THE NEXT morning I sign up for self-defense classes using my phone. I power through my homework and get it all done before dinner (if she still wants to go out for dinner). In between study bursts, I text almost nonstop with Scarlett. Each time my phone pings the arrival of a new missive, my heart leaps. It’s ridiculous because they’re all unimportant comments we keep passing back and forth, but every word brings a grin to my face and a glow to my chest.
She starts it off with just a Hey, miss you before I fall asleep on Saturday. I write back, Miss you too. :) Sleep tight, and then wonder if that was stupid or premature, or somehow wrong.
Late Sunday morning, she writes, Would it be considered a mercy killing if I strangle Connor for terrible off-key singing in the shower?
I bite my lip on a grin and reply, I think it’s only a mercy killing if someone puts YOU out of your misery, as the sufferer.
Manslaughter for the greater good, then. Totally justifiable. Shortly followed by, I forgot how obnoxious he is. Time and distance really do dim painful memories.
He can’t be that bad.
He begins his day banging around the house like a Nazi storm trooper.
And that is pretty much how my studying goes: interrupted periodically with happy little dings that usher in musings and asides, insights into the workings of Scarlett’s mind.
She tells me, You were right. Serhan and Carolina are going out.
I say, I’m sorry. :(
She says, It’s fine.
As I’m standing up to take a break and go grab a glass of water, I’m arrested by the flash of sunlight off a car driving by my window—headlights off, even though the sun is setting and they should technically be on. It’s my elusive neighbor. I realize I haven’t given him my apology cookies yet and haven’t learned the payment for his wrecked rooster.
My phone announces a new text: Are you hungry for dinner? We could go get some Thai food, if you like Thai.
That sounds great. I’ve never had Thai. Come over. I’m running to my “possibly a serial killer” neighbor’s house to deliver cookies and to pay for a rooster I broke, but should be back by the time you get here.
Intriguing. That sounds like a story to be told over noodles. I’ll be by in 10. See you soon.
“Why are you grinning like that?” Sam asks as I go to the freezer and pull out the peanut butter cookies I made with Amber. “Aw, man! I didn’t know those were in there. Can I have one?”
“These are for our neighbor for the rooster incident,” I say, but cave and unwrap the plate to unstick one from the stack and give it to him. I hope they thaw okay and still taste good.
I hesitate before leaving. Ten minutes won’t give me much time to get ready when I get back, so I quickly brush my hair to look as shiny as possible, and put on the lip gloss Amber gave me. I’m wearing a nice (for my wardrobe) green top, and I swap out my wrinkled khakis for an old white skirt that’s inching toward being too tight. I’m just able to squeeze my phone into the pocket. I pick up my plate of cookies and hope the walk might loosen it a bit.
The sun is setting and turning the sky into a glorious tapestry of colors. The air is warm and fresh, and not even the blaring TV and angry voices from the Thompsons can bring down my spirits as I march past their house and to the scene of the rooster decapitation.
The navy car he was driving is parked rather haphazardly, with the front wheel off the driveway and buried in the soft ground, still muddy from yesterday. His bulky wheeled trash can is empty, even though the garbage pickup is tomorrow, so he must have been gone for a while. I see the porch is cleared not only of the rooster, but stripped bare of everything else as well. With guilt, I hope he didn’t think I was being a delinquent looking to destroy his stuff for fun.
Hopefully the cookies will clear that misconception. I knock on his door and wait. Then I knock again. I’m almost resigned to leaving and trying another day when the door flies open and a hand reaches out, grabs my arm, and drags me inside.
I’m barely able to register the slamming of the door or the darkness of the house, my mind too busy screaming Oh my God, he really is a serial killer!
I open my mouth to scream as well, but he puts a hand around my throat and shoves me against the door.
“What do you want?” he growls. He shakes my arm that he has a pinching grip on, knocking me against the door so my head bangs back against it. “What will make you shut up and leave me alone?”
I struggle for breath, heart pounding. My free hand scrabbles against the arm and hand around my throat, raking scratches down the skin. He just tightens his hand and cuts off my airway entirely. It’s a terrible feeling trying to gasp and not being able to suck in any air. I’m panicking and tears are leaking from my eyes. I hit at him as hard as I can, at his face, at his Adam’s apple, at anywhere that looks vulnerable. Spots are dotting at the corners of my vision when he abruptly releases me and steps back.
I slide to the floor with a thump, one leg bent under me, and my phone pops out of my pocket and clatters to the ground. I drag in several deep lungfuls of stuffy air, almost sobbing in relief. He’s pacing and muttering to himself. In the last light of the day, I can just make out his features. He’s older and waxy-looking, with a receding hairline that’s gray and yellow. He’s got small, wire-framed glasses and looks familiar, though I can’t place where I saw him before.
I gather my legs under me to make a run for it, but he slams a hand into my shoulder as I start to rise, knocking me back against the door and to the floor again. Deliberately, he locks the deadbolt above my head and stands, towering above me, with his weight against the exit. He takes up almost all the space in front of me, and it’s oppressive and horrifying. His legs and hips are directly in front of my face.
“No, no, little girl, you’re not leaving until I deal with you. Tell me what will stop you from harassing me. What do you want for your silence?”
“What?” I rasp. My throat is on fire and sore, and I wonder distantly how long he had me crushed in his hand. It felt like an eternity but couldn’t have been that long. I sink back against the door and, under the premise of pulling my skirt down to cover myself, manage to snag my phone in one hand and secret it under my thigh.
I need to call the cops, but I don’t know how to get his attention off of me to do so and give them the address. I need to create the opportunity, but I have absolutely no leverage in this situation. I have no idea what he wants, or who he is, or what the layout of the place is to make a run for it. I thumb the volume button down to mute by feel alone. If it makes noise and gives away the fact that I have it, my only piece of defense will be taken away.
He leans over and peers through the side of the curtain and blinds. The other window on the west of the house is wide open, but the blaze of the sun is rapidly sliding down the wall. I don’t know what’s going to happen when the house goes dark. I don’t know what he’s going to do at all, and the flashes of scenarios that race through my mind fill me with terror. I force myself to push them down and away and focus on the job at hand. It’s just like ignoring how hungry I am to plow through my school assignments and get them done perfectly, no different.
He finally steps back and eyes me narrowly. My heart thuds even louder and faster as his gaze rakes over my legs and lingers.
“You keep watching me,” he says, not looking away. I press my legs together. “Coming around and bothering me. Knocking at the door, looking through the windows.”
“I’m s-sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean to bother.”
“How’d you find out I was here?” he asks, snapping his eyes back up to meet mine. His are pinched tight and glaring. “What tipped you off?”
At this point I’ve figured out he’s talking about more than just me being a neighborly annoyance. He thinks I realized he was a serial killer from the start.
“I knew there was something,” he continues relentlessly, this time looking away and darting that crazed gaze around the bare walls. The place
is empty of personality, completely devoid of humanity. If I had just randomly walked in here, I would never have thought the place was inhabited. “It all happened too fast for me to plan for everything. There must have been some flaw, some chink….” His head whips back toward me. “What was it?” His eyes widen and his nose flares. “Was it her? Did my wife send you after me? The jealousy was eating her alive, wasn’t it?”
He approaches again and I can’t stop a whimper of fear before his hands wrap around my upper arms and he lifts me bodily from the floor and shakes me viciously. I clutch my phone so tight in my sweaty hand I fear it will snap in half. He turns and throws me back from the door. I land hard and slide for a second before coming to a stop between the opening to a tiny kitchen that looks like it belongs in the 1970s. There’s a door to the right.
Moving without thinking, I clamber to my feet and race to it. I wrench open the door and throw myself inside. It’s a laundry room. Thank God, the door has a lock. I turn it with hands that are shaking too badly to be truly useful, then dial 9-1-1 on my phone.
“Help me,” I whisper in the mouth piece when the cool, detached operator answers. A crash booms. It sounds like the man is throwing himself against the other side of the door. This is like something out of a horror movie. “I’ve been taken hostage by a crazy man who wants to kill me.” I give them the address twice, to make sure they get it right.
“Please help me,” I manage before the old, moldy door finally gives.
I run toward the back of the room. I don’t know why; there’s no exit there and nowhere to hide, but some animal part of my brain is pushing me to get away, get away.
I don’t make it three steps before he closes in on me. One arm wraps around my waist, the other cruelly flattens against my breasts. Both lock my arms to my sides. He lifts me and carries me back toward the kitchen. I scream as loud as I can, which isn’t that noisy, since I’m breathless in fear and my throat is still raw from his hand. It also probably won’t be noticed in our neighborhood.
I twist as wildly as possible to free myself. I kick back hard and land several solid hits (thank goodness for all that jogging building up my leg muscles). I swing again, making great contact, cracking against his knee. He grunts before leaning down and biting my shoulder. His teeth sink deep and break through the fabric of my shirt. I scream in pain and go crazy trying to get away. He releases the arm from my chest and brings it up to cover my mouth, blunt fingers digging into my cheeks and jerking me upright from where I’d been straining to arch away from his mouth.
“Shut up, you stupid, filthy whore,” he says, and that makes the connection for me. I know where I’ve seen him before.
On the news: the dead state senator. Only not so dead, and it clicks why he’s been acting the way he has: hiding and spooked that someone might see and identify him.
I throw my head back to try and dislodge his hand from my mouth or nail him in the teeth, but he dodges the blow easily.
He’s pulling me past the living room, toward another door, and I’m squirming, trying to get my arm free when the doorbell rings.
He freezes, and my heart leaps for joy. The cops!
“Audrey?”
My heart stops and I go cold all over. It’s Scarlett.
“Audrey, are you in there?”
The fingers against my face burrow in deeper. I’m breathing in frantic puffs through my nose.
“I don’t like the looks of things out here, so I’m going to come in, all right?” Her voice is so wonderfully familiar and just the sound of it makes me want to be in her arms, breathing her in. “If you are talking with your neighbor and being friendly, one of you had better open the door. Otherwise I’m breaking it down.”
I can practically feel the senator weighing his options behind me. There’s a long pause where the earth stands still. No one breathes, no one moves. There’s no sound at all, not even the chirping of birds.
Then something slams against the door hard enough to make it shudder in its frame. The senator curses vulgarly behind me and tightens his grip. His fingers are intense pain points on my face and against my arm. The door rattles again with another boom.
Coming to a decision, the senator strides toward the door, bearing me with him.
“Stop!” he shouts. “Whatever you’ve got, put it down.”
“Where’s Audrey?” Scarlett demands. “If I don’t hear from her, I’m going to—”
“You’re going to stand back,” the senator says, voice coldly authoritative. He may be insane, but he also has years of experience ordering other people to obey him, and it shows. “I’m going to open the door. You’re going to come inside, hands in the air, nice and sweet. If you don’t do exactly as I say, or make any noise, I’m going to slit your friend’s throat, dump her body outside, and let you watch as she bleeds out.”
There’s a soft thud.
“I’m unarmed. My hands are in the air,” she says, with a faint tremor.
The senator puts his nose to my hairline, so his mouth is barely brushing my ear. “And the same goes for you, little girl. Make one peep, and I won’t hesitate to bash your friend’s head in. Got it?”
I nod. He chuckles and makes me nod some more, pushing my head up and down with the hand over my mouth.
“Yeah, you’ll play nice now,” he breathes.
He moves so he’s in front of the door and lifts his hand from my mouth, letting it hover for a moment as if testing what I’m going to do.
My thoughts are racing: I can practically see a decision tree sprouting out my choices and each potential consequence, allowing me to run down one path and reject it and try another and another.
I’ve only taken a few breaths before I hit upon which way I want to go. He starts reaching to open the door.
“Get my dad!” I scream as loud as I can, pushing through the pain from my abused throat. “Scarlett get help, get my—mmphff.”
He’s clasped his hand over my mouth again.
“You’re going to pay for that, you stupid, stupid girl,” he grinds out. “You thought I was bluffing about slitting your throat? I only wish I had the knife in my hand. Come on, let’s go.”
I hope Scarlett heard me and is running toward my house right now, with the speed from years of soccer giving her the edge to get there at the rate I calculated.
I start thrashing around as hard as possible, my goal less to get away as to wear him out and give me an opportunity to break free. I’m banking on the likelihood that it’s difficult for a man who’s had little to no strenuous activity for the past couple of months to hold tightly to a wildly twisting teenager, regardless how much smaller and malnourished I am. I wrench my head back and forth to try and keep his hand away from my neck; there’s a greater probability of him going for my throat again, considering it was his first instinct when I got here and he seems obsessed with cutting it. I tuck it down toward my chest. I bend my legs toward my chest so he’s holding all my weight and aim both feet back toward his knees again. Judging by the way he’s wheezing and his hand slips from my face to grab around my chest again, this strategy seems to be working.
On a burst of renewed energy, I start swinging my legs to the sides to throw him off balance. It works: He loosens his arms enough that I’m able to pull my right hand free. I reach back blindly and grapple for his glasses, which are askew. I rip them off and hurl them away. I hear what I hope is them shattering into pieces on the ground.
“You—” But he’s startled by the loss of sight, and I’m able to wrench out of his grasp while he’s still adjusting. I run to the door and throw open the deadbolt. My hand is on the doorknob when he throws me to the ground. I almost wail in disappointment. I try crawling away, back toward the kitchen and the laundry room, but he’s got the upper hand again.
“You, you,” he keeps grinding out, flipping me over so I’m facing him. His face is distorted with rage and almost purple from the exertion. He looks demonic. I slap at his head, aiming for his exposed e
yes, and he backhands me across my cheekbone. It’s not a great hit, but it still makes my ears ring and my vision blank out for a second, enough time for him to pin my wrists down and settle over my hips, out of range of my flailing legs.
The door straight across from us explodes open and the heavy trash can from the end of his driveway crashes to the floor. Scarlett stands in the doorframe, and my dad is charging up the porch like a bull, eyes blazing in the moonlight.
“Get off my daughter, you sick freak!” he roars and flings the senator off of me. They both disappear from my line of vision, and Scarlett bends over me, ashen-faced.
“Are you all right?” she asks, using both hands to brush my hair back with a touch so gentle my ragged throat closes up. She lightly skims her fingers over my throbbing cheekbone.
Then, hallelujah: red and blue lights dance off of the walls and a siren finally enters my consciousness.
“I called the police,” Scarlett says almost mechanically, still stroking my hair. “I can’t believe they got here this fast.”
A couple cops burst onto the scene, guns up and cautious.
“Nobody move!” one blares. “You—drop him! Drop him now!”
I struggle to a sitting position in blatant violation of the no-moving order. Scarlett helps me with an arm around my shoulders. A cop is trained on us, watching our every motion like a hawk, and asking repeatedly if I’m all right. The other is yelling at the senator and my dad, who’s shouting back. Dad is standing with his hands clenched into huge fists, and the senator is lying on the ground with blood splattered across his face from a broken nose.
“He was on my daughter!” my dad keeps shouting. “That pervert was on my daughter!”
“Sir,” Scarlett says to our cop, “call an ambulance. Audrey’s hurt.”
“I’m okay,” I say numbly, through lips that don’t want to move. Shock, I think. Scarlett’s arm is still around my shoulder and the heat of her body pressed along my side is the only warmth I feel.
“Officers,” says the senator, pulling in his obey-me voice as best as he can. “Arrest these people. They barged onto my property and attacked me.”
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