Trapped

by Jonas Saul

Whether Trent was dead or not, she couldn’t remain under the table all night. She moved her head out of hiding to peek. No one was in the hole that looked out to the front. With a last glance around the back room, she edged out farther. No one accosted her. No gun was fired.

  It took her a full minute to get to a standing position. The beating of her heart seemed louder in her ears than the boy’s soft moans from the other room. A part of her couldn’t believe what had happened. It was like a dream. Or a nightmare. She also had no idea how her husband Layton was going to explain the woman Vicky.

  Melissa knew on every level that tonight would completely change her life. The only way to find out how much, was to walk out of this restaurant alive. She had every intention of doing that. This had become a game humans played since the beginning of time. The Mayans beheaded the losing team, the Gladiators died in the Coliseum. On this evening, in this restaurant, people had died. The victor wouldn’t be the most agile or the most physically fit. No, tonight’s successor would be the smartest one. Melissa knew her best weapon was her mind. Right now it was honed and alert, ready to outwit her opponent.

  She knew Trent wasn’t dead. No way. Her random shots were wild. It would’ve been seriously lucky for her to’ve had a direct hit. The moment she began firing, Trent had ducked back.

  Now, standing slightly bent over in the kitchen, a perfect target, she only had seconds to accomplish her goal before Trent would lay down another barrage of steel projectiles.

  Inching for the rear of the restaurant, she shouted to the front, “Is there a phone out there I could use to call an ambulance for you?”

  “Yes,” the boy shouted back. “It’s right by the cash register. Please hurry.”

  “Okay, but you’re sure Trent is dead? I don’t want to come out there and get a nasty surprise.”

  “Yes, please hurry. I can’t seem to stop this bleeding.”

  She grabbed a cloth that lay across one of the back sinks. After balling it up, she got into position.

  “Okay, here I come.”

  Melissa tossed the cloth and ran for the back door. The balled-up linen sailed through the opening over the doors that led to the front. She was three steps from the back when a hail of bullets were shot into the cloth and the wall behind it. Before her assailant could realize that he’d been duped, Melissa was already reefing on the metal bar of the back door. It opened without protest and she burst out into the night.

  What surprised her the most wasn’t that she had gotten out of the building unscathed or that the idiots in the front of the restaurant were too stupid to figure out what they had allowed her to do.

  What surprised her was the vehicle that sat parked in the far corner of the lot in the darkest area, unlit by any of the building’s lights.

  The vehicle was a Lincoln Navigator with twenty-four inch silver rims.

  The exact vehicle and rims that her husband drove.

  It all came together. Layton had orchestrated everything. He was in on all of it. He hired these thugs to take care of her. That meant he knew what was in her trunk and he planned to take it. They’d been together for almost nine years. How could she not see who he really was in all that time?

  She heard scuffling noises behind her. Without wasting time to turn and look, Melissa ran for the side of the building and turned the corner. A quick sprint brought her to the front of the restaurant where she saw her Cadillac and the van that was still idling beside it.

  The trunk of the Cadillac was open. She knew her husband had done this. He had stolen what was rightfully hers and he wanted to kill her for it. The feeling of being so unwanted that the person you love would rather have you dead was quite debilitating. She felt a paralysis of loneliness as she stood in the darkened night and stared at the open trunk.

  The night lit up in front of her. It all happened so fast. She only caught a glimpse before her eyes closed out of reflex.

  The idling van had exploded into a huge fireball. Her Cadillac rocked beside it as it’s windows all shattered in unison. The force of the explosion came fast, knocking her into the air and back at least ten feet.

  The gun fell from her grasp as Melissa put both hands behind her to help break the fall. She landed in a small bush, rolled backwards going over her head, and ended up on her stomach with the wind knocked out of her. After a few quick gasps, she got her breathing back under control.

  The van was completely engulfed in flames. No one could survive that. Her car was starting to catch the fingers of flame.

  The immense loneliness she felt a moment before the explosion was now replaced by a sadness so deep that a bottomless well paled in comparison to it. Vicky and the little girl had been in the van. Unless by some stroke of luck they had gotten out before it blew up, which seemed unlikely to her.

  Her stomach ached, her forehead stung and her heart wept. Melissa rolled into a ball and hugged herself.

  How could this be? What had happened here tonight? Could this really all be about her mother’s ring?

  It had been eight years since the ring was last seen. Her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s nine years ago and lost the ring shortly thereafter. It remained a mystery until she died. Melissa’s sister had found the ring in an old jewelry box packed with photo albums and other trinkets of another era. The ring was apparently purchased during the war and given to her mother, but the story was that it got removed from the hand of a rich woman who had died during a raid in Germany. An appraisal had pegged the value of the ring at a quarter of a million dollars back in 1955. It was willed to Melissa. She had placed the ring in a waterproof, fireproof safe for the trip home, keeping it in the trunk where no prying eyes could see it.

  The only person who knew about the ring was her sister. And now Layton. It didn’t take much to put it all together.

  Maybe they had set it up to look like a robbery gone bad or maybe this was all about having the insurance pay out on the theft of the ring. Whatever the reasons, Melissa knew it wasn’t over. Layton had gone this far. He wouldn’t allow her to just walk away.

  She eased out of her scrunched up position and turned her aching body to get up.

  She heard footsteps over the sound of the crackling flames. Trent stood fifteen feet away, his arm extended, the barrel of his gun aimed at her. She looked down. Her hands were empty. The gun had fallen when she got tossed by the explosion. With nothing to defend herself with, Melissa looked into the eyes of her would be murderer.

  How did it come to this? How did I miss the signs?

  Trent closed one eye in an exaggerated expression of taking careful aim. Melissa closed both of hers and waited.

  The gun fired. She jolted, stumbled, and almost fell. There was no pain. Maybe it took a few seconds. She was sure the pain was on its way.

  When she opened her eyes she understood why there was no pain.

  She hadn’t been shot.

  Trent was on his knees. Blood surged out of his mouth in spurts. The gun that had fired was held by the man standing behind Trent.

  “How the fuck could you have screwed this up?” Layton asked.

  Melissa wondered if he was talking to Trent or her.

  “Seriously. I cannot believe you had this kind of talent. You are one brave fuck, you know that?”

  He was talking to her.

  “I hired these guys to do one simple fucking task in the middle of nowhere. But no, you gotta fuck that up.”

  He advanced on her. As Layton walked past Trent he lowered his weapon and fired two more quick rounds into the corpse.

  Melissa looked around her husband and saw Vicky standing back by the Lincoln with the ten-year-old girl. Relief at seeing the little girl alive coursed through her.

  “If all you wanted was a divorce so you could be with your whore, there are better ways to go about it.”

  Layton closed the four foot gap between them and backhanded her so hard she hit the ground with almost as much force as the blow. Blood flowed freely from a new wound
on her face. She wondered if having a baby was more painful because the pain she felt at that moment was more than at any other time in her life. A part of her brain wanted to shut down, turn off.

  Wouldn’t it be so nice to just sleep for a while?

  His rough hands grabbed her and lifted her to a sitting position.

  “Stand up!” Layton shouted.

  Melissa got up and leaned against a tree.

  “All this,” she paused to catch her breath, her face a mask of pain. “All this for the ring. Are you for real?”

  “Not just the ring. Life insurance you stupid bitch. One million dollars on your life. But the only clause is I can’t kill you and it can’t be suicide. That’s what these inbreeds were for. I gave them everything. All the tools they’d need. The planning, the restaurant and even the detour idea. Everything, but they’re too stupid to fucking do it right. And now they’re all dead.”

  “Why is my trunk open then?” Melissa said as she looked at her Cadillac. It was completely covered in flames now.

  “The ring was extra. Knowing you were retrieving the ring from your sister this weekend was the catalyst. When I had decided to kill you, I needed to nail down a time. After the good news of the ring, I knew this was my opportunity.”

  “So what now?” Melissa asked. She needed to attack him. Since he couldn’t kill her, she could try to kill him. But her energy was gone, depleted.

  The flames that licked at the two vehicles in the front of the restaurant illuminated the side of Layton’s face in a way that his expression of anger turned him into what appeared to be a man risen from hell.

  “What now you ask? There is no what now. You will die here, tonight. I will leave this place, collect the insurance, cry fake tears at your funeral and then go golfing. That’s what now, you piece of shit.”

  He grabbed her shoulder. It was brute strength against her weakened adrenaline-depleted body. She was no match.

  Layton dragged her out of the bush and onto the gravel clearing toward the Lincoln Navigator.

  “I’ll get that stupid Vicky to do it for me. You can be killed by my new bitch and then I’ll rat her out …”

  Melissa saw the driver’s gun on the ground two feet away. The one she had dropped when the van exploded and thrust her into the bush.

  Melissa twisted, turned and thrust toward the gun. Layton’s grip was lost as she landed perfectly beside the weapon. Continuing in the roll, Melissa snatched it, slid her finger past the trigger guard and brought it up to shoot. Layton recovered and was about to reach for her again when his eyes widened at the sight of what she had in her hand.

  “What the fuck?” he asked.

  She pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  She pulled again and again.

  Layton smiled. “You are a dangerous one. I had no idea. Where did that come from, I wonder?”

  It riled her to hear him talk like that. He always did it. I wonder where my wallet is? I wonder why our neighbor does that? All the time, pondering out loud, driving her crazy.

  By the time she had turned the gun to see if the safety was on, Layton had already grabbed the front of her shirt. He pulled hard and started dragging her across the gravel again.

  “You will pay extra for that. You actually scared me for a second. Ohhh, you’re going to love what I have planned for you—”

  A gun fired behind them. Layton stopped. He let go of Melissa. She hit the gravel and rolled onto her side. A moment later Layton’s gun dropped from his hand. As fortune would have it the weapon fell one foot from Melissa’s right hand. She snatched it up and gripped it tight, aiming it at Layton.

  She realized that shooting Layton was pointless. He was the one who had been shot. He dropped to his knees and fell forward onto his face where he lay motionless.

  From the ground, Melissa spun toward Vicky.

  Then someone spoke from behind her.

  “Nobody talks about John that way. He was the only one who mattered to me. He took me in when my dad threw me out. He was not stupid and he was not a fucking idiot.”

  The boy sat on the back step of the restaurant, a gun in hand, his foot wrapped in the white apron that was now completely red. He dropped his head and sobbed.

  She swiveled around as she heard the pitter patter of feet running toward her. Vicky had left the little girl by the Lincoln and was running to the boy’s aid. Ten feet from the boy was as far as she got. The boy lifted his gun and shot her in the face. Her forward momentum made her look like she did a funky dance as she jiggled to the ground. Vicky landed on the gravel and slid to a stop, a large chunk of her face landed two feet from her body.

  “Don’t you come running to me like you’re on my side, bitch. You were going to blow up the van with us in it and run away with all the money and that asshole. Fuck you, Vicky.” The boy pointed in Layton’s direction. “And fuck you too.”

  Melissa couldn’t believe it. Everyone was dead but the boy, the little girl and herself. Inch by inch she moved her hands to aim Layton’s gun at the boy to make sure she didn’t get a bullet after all her efforts to stay alive.

  The boy saw her intentions and recognized them for what they were.

  “I got one bullet left and it aint for you,” he said. “Kevin is gone. My parents are dead. I killed the owners of this restaurant. There’s nothing left to live for. I won’t spend the next thirty years in prison.”

  He lifted his gun and placed the barrel in his mouth. Before she could shout anything to stop him he fired his weapon. The back of his head lifted off and smacked into the doorframe. His body slumped and did a slow motion fall to the ground.

  Melissa did her best to stand on wobbly legs. She half limped, half walked toward the Lincoln Navigator and the ten-year-old little girl still standing beside it.

  “Are you going to be my mother now?” the little girl asked.

  “Yes I am. Would you like that?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I might be sad for a while. I loved her, but she was mean to me every day. I prayed for her to go away. I said that if she ever did, I would be a good girl after that. She always told me I was a bad girl. I’ll still be sad though.”

  A tear crept past her lid.

  “I understand. I might be too. Do you think we could be sad together?”

  The little girl shrugged and seemed to think about it. “I guess so.” Then she said. “Can we leave here now? I don’t like this restaurant.”

  “See, you’re already being a good girl.”

  Melissa got in the Lincoln Navigator, made sure her small passenger was buckled up and drove away from the carnage. She dropped the little girl off with her deaf sister and drove to the police station where she gave them her statement. The ring was in the back of the Navigator where Layton had placed it.

  In the end, Melissa collected one million dollars insurance money on the death of her husband. She cried fake tears at his funeral and kept the ring as an extra.

  She didn’t go golfing.

  Vengeance

  An excerpt from Veangeance, a short story.

  I had no idea that I would die that day, along with so many other people. It’s been ten years and I still look back and wonder how that day got so fucked up.

  I had been looking forward to that holiday all summer long. Four of us had rented a cabin for Labor Day weekend, early September. It was our last party before University started for another year. We wanted to finish summer with a bang.

  Boy, did we ever. I blamed a lot of people during those ten years, but never myself. It’s so hard to own something that tragic.

  It’s all my fault. Everyone’s death, everyone’s blood is on my hands.

  I still kill to avenge their deaths.

  #

  Tabitha and I stopped at the last liquor store before the cabin to load up on alcohol. Scott and Allison pulled in behind us in their Jeep Cherokee. The sun was high, the air on fire, and we were sweating like crazy. My old Buick didn’t have air cond
itioning, so Tabby and I had driven for the past three hours with the windows down.

  “Scott, how about this heat?”

  He looked at me, raised his sunglasses to his forehead and winked. “It’s great. The inside of my Cherokee is like sitting in an igloo.”

  I jabbed at his arm. “And you’d know how it is to be in an igloo because you’re a hard-boiled Canadian boy.”

  We laughed, wrestled around and tried to get our girls to smirk. Tabby and Allison were both prepared for the heat. They looked great in their jean shorts and halter tops. I used to swear that these two girls called each other in the morning to coordinate their clothes for that day, making sure everything matched.