.

She opened the door and sniffed, momentarily disappointed to smell no good cooking smells; however, she heard the scraping of a chair, and smelled coffee, so perhaps he'd just gotten up? She put her keys in the dish and took her sandals off, going in search of her boyfriend.

"Penelope?"

Penny pursed her eyebrows. His voice sounded funny, and the way he said her name strangely mushy.

"She's not going to help you, you fool. She'll take one look at you and head for the hills."

Was that Frederick's voice?

Penny felt the first frisson of fear in the pit of her stomach. There was no way, no way in the world Cam would let him into the apartment with what was going on right now.

"Penguin, run! Run away right now!"

And now Penny could hear the raw panic in his voice, the pain, the terror, and as she stood, Frederick came into view, looking like someone from a horror movie. He had random spatters of blood on him, scattered across his round stomach, even on his face. He smiled, a leering grin, in her direction, and Penny saw to her horror that he had blood in his mouth as well. And was that a gun in his hand?

"Hello, darling," he said, and he began running toward her.

Penny got moving, whirling and running toward the door, but her got there just as she did, and he clouted her on the head with the gun, hard enough to make her see stars. She staggered away from him, heading toward the kitchen, toward the sound of Cam's voice.

She ran until she stepped on the shards of broken glass from the broken bottles of tea and cream, slicing open the bottom of her right foot. She fell to her knees, cutting both of them open next, and she let out a scream of pain, and she could hear Cam calling her in that same, mushy voice.

For some reason, Frederick hadn't followed her, and she found this terrifying. She scrambled to her feet and ran toward Cam's voice, doing her best to avoid the glass on the floor.

When she skidded around the corner and saw Cam, she stopped, putting her hands to her mouth, frozen, like Lot's wife. Even if Frederick had come up behind her, ready to shoot, she couldn't have moved.

Cameron had managed to untie himself and had fallen out of the chair to his hands and knees on the floor. He looked up at Penny, palms spread in the huge puddle of blood that surrounded him.

"Penelope, my love," he said. "Run. He's ruining the lock on the door so no one can get in. Go to the bathroom, go out the window, you understand?"

Penny stared.

Cam's face was a bloody ruin. She could see his eyes, and that was all, the rest was just blood, and flaps of skin hanging, and possibly bone where the skin had been cut away.

"Penelope!"

Penny jumped.

"Understand?" Cam looked down and spat, and Penny heard the clicking sound of a tooth hitting the floor. The strength left his arms and legs and he collapsed with a groan.

"Go," he whispered weakly. "He's coming back. Go! I love you. Love you."

Penny began to run to Cam, but he shook his head grimly, his face sliding on the concrete.

"Go," his lips said.

Penny went, running through the apartment. The bathroom window overlooked a ramen house, and the roof was about a ten foot drop, which might not be too bad if she could drop carefully.

Penny sobbed as she ran, but she realized that Frederick was following her easily, because of her bloody footprints, caused by her stepping on the shards from the bottles in the kitchen.

She ran through the bedroom and toward the bathroom because she didn't know what else to do. She couldn't get the image of Cameron's ruined face out of her mind, his lips trying to form the word "Go," as his face slid along the floor.

She looked around the bathroom, sunny and cheerful with the sun shining through the window onto the sunflowers with which they'd decorated it.

She picked up the lid of the toilet tank to at least try to defend herself, though what could she do with it against a gun?

She sobbed again as she heard Frederick's shuffling, running feet.

"Penelope?" she heard him call. "Come on, don't run away, you've always been so good about accepting your punishment, haven't you?"

He ran into the bathroom and came at her but took the corner too sharply and tripped squarely over Carol Channing, who was in the cool sweet spot on the tiles, stretched out full length. Penny saw the look of almost comical surprise cross Frederick's face as he continued to run, leaning forward and off balance, hands held out to try to break his fall. The gun flew out of his grip and bounced off the tile wall, landing harmlessly at Penny's feet.

Frederick ran full tilt into the large, claw-footed bathtub, an antique that Penny and Cameron had been thrilled to find. It was a cast iron behemoth, and he hit his head with all of his considerable body weight behind it and then some, as his feet had actually left the floor when it happened. There was a considerable bronging noise that reverberated through the bathroom as C-Chan went running for cover.

Frederick came to rest finally on his back, next to the tub, staring up at the ceiling, motionless.

Penny stared at him for a few moments, making sure he wasn't going to move, before she approached him to stare at his face. He had a strange, indented groove on his forehead, the exact shape of the lip of the tub, running from one side to the other, and one of his eyes bulged nearly completely out of the socket. And he still looked like he was smiling.

Frederick would be doing nothing to anyone anymore.

Penny quickly and carefully stepped over his body, and, ignoring the terrible pain on the bottom of her right foot, ran to her boyfriend, who was a still lying motionless on the kitchen floor.