by M. E. Betts
As she was walked, she saw something out of the corner of her eye...a glint of metal caught the moon's rays. She stepped closer, investigating. It was a blade, sitting in the hollowed stump of a rotted tree, with a hook at the tip. The hook beckoned to her, like a finger gesturing... Come here, child. She regarded it with awe, eyes wide, mouth agape. She picked it up to examine it more closely. She brought it closer to her face, realizing that there was an engraving running down the length of the blade...Talon of the Titans. She ran a finger lightly across its edge. The wooden handle was deteriorated almost to non-existence, but the blade was pristine, more than she thought it should be, having sat neglected in the woods since God knows when. As she held the knife in her hands, a thought struck her consciousness like lightning.
I could use this, she thought. Maybe I shouldn't just run away. Maybe I should make them pay.
As she trudged through the woods back toward the house, she was vaguely aware that something had changed in her when she had picked up the knife. She was a different person, one who no longer had to be a victim. The house was within view, and she smiled. I'm not afraid anymore.
As she entered the yard, she heard a low growl. She looked down at Precious at her feet, and knew the dog was only a moment away from barking, which would wake her foster parents up. Without consciously thinking about what she was doing, she lunged down and slashed the dog's throat with the blade before it could get out more than a growl. She gasped, unable to believe how easy it had been. All the times that damn dog nipped at me, I can't really feel bad. The dog bled out for a moment, then died. She realized suddenly that she'd have to hide the body, and do something about the blood puddle in the grass. I want to see them suffer, she thought, see that old witch cry, wondering what happened to her precious doggie. She glanced at the dumpster that sat off to the side of the garage. She knew the next morning was garbage day, that the truck would be coming to collect the contents of the dumpster. She crept over to the shed, where there was a roll of garbage bags. She grabbed one and walked back over to the dog, picking up its limp body by the scruff of its neck and placing it in the bag. They'll never think to look for it in there, she thought with satisfaction as she walked over and dumped the dog into the receptacle. Now what about the blood? She walked back to the shed, picking up a large watering can. Watering the shrubs is one of my chores tonight, anyway, she thought. They won't think anything of the water running, even if they do hear it. After a half-dozen trips with the watering can, she was satisfied that the blood was sufficiently washed away. She made quick work of watering the shrubs, finished her other chores, and was done within an hour's time. She wanted everything to seem normal until she was ready to pounce on the Andersons...everything except the missing dog. She buried the knife in the mulch that surrounded the shrubs, and laid down to sleep in her usual spot beside the garage. She drifted off to sleep with a smile on her face. She could hardly wait to get her revenge on the family who had made her life a living hell.
Daphne could scarcely keep from cracking up with laughter the next morning while a very distraught Mrs. Anderson tearfully called out in vain for her dog.
"Precious!" she called, raising her fat arms to cup her hands around her mouth. "Precious!"
"It's okay, mom," Jason said. "I'm sure she'll come back."
"I sure hope so," Mrs. Anderson sniffed. "It's supposed to be down around thirty tonight, and she can't sleep outside in that kind of cold. It would be cruel! She's got to come back, that's all there is to it. I can't bear the thought of leaving her out here."
Daphne gritted her teeth. Hearing those words come out of her foster mother's mouth made her blood boil. It took everything in her not to dig out her knife right then and there and kill them both, mother and son. More fun to wait, she thought. Enjoy their pain. Besides, I can't take them both on at once. The garbage truck had come and gone, carrying with it any chance of the Andersons finding the body of their pet.
They beat her, of course, for letting the dog get away. She knew it was coming, but it only fueled her hatred, only compounded the certainty of their fate. She told them the dog must have gotten away while she was sleeping, but they held her accountable, nevertheless. She couldn't help but be surprised that it never seemed to cross their minds that maybe she'd done something to the dog. They really thought they'd broken her spirit...and although it worked in her favor, she was a little dismayed and insulted by the fact. They really think they're my keepers, she thought.
She had formulated in her head exactly what she would do. The sun went down, blanketing the countryside in velvet darkness. The sky was entirely overcast, hiding the light of the moon, so it was very dark. All the easier to hide, Daphne thought. She waited until a few hours after sunset. Then she yelled at the top of her lungs...
"Precious! Precious is back!" It sounded as if an elephant were on the loose in the house. She knew Mrs. Anderson would come bounding out the door, and that she'd be the first. She kinew that Jason and Mr. Anderson didn't give a damn about that dog nearly as much as Mrs. Anderson did. Daphne stood outside the back door, waiting. She covered her eyes with her hand, preserving her night vision, just before her Mrs. Anderson flipped the switch that was inside the back door, turning on the back patio light. As soon as she exited the house, Daphne smashed the light fixture with a brick, bathing the yard in darkness once again.
"Huh?!" she heard Mrs. Anderson gasp, confounded. She came up behind the woman, noiseless, slitting her throat as she had the dog. She gurgled, unable to speak or yell out. Daphne watched coldly as her foster mother sank to the ground, still alive for the time being.
"You shouldn't have treated me like shit, and you shouldn't have let that fat fuck you call your son rape me all the time," she said calmly, quietly. "It's a shame you people call yourself Christians." As the words left her mouth, she mounted the woman and brought the knife down into her abdomen and pulled it back out, the gut hook snagging the intestines on its way out. A half-dozen meals worth of digesting food spilled out. As an afterthought, she cut the woman's right ear off, tucking it into her pocket. This is mine, she thought.
She heard Mr. Anderson call out from the house. "What the hell was that breaking sound?" he demanded as he opened the door. Daphne was ready for him, leaping from the darkness onto his back, slitting his throat. He never saw it coming, Daphne thought as he slumped down.
"I killed your wife," Daphne said indifferently as she waited for him to bleed out. "And I'm going to kill your son."
"Why?" he whispered, then passed away. She cut his right ear off as well, putting it in her pocket with that of his wife.
Where's Jason? she wondered. That lazy fuck is probably still sleeping through all this. She slipped silently into the house and up the stairs. She paused, wondering which room was his. This was her first time being upstairs. She tried a door...the linen closet. She treaded noiselessly down the hall. She put her ear against a door...she could hear faint snoring. She carefully opened the door and approached the bed, where Jason slept. She stood over him for a moment, watching him in his state of slumber. You'd almost think he's innocent, she thought, but I know better. She slashed his throat while he laid there, as defenseless as she was all those times he violated her. His eyes shot open for a moment, then began to close as he quickly bled out. She threw back the blanket, reached into his pajama pants, and castrated him before he died.
"You don't deserve this," she hissed, "and you won't need it where you're going." She threw his dismembered phallus at him. It smacked him in the face before it rolled onto the floor, where she ground it into the wooden flooring beneath her bare foot. She collected his ear, spun around, left the room, and went back downstairs. After she took a long, hot shower, she helped herself to some food from the fridge, gorging herself until she vomited, then ate some more. When she was full, she sank down on the plush couch in the living room, and watched TV until she passed out.
When she woke up the next morning, it was already eleven o'clock.
Oh God, she thought. I better go, before someone finds out what I've done. She searched the closet upstairs for something to put on, something besides the same pair of rags she wore every day. Needless to say, most of Mrs. Anderson's outfits could fit about four or five Daphnes inside them. After a thorough search, she found a dress and coat that must have been sitting in the closet for years, since her stepmother was about two-hundred pounds lighter. I wonder if she thought she'd ever fit into this again, Daphne thought with amusement. She wiggled into the dress, put on the coat, and found a pair of boots. She grabbed a rolled-up sleeping bag she had seen in the linen closet and left the house, her knife tucked lovingly into the coat's inner pocket.
She wandered the woods for several weeks, hunting small animals, sleeping under the stars as she was already accustomed to doing. She occasionally stole food or supplies from whatever yards or houses she could sneak into undetected. She had dried the three ears she kept as trophies and hung them on a piece of intestine from a rabbit she had killed and eaten...she had learned how to build a fire from one of Mr. Anderson's military survival guides. It's a nice little trinket, she thought morbidly of the string of ears.
One day, she saw a poster on a telephone pole on the edge of the small town near her former home. As she examined it, she saw that it offered a reward to anybody with information on the whereabouts of one Daphne Anderson. The poster had a drawing that resembled her face, as nobody had ever taken her picture since she lived with her real parents. They'll come to get me soon, she thought. I better hide my knife, and the ears. I'll be damned if anyone's gonna take those away from me.
She hid her things in a small leather pouch that she had stolen from somebody's shed and buried them in the woods. She had looked for a spot she would remember--a bend in the stream where an ancient, gnarled tree grew, its trunk at least six feet in diameter.
She continued to wander the woods, waiting for a search party to come and place her under arrest. She didn't know what would happen to her, but she was certain that she didn't want to spend her life running. After three days, she woke up to the sound of somebody speaking her name.
"Are you Daphne Anderson?" Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw the local sheriff looking down at her.
"I'm Daphne McAllister," she retorted groggily, and thought to herself, I'll never answer to that name again. "But I think I'm the girl you're looking for, yes."
"I found her," he said into his radio. "Young lady, I'm gonna have to ask you to come with me." She rose up from the sleeping bag, offering no resistance, and walked with him to his squad car.
Because of the unusual abuse she had suffered, she had been sent to a mental hospital instead of a detention center. The prosecutor had tried to argue that there was no record of abuse, according to the family doctor's records. However, the medical examinations she had underwent showed severe scarring on her legs, back, and arms from the lashings that had been inflicted onto her, and confirmed that she was severely malnourished. The doctor had also assured the court that she had, in fact, been raped...horribly and repeatedly.
"She'll never have children," he had testified.
After she had turned nineteen, she was released from the hospital. The first thing she did was to return to the spot where she had buried her treasure. It's still here, she thought, tears rolling down her cheeks, as she finished digging and took out the leather pouch. She took the knife from the pouch, kissing the blade. I hope I never have to use you on another human being.
She reflected on that thought, two years later, as she collected the ears of the men who had tried to rape, and possibly kill, Fauna and Shari. I meant it, she thought. I never wanted to do it. I never wanted to kill anyone again, but I can't let bad people hurt good people.
She glanced toward the road, and the nearby town. She could hear a group of undead shuffling in her direction. Aw, that's cute, she thought. They want to go after that truck that came through.
She took out her knife and cut off each man's right ear, stashing them in her pack. She quickly finished searching the bodies, and climbed about fifteen feet up into one of the trees on the outer edge of the woods, waiting for her prey.
Shari was on her hands and knees in the vegetable garden, pulling weeds and throwing them into a compost bucket. The July sun blazed down with a dizzying intensity, even though it was still early morning. She gulped down some water from the bottle beside her. It had been a little over a week since Jon and his family had come. It had been largely uneventful other than Cindy's trespass that first day, although Shari still caught her staring her down contemptuously on occasion. Go away, she had thought the last time she noticed it, growing more and more agitated each time it happened. I don't feel like being your foe.
She had been outside for around an hour when Jon snuck up on her.
"You're gonna get heatstroke if you stay out here much longer," he said. She jumped, startled.
"I didn't even hear you come up," she said, and lowered her voice almost to a whisper. "Should you be out here talking to me? Isn't you-know-who going to pitch a bitch fit?" After the words left her lips, she wondered if it was a rude thing to say. She looked over at Jon, who didn't seem offended.
"She's in the shower," he said. He stood for a moment, head down, gazing over the garden, formulating his thoughts. "Listen, I want to thank you again for all you and Fauna have done for us."
Shari smirked. "You've thanked us a lot already...like, every day!" She looked back down at the ground, continuing her work. "You're welcome, though."
"And I want to apologize. I had a feeling Cindy would start trouble if there was another young female here, although I didn't know before we came that you'd be so attractive." Shari snapped her head in his direction, her eyes open wide in surprise. She could feel herself blushing. He looked just as surprised as she was, as if he hadn't intended to say it. "I'm sorry, I...that was probably inappropriate."
It wouldn't be, said that rogue voice in Shari's head, if it weren't for the fact that we both obviously want to play a game of pole-in-the-hole with one another.
"No, it's okay," she said, "everybody likes a compliment every now and then." She smiled. "Besides, I can't fully blame her. A lot of women would be possessive of a good-looking guy like you." He grinned sheepishly. "You two should just count yourselves lucky that you've got each other for companionship and...." She paused uncomfortably. "You know, to relieve your sexual frustrations."
He scoffed. "Yeah, she's not really reliable for that. I haven't gotten any since a month before the zombies showed up." He shifted awkwardly. "Well, I'm, uh...I'm gonna go see if she's out of the shower yet."
"Alright," Shari said, turning back to her weeding. What was that all about? she thought. And then, that rogue voice again...He wants to do me. She stood, deciding that she had finally had enough of the scorching heat for one morning, and headed back to the loft.
Shari stood on the balcony, fixing the sight of her crossbow on a zombie wandering down the road. She had been practicing with it over the past week so that she had a ranged weapon that was relatively silent, unlike the sniper rifles which they only used when it was absolutely necessary. Fauna had encouraged her to practice with the crossbow.
"You done good with every other weapon I put in your hand," she had said. "I'm sure you'll be usin' it like an old pro in no time."
The rotting undead woman was one of roughly a dozen, scattered over about a fifty yard stretch of the road. She steadied herself, situated the crosshairs on the middle of the woman's head, and squeezed the trigger, watching as the body crumpled lifelessly to the ground. She aimed at the next closest one, and frowned. That shirt looks familiar. She squinted, frowning. And the movement isn't really zombie-like. Is that...?
She ran back into the loft, where she found Jon and Cindy sitting on the couch together, reading to Timothy.
"You guys, when's the last time you saw Stephanie?" she asked, breathing heavily in her sudden panic.
"About twenty minutes a
go," Cindy said, confused. "She said she was going to see the horses. Why?"
"Because I think she's on the road, getting ready to walk into a crowd of zombies," Shari said hurriedly as she took her car keys from a hook on the wall, all but jumping down from the loft into the garage. She vaguely heard Cindy start after her.
She started the car and made a right onto the road, hoping she wasn't too late. Even if a person does want to kill themself, Shari thought, feeding yourself to zombies is a really bad way to go. She saw that Stephanie was about ten yards away from the crowd of undead. Shari pulled up next to her, opening the passenger side window.
"Get in!" she said through gritted teeth. Stephanie seemed unaware of her presence at first. She stared off toward the horizon, eyes red, tears flowing down her puffy face. "Get in!" Shari repeated. She glanced at the undead shuffling in their direction. They were now about fifteen feet away. She put the car in park, preparing to get out and throw the suicidal young woman into the passenger seat. Before she could open the door, she saw Jon speed past her in his truck. He plowed into the crowd, taking six of them out in one straight shot. The bodies went flying into the ditches to either side, some of their festering body parts coming off in the process. A well-rotted hand landed on Shari's windshield, spraying putrid juices across the glass. Jon reversed, running over another two....only one was left. He put the truck into drive once again, eliminating the last zombie in the roving herd.
