She grabbed a chunk of her long hair and slowly twirled it in between her fingers. Her natural goddess hair, as Jack used to call it. He said it was what first attracted him to her the day they met at Isaacs’s Coffee House. He would often pull out her hair band, releasing her ponytail, letting her long locks fall freely. She remembered how he would hold her hair and her head in his fingers while he kissed her slowly. She twirled the chunk of hair a few more times. That liar. Holding the scissors closer to her scalp, she hesitated. And then, without a second thought, she cut off the thick lock.
She held the hair in her hand, inspecting its unusual separateness, and let it drop to the floor. There was no turning back now. She grabbed another chunk and did the same. She continued to do this until it was all gone. There were clumps of long hair covering the sink basin and the floor around her bare feet. Her newly short hair was uneven and patchy, so she grabbed the electric clippers and shaved her head.
All of her highlights were now gone and she was left with a dark brown crew cut. She ran her hand over her bristly scalp. She swayed her head from side to side. It felt so strange and light. Like the weight of her fear was gone, lying on the floor. She was amazed at how different she looked. She was older, serious. Her eyes were more pronounced. She could see the definition in her cheekbones and how they shaped her face. She stood motionless in front of the mirror and studied herself intently: her nearly bald head, her determined face, her deep eyes. She examined the fire red blood marks on her arm, like they were part of an initiation process into a new tribe. She looked like a fighter. It was then she decided that she wasn’t going to let Jack get away with it. She wasn’t going to cry anymore, or feel sorry for herself. She was going to make Jack regret what he did to Ben, regret what he did to her. And if Ben was right about Jack killing Rachel, well, she was going to make him regret that, too.
* * *
She spent the next couple of days planning and preparing for what she now knew she had to do. Alone in her room with the door locked, Type O Negative’s “September Sun” played loudly from the small stereo. She peered out the window at her grandmother who was busy tending to her small greenhouse in the backyard. Even though her grandmother was upset about what Sara had done to her hair, she seemed relieved to see her up and about, going back to work and over her grief.
Sara sat down on her bed, picked up a wrinkled sheet of paper lying nearby, and reviewed her handwritten notes. She rehearsed what she was going to say one final time. Then she leaned over to turn down the music. It was time for the first step. She carefully dialed the number she had found in the phonebook. After two rings, a woman’s voice answered the line.
Doing her best to disguise her voice and sound mature, Sara asked, “Is Jack there?”
“Yes, one moment please. Jack, hon, it’s for you,” she heard the woman call out. Then she heard the sound of footsteps approaching.
“Who is it?” she heard Jack ask.
“A mistress? I didn’t ask.” The woman giggled playfully. Sara imagined Jack tickling the woman the way he had often done with her. The thought made her want to throw up.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hello, James.”
There was a hesitation before he responded. “I’m sorry, you must have the wrong number.” His voice was loud and animated.
“Oh, that’s right, it isn’t James, is it? It’s Jack. Jack Spencer, right?” she said as her hand that held her notes began to sweat.
“Yes,” he said, “This is Jack Spencer. Um, what can I do for you?”
“Oh, so you don’t recognize my voice?” She grew irritated. “Okay, let me refresh your memory. We met at Isaac’s. We went around together for, like, six months. You got me pregnant, made me get a fucking abortion and then dumped me. Oh, the latest news, you also slept with my therapist, your wife’s best friend. Ring a freaking bell?”
“Oh, yes, I think you’re trying to reach my coworker, Bill. Tell you what, give me your number, I’ll have him call you,” he said forcefully.
She paced the room. “Can’t talk, huh? I can always, you know, come by. Now that I know your real name, and know how to use the Yellow Pages.”
“Give me your number, and I promise I’ll have him call you,” he repeated, then whispered directly into the receiver, “Not here. Give me your number. I’ll call you.”
“No,” Sara shot back. “Meet me at your old house tomorrow at midnight.” She paused. “With $25,000 cash. If you don’t show up, I’m going straight to the police.”
“Are you insane?” he whispered again. “I can’t just come up with that! Give me a few days. I’ll be there Monday night.” He raised his voice to speaking volume. “Yes, I know Bill will be happy to speak with you, and help you with whatever you need.”
“Monday. Midnight. Be there,” she said and cut the line.
Sara had bought a disposable phone from the drug store to make the call, so she knew he couldn’t trace her. Still, her fingers were shaking when she pressed the button to hang up. She felt feverish and had to sit down. She had a sudden urge to scream, so she grabbed her pillow and let it out as loud as she could. She wasn’t expecting to have such a strong reaction to the sound of Jack’s voice. All the love, gone, turned to disgust and rage. She got up and walked around her room, trying to shake off the anxiety that had built up like a flood in her body. She closed her eyes and fought back the tears swelling inside. She tried to focus and bring her mind back to her plan. She told herself everything would be fine after Monday night.
She was actually relieved he had pushed back the night they would meet. It would give her more time to prepare. She sat again and turned the stereo up, focusing her attention once more to The Plan. She carefully inspected the items she had laid out on her bed. The night before, she had broken into her father’s house, snuck into his office to take his compact digital recorder. She also had bought some duct tape, rope and two bottles of wasp spray from the home improvement store. She began stuffing her backpack with all her supplies. There was only one more thing she needed, but she would have to get it from the vet’s office, and she would need to make sure no one saw her taking it.
* * *
It was nine-fifteen on Monday night. Sara drove slowly down Jack’s street. His house was on the far-southeast side of town in a modest, somewhat rundown neighborhood that had deteriorated over the years. It was a simple three-bedroom, single-family home that had been built in the early seventies. Like most of the homes in the area, it had been badly neglected, and the yard was overgrown. The house across the street appeared vacant, and in its driveway was a late model car without a tire propped up on a cinder block.
She looked intently at Jack’s home. She had to make absolutely sure he wasn’t there. For her plan to work, she had to be inside the house well before he got there. She parked her car a few yards away and turned off her headlights. She looked for any movement around his house. There were no lights coming from the windows; it didn’t look like anyone was home. She waited and watched for fifteen minutes. When she was sure Jack wasn’t there, she drove her Civic two blocks over and parked it in a dark area, under a cedar tree by a ditch.
She was dressed in black, from her sneakers to her baseball cap. She looked around for neighbors, but the street was deserted. She carried her heavy backpack, walking briskly through the shadowy streets that were dimly lit by dull, yellow streetlamps, then darted into the back alley that ran parallel to the houses. Several dogs barked ferociously as she passed by the decaying wooden fences. She prayed she wouldn’t encounter one. She stopped to arm herself with a can of wasp spray, just in case. She had never actually used wasp spray as a weapon, but she knew it could spray up to twenty-five feet with pretty good accuracy and would definitely cause substantial pain and temporary blindness. She stood on her tippy-toes and peered over the fence into the area where she thought Jack’s house was. It was dark but she could tell it was the right one because she recognized the old planter on the back porch he
had often used as an ashtray. She looked around and was pretty sure she had made it without anyone noticing her.
She glanced around one last time before she threw her backpack over the gate, then hoisted herself up, and jumped over and into the backyard. She stumbled and fell on her hands and knees. Shaking herself off, she was startled by the sudden horn and rambling of a train passing nearby. There were long, dry weeds all around her. She took out the small flashlight from her pocket and checked to make sure nothing had fallen out of her bag. With everything accounted for, she made her way to the back porch. Unless Jack had had it fixed, she knew the latch on the sliding door was loose. She grabbed the handle and wiggled it up and down until it unlocked. She stopped and peered over the fence to make sure no one had heard the noise. Once she felt safe, she slid the heavy door to the side and let herself in.
Inside, the house was dark and stale with little furniture. She moved her flashlight around to check out her surroundings. There were large cobwebs in the upper corners of the living room and old water stains coming from the air vents. It was obvious the house had been vacated and that no one had been living there for a while. The house’s few windows were covered by filthy, mangled, metal blinds. She stood in the living room and thought about the last time she was there. This was where Jack would bring her to be intimate. They would charge into the house so worked up they hardly ever made it to the bedroom. She figured they had had sex in most, if not all, of the rooms. It was in this house, during one of those ill-fated encounters, that she had gotten pregnant. And it was there, on a cloudy Sunday in October, that Jack’s friend Mike had given her an abortion.
Sara walked over to the bedroom where it had happened and turned on the light. Only a full-size bed sat in a corner of the room. The bed had been stripped of its sheets and she could see various stains on the bare mattress. The large, dark one in the center, she knew, must be her own blood. She closed her eyes and remembered lying there with her legs totally open. Jack had given her something to drink. It made her feel drunk and nauseous. He told her it wouldn’t hurt, but it did. She remembered Mike’s crooked, yellow teeth and his creaky, high voice telling her to just relax. She remembered that, although he had washed his hands, she could see black grime under his fingernails. She remembered that he had winked and smiled at Jack when he rammed whatever metal device he was using inside of her. She squeezed Jack’s hand as tight as she could whenever she felt those sudden, piercing jabs of pain. She searched for his eyes, but never found them. After a while, she just stared at the worn popcorn ceiling as she fell in and out of consciousness. Thinking back, she realized now how lucky she was to be alive; she could have easily bled to death.
She turned off the bedroom light and went back into the living room. She put her bag down on the shabby, brown couch and removed from it the other can of wasp spray, two rolls of duct tape, the digital recorder, an old rag and the bottle of chloroform she had taken from the vet’s office. She then went to the front of the house, where the front door stood to the left of the small kitchen. She turned on the light and looked around. There was an old, wadded-up napkin and a Styrofoam cup sitting on the laminate countertop next to a dead cockroach. The sink was dirty, with rust marks around the drain. She stood on the counter and carefully unscrewed the light bulb using her gloved hand. She threw the bulb in the trash can, jumped down and went back to the living room.
Checking her watch, she figured she had about two hours before Jack got there. She pulled the thick, brown curtains over the sliding door, blocking out any light coming into the already murky room. She took off the glove on her right hand so she could get a better handle on the wasp spray can. She was ready. All she could do now was crouch down behind the couch and wait for Jack.
She double-checked the recorder and put it back in her pocket. She was craving a cigarette, so she swallowed the old chewing gum she had in her mouth and grabbed a new piece from the front pocket of her bag. She was nervous, but incredibly excited. After Jack had vanished from her life, she had spent so much time being miserable. The abortion had weighed on her immensely and made everything worse. The only person she could ever talk freely with was Rachel, and after she died, Sara felt completely alone. Her feelings of isolation had grown with the realization that Jack was a fraud. And now when she started to feel overwhelmed, she would find herself thinking about cutting again. Rubbing her forearm, she wondered how she would hide the marks when the weather changed and long sleeves were no longer an option.
She had been sitting there for about forty minutes when she heard the garage door open. Startled, she sat up and checked her watch. It was only ten-fifty-three. She hadn’t anticipated Jack coming into the house from the side door. Now, she wouldn’t be directly in front of him when he walked in, so she wouldn’t have a direct shot at his face. Plus, since she had only unscrewed the light in the kitchen, he could easily flick the switch for the living room from the side door. She considered moving to the other side of the room to give herself a better shot at his face, but if she got up now, she risked him coming in and seeing her dart across the room. But if he turned on the light when he walked in, he would see her for sure. Trying not to make any noise, she quickly stood up on the sofa and tried to unscrew the bulb from the light fixture, but she lost her footing and fell to the floor, nearly dropping the wasp spray. She jumped back up and tried again. The bulb was screwed in tight. She could barely get it to budge. She heard the garage door closing and then saw the doorknob turn.
As soon as Sara squatted back down, Jack walked in. He was carrying a bag and tried turning on the light in the living room with his free hand. Sara froze. When it didn’t work, he flicked the switch up and down a few times. Sara crouched in the darkness about twenty feet in front of him. She held her breath, wasp spray at the ready, waiting to see what his next move would be. She was about to stand up and spray him when he suddenly turned towards the kitchen. He tried that light, too. “Shit,” he said, and turned on the stove light. The light was dim, but Sara could see him emptying some items from his bag and placing them on the counter. She watched him pull out a long string of rope. He also had small plastic bags of something she couldn’t make out. And then she saw the gun. The steel shone in the light as he put it on the counter. Sara panicked and looked at the back door. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t move.
She turned back to watch him again. There he was, after all this time, after all they had been through, and he was there to kill her. She looked at the dark doorway of the room of her abortion and remembered how Jack had soothed her with the promise of things going back to the way they were before the pregnancy. But after he dropped her off that night, he stopped calling. He dumped her at her grandmother’s and never once checked to see how she was. Because he was lying. Because he was married. Because he slept with Rachel and probably killed her! Sara stood up, raised the can and called out his name.
“Hey, Jack.”
As soon as he raised his head, looking towards the voice from the darkness, she pushed her index finger down as hard as she could. A strong, narrow stream of wasp spray shot directly into his eyes. He immediately brought his hands up to protect his face from the torrent of chemicals, but he was too late. The spray had done its job. He cried out and fell to his knees. He held one hand over his eyes and tried to grab the gun with the other. Sara ran over and knocked the pistol off the counter and out of his reach.
“Who’s there? What is this?” he screamed in agony.
Sara put the wasp spray down, and grabbed the bottle of chloroform and the rag. She felt adrenaline rushing through her body like a supercharged energy drink. She struggled to open the bottle and poured almost half of it onto the rag in her hand. She then maneuvered to get behind him. He tried swinging at her and fell forward. Quickly, she put the rag over his nose and mouth. He tried to grab her by reaching his right hand behind him while trying to pull the rag off of his face with his left. They both fell to the floor, but Sara didn’t let go. Jack grunted an
d bit her through the material. She felt his teeth bear down on her fingers and she screamed. It felt like he was going to break them. Suddenly, Jack released the pressure in his bite. His body went limp.
Sara cried out as she pulled her hand back. She left the rag in Jack’s mouth, jumped up and rushed to the stove area where there was more light. She inspected her fingers. There were deep bite marks imprinted on the side of her ring finger. It was already swelling up and showing signs of bruising, but she could bend it a little, so she figured it wasn’t broken.
Shaking her wounded hand, she looked at Jack’s weary body on the floor. She knew she didn’t have a lot of time before he regained consciousness, so she ignored her throbbing hand and fetched the duct tape. She brought his hands behind his back, wrapping his wrists together with several layers of tape. She wrapped his ankles, then his knees. She checked the digital recorder and put it back into her jacket pocket. She inspected her wounded hand again before painfully slipping her black gloves back on.
After a few minutes, Jack started to moan and move. She grabbed his gun off the floor. She was surprised at how heavy it was, like an electric drill. She looked more closely at the bags on the counter: one containing drugs, the others, pipes and needles. “Huh,” she wondered to herself. She bent down to remove the rag from Jack’s face, then sat against the wall about two feet in front of him. She pointed her flashlight at his eyes and saw how red and swollen they’d become. They were shut tightly, with dark, runny slits at their centers. She placed the flashlight beside her and waited for him to wake up. She slowly turned the gun in her hand. She liked the feeling of holding it. After a moment or two, she took a deep breath, got up and moved close to his bound body. “Wake up,” she said as she slapped his cheek.
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