She couldn’t take any more.
As his lips closed over her nipple and his teeth started to rake across her skin, she flipped up the rim of his skully cap, to reveal his ear. Surprised, he started to lift his head, but she was faster: she clamped her teeth over his earlobe and bit down as hard as she could.
He yelled. As he jerked away, his ear tore, blood spattering the snow.
“You bitch!” He scrambled away, hand pressed against his head. “You bit my ear like fuckin’ Mike Tyson!”
She spat out his bloody earlobe. Rising, she pulled her blouse across her bosom.
With horror, Jamal regarded his chewed-off ear, lying on the snow in a smear of blood.
She noticed that he had dropped the knife beside her. She snatched it up.
Jamal made a move to charge her.
“Get the fuck away from me!” She waved the blade in front of her, made a feint as if to cut him.
Weeping, gritting his teeth against the pain, Jamal scooted backward. He dug his hand into an inner pocket of his coat.
When Tonya saw the cold glimmer of the gun, she turned and ran.
He fired. A bullet zipped past her, plowed into a snowbank. Bits of ice sprayed her.
She started to run in a chaotic, zigzag pattern, to make herself a difficult target. The station was ahead. There was no attendant on duty, but if she could get inside, get to a pay phone ... something. Maybe some kind of plan would become clear. Maybe she could survive this nightmare.
She leaped the concrete steps and ran onto the platform. She almost slipped on a patch of ice that hadn’t been covered with salt, regained her balance just in time.
Jamal was rushing across the parking lot, kicking up snow, coming after her.
She hurried inside the station. It was a small, glass-fronted structure, built solely to shelter passengers from the elements. It was full of faded plastic chairs and a trash can. No potential weapons. Not even a telephone.
Jamal had reached the platform steps.
She ran out of the door on the opposite side of the building, onto the boarding platform.The railroad tracks lay beneath her, gleaming in the moonlight like the vertebrae of some ancient beast. No train approached, and none would for the remainder of the night. She had caught the last train home.
Jamal was charging through the station.
She jumped off the platform, landed on the tracks. She raced across them and plunged into the brittle snow on the other side.
There was forestland ahead. Trees, bereft of leaves, twisted into the night sky.
A distinct thought surfaced in her mind: if she entered these woods, one of them would not return alive.
“Bitch,” Jamal called, behind her. He fired. Automatically, she dropped to the ground for cover.
The bullet smashed into a tree only a few feet away from her.
Rising to a crouch, praying with every step, Tonya scrambled into the woods.
She didn’t bother looking behind her to see if Jamal was following. Inevitably, he would. He was as persistent as he was crazed.
Why had he picked her? What was it about her that made him decide to attack her? She had never been in a situation like this, had never fought for her life against a psycho. Why her? Why now? She didn’t want much. She wanted only to make enough money to give her son a comfortable life. Save her mother’s helping hand, she was doing it alone. She was a good person, a Christian woman who strived to do the right thing, treated others as she wanted to be treated, read a Bible passage every day at lunch and said her prayers before every meal, and worked hard to impart good values to her son so that he would grow up to be a decent, honorable man. Why was she being put through this? Why did she deserve this? Why did—
Another bullet whizzed past her.
“Can’t run from me!” Jamal shouted.
Maybe not, but she’d be damned if she would give up.
As she ran, her boots punched holes in the snow. The effort of slogging forward had her thighs screaming and her lungs burning, and her injured calf ached, too, but she didn’t dare slow down. She ducked underneath gnarled branches, brushed past skeletal bushes. Wind gusted, howling through the forest and blowing gritty snow in her eyes. She squinted and pressed onward.
She heard Jamal behind her, fighting his way through the forest. He had a gun, and she had the knife, but the weapons didn’t seem to matter much anymore. This had become a pure contest of wills.
She wasn’t going to quit. She had no choice but to win. She had to survive, for her son.
She stumbled out of a patch of dead shrubs and into a clearing. A large pond lay before her, the perimeter ringed with tall elms. The pond’s surface was an unbroken, smooth sheet of ice that looked like molten silver in the moon glow.
She didn’t know how sturdy the iced-over pond would prove under her weight, so she began to travel around the edge of it. When she was at the halfway point, Jamal emerged in the clearing.
She was out in the open, an easy target. She ducked.
He fired.
The bullet bit into her shoulder.
She screamed, spun, lost her footing, and slammed onto the ice, the knife popping out of her hand and spinning across the pond.
CRACK!
Pain fanned across her back and shoulder blades. She rolled over, like a log. Her fall had fractured the ice beneath her. But the surface still held.
She touched her shoulder. The bullet had grazed her; she was lucky it hadn’t penetrated, or she would be in far worse shape. But blood dampened her coat, and numbness began to spread through her arm. She felt faint; her sheer will to survive was all that kept her conscious.
She pulled her wool scarf from around her neck and pressed it against her wound, to stop the flow of blood.
Jamal strutted around the pond—the same swaggering walk that she recognized from the office.
She suddenly hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone—even more than she’d once hated Marcus, her son’s father, when he tried to deny that Aaron was his child. The hatred she felt for Jamal was the hatred she would have felt for anyone who threatened to destroy everything that she held dear. She was a charitable woman and didn’t often indulge such negative feelings, but this time she allowed herself to indulge in hatred, knowing that it would give her the fortitude to keep fighting.
She blinked away tears of pain.
“Well, well, well, Tonya Washington.” Jamal looked at her, studied the pond, looked back at her. “You’re gonna make a brother walk across thin ice for you, huh?”
With a great, agonizing effort, she crawled farther away from him, toward the middle of the pond. The ice crackled beneath her, but didn’t break. However, a long, jagged line had begun to spread beside her.
How deep was the pond? Plunging into even a mere two feet of frigid water would probably induce hypothermia. It could certainly shock the hell out of you, numb you to the marrow, temporarily paralyze you.
A plan formed in her mind. A last, desperate attempt to end this.
She rolled onto her back. Above, the cold stars watched her, a thousand indifferent eyes.
She stretched her tired legs in front of her, looked at Jamal.
“You got me,” she said. “Come get it. Get it over with.”
He frowned, clearly suspicious. Then he saw the knife, lying out of her reach, and his frown faded.
“I’m coming, sista.”
He stepped warily onto the ice, testing his weight. The ice emitted a soft snapping sound, but didn’t collapse. He began to advance, with growing confidence.
She drew up her legs, muscles tensed.
“Don’t try any shit,” he said. He aimed the gun at her, moving closer.
Just as she hoped, his boots pressed across the gigantic fracture that her fall had created.
“Why would I do that?” she asked.
As she spoke, she raised both legs high and then brought down her heels, banging them against the ice.
The ice around Jamal bro
ke.
“Bitch!” he yelled. He plunged into the freezing water.
Tonya scooted away from the shattered ice.
The pond was much deeper than she had thought. Jamal sank completely beneath the surface. He thrashed wildly. Screaming.
The gun flipped out of his hand and clattered onto the ice. Tonya crawled toward it. She got her hands around the handle, slid her finger over the trigger.
Jamal suddenly launched out of the water as if shot from a cannon. He flopped onto a shelf of ice, shivering. He saw her, and his face twisted into a mask of rage.
He began to scramble toward her.
She aimed and pulled the trigger.
The bullet ripped into his throat. Releasing a garbled scream, he splashed back into the water.
He flailed for a few seconds ... and then sank under the surface.
The water grew still. The night, too, was quiet. The only sound was Tonya’s tortured breathing.
He was gone. She had killed him.
She felt no remorse, no anger. Perhaps she would, later. Now, she just felt hollow.
She stuffed the gun into her pocket. She located the knife, wrapped it in her scarf. The weapons were evidence.
Then she crawled back to land, slowly got to her knees, and even more slowly, rose to her feet.
Soon after, she began to cry.
When Tonya walked out of the woods and crossed the railroad tracks, she saw her mother’s Jeep Grand Cherokee rumbling down the road beside the parking lot.
Heedless of the pain in her shoulder and her calf, Tonya started running.
Spotting her, her mother drove toward her, pulling up close to the station. Tonya saw Aaron sitting in the front passenger seat, bundled up in a coat and hat.
She raced to the passenger door, yanked it open, and pulled her son into her arms, not even feeling her wounded shoulder. Her son was so warm, so alive. She covered his face with kisses.
“Mommy, Mommy!” He giggled. “I stayed up for you!”
Everything she had faced was worth this moment.
“What happened to you?” her mother asked. “I tried calling you on your cell phone, then decided to drive down here ’cause I got worried about you.”
“I’ll tell you all about it, Mom,” Tonya said. She had a long night ahead of her—contacting the police, retelling the incident blow by blow, going through the entire horrific experience one more time, visiting the hospital to get treatment for her injuries ...
But she didn’t want to think about any of that right now.
She stroked her son’s hair, kissed him on the forehead, and looked into his eyes. He grinned at her with a child’s boundless love.
“First, let’s go home so Mommy can tuck you in.”
Notes on the Stories
“Daddy’s Little Girl”
This is one of the older pieces in the collection—I wrote this one back in 1996. I initially submitted it to Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, the magazine that published “Dead the World,” the first short story I ever sold. Algis Budrys, the editor and publisher, declined the story—I don’t even recall why exactly, but I’m sure his reason was legitimate—and I set the story aside for a while. Then one day, I got an idea for how I could make it better, and I sat down and rewrote it. I never did resubmit it to Mr. Budrys, and decided to store it in the infamous Writer’s Bottom Drawer, in hopes that I would eventually find a home for it someday. So, here it is. (Note to aspiring writers: Never throw anything away.)
The story makes no attempt to be profound or thought provoking. But I think it’s fun to read, in a campy sort of way. Besides, who doesn’t like werewolves?
“The Sting”
I wrote this one a few years ago, too. At that time, I had noticed a trend in my writing: I was always telling stories about nice guys. I like writing about nice guys, mind you, since we supposedly always finish last—but I wanted to write a story about a complete asshole, for a change. You know the type: the kind of person who is absolutely insufferable, in almost every way. The kind of person whom you are glad to see get his just desserts at the end. (Because, in real life, the bad guys often seem to win.)
Oh, and I confess to personally having a minor phobia to winged insects with stingers ...
“After the Party”
One year, I got it in my mind that I should write a story with a Halloween theme, just to see what I could come up with. I think most of us dread getting pulled over by the police—especially when we know damn well that we’ve done something wrong. I know I do.
But there are things much worse than being hauled to jail. Much, much, worse.
“The Secret Door”
One of the less exciting jobs that I worked in my youth was that of a “corporate housekeeper”—a janitor, in other words. I’ll be honest: I hated the job. I felt that it was a misuse of what I believed my talents to be.
But hey, even Einstein had to hold down a gig to pay the bills. You do what you gotta do, know what I mean?
Although I mostly despised the work, it taught me humility. It taught me that there is honor in a job well done. And it gave me the source material for this story. (And a bunch more that I’ve yet to write.)
In retrospect, sounds like a fair trade-off.
“Hitcher”
I’ve always wanted to write a story about a hitchhiker. (The 1980s film The Hitcher, starring Rutger Hauer as the madman, has stayed with me for years.) But as oftentimes happens to me when I’m writing, what begins as one kind of story suddenly metamorphoses into something entirely different. That’s what happened here. I was a bit surprised myself at how strange things soon became with these characters.
Talk about one weird, dysfunctional family!
“Predators”
This is one of those far-fetched, but “this could really happen” type stories that I love. I also love to write about independent, tough-minded women who have faced adversity, lived to tell the tale—and decided to do something about it. That “something” usually translates into the woman refusing to live as a victim. She takes action.
The heroine in this story takes action—to the nth degree.
You go, girl!
“Nostalgia”
Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. After my grandfather died, in 1991, my family asked me to move in with my grandmother, to keep her company and help her around the house. I ended up living with her for eight years, and during that time, we became—and still are—exceptionally close.
When I moved away to Atlanta, it was hard for both of us. I was twenty-five and wanted to move on and live my life as an adult, in a new city. But I sometimes felt guilty and asked myself if I was abandoning her. She understood why I wanted to leave, but she loved me like a son, and was sad to see me go.
I wrote this story while I was going through that transition period.
“A Walk Through Darkness”
Years ago, I heard a story about one of my great uncles walking along a lonely road at night, through the mountains in the South—he was hitchhiking, so the story goes. And as he walked, he noticed a man-sized shape up in the hills, keeping pace with him. Was it a bear? A man? Something else? He never found out—someone picked him up before too long, and he eventually arrived home.
Anyway, sometimes I will hear a real-life story and know that it’s a perfect launching pad for a helluva fiction piece. That’s what happened here.
“The Monster”
This one is yet another older piece. When I was a kid, I had (and still do have as an adult) what people label an “overactive imagination.” Back then, in my darkened bedroom, my imagination would take off on frightening flights of fancy. There was always someone in the closet across the room, peering at me through the slit between the door and frame. That rumpled pile of clothes in the corner was really a giant, grinning face.
And there was a monster under the bed.
Nothing but a child’s overactive imagination, of course.
But w
hat if the monster was real?
“Death Notice”
I’ve observed that when people begin to get up in age, they oftentimes develop an intense interest in death—specifically, in the recently deceased in their town. The devotees of such matters invariably turn to the newspaper obituaries to satisfy their thirst for this morbid knowledge. And who showed up in the day’s obits is a regular topic of conversation.
This story is my attempt to understand why the obits are so important. I’m sure that as I grow older, my wisdom will deepen in this regard.
I just hope I don’t end up like Mary Pryor.
“The Woman Next Door”
I originally wrote this piece intending to submit it to the Brown Sugar 4 erotica anthology edited by Carol Taylor. Then, for reasons that I don’t even remember, I changed my mind and gave Carol another story, “Ghost Writer,” instead. But this one still resonates with me. It’s my first stab at a mix of erotica and supernatural suspense. (I explored this blend in more depth in my novel Within the Shadows.)
Besides, in our transient society, you often don’t know much at all about your neighbors ...
“Flight 463”
This is probably the most serious story in the collection. The main character is undergoing a crisis of faith, triggered by the suffering, and eventual death, of his beloved grandmother. The story grapples with the timeless question that has spawned a thousand books and Sunday-morning sermons: why do bad things happen to good people?
I don’t profess to have the answer to this question; I’m not sure anyone does. But it haunts me, as it does many of us who have lost a loved one who seemed to deserve more time on earth, or a better life, or a less painful death.
I wish I could get a divine confirmation as powerful as the one Sean receives at the end.
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