The Good Neighbor

by Kimberly A Bettes

  After History, I put my book in my locker and headed to Woodworking class. I didn’t drag my feet about getting there like I did to my other classes. It was one class I didn’t dread. I liked working with the wood. I liked the smell of the lumber, the hum of the lathe, and the feel of the tools in my hand.

  It was one of only two classes I wasn’t flunking.

  Plus, I shared my worktable with Carly. I had a lot of classes with her, but this was the one where we talked the most. You didn’t have to be too quiet in Woodworking.

  “Could you help me for a minute, Brian?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, putting down my planer.

  “I’ve measured this board three times and have gotten three different numbers.” She smiled.

  I took the tape measure from her and measured her board.

  “What’s it supposed to be?” I asked.

  “I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.”

  I looked at her.

  “You think I’m stupid?” she asked shyly.

  “No. I’d never think you were stupid.” I tried to gauge her reaction.

  She smiled at me. “Well, I feel stupid. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  “I’ll help you,” I said. That’s when I began working with Carly on her project, a shelf for her mother. I spent more time working on her project than mine. That was fine with me.

  “Thanks for helping me,” she said as we walked to lunch.

  “You’re welcome. I don’t mind.” I looked at her and she looked back at me and smiled.

  Of course, when we entered the cafeteria, she ran off to be with her friends and left me to myself. I was used to it. But at least I had the time we spent together to think about.

  I stood in line and waited to be served my food. I glanced around and was happy not to see Dominic or his friends. I knew they’d be here, though. They always were.

  I got my tray and headed out to the tables. There was no one willing to let me sit with them. I always sat at a small table on the far side of the room. I usually ate alone. The only time anyone ever sat at the table was if a new kid had no one to sit with. Usually, they had already made at least one friend by lunch.

  So I sat alone eating a chunk of dry lasagna with undercooked noodles, green beans, peaches, chocolate pudding, and drinking my milk. It wasn’t a delicious meal, but it would fill the hole in my stomach. Besides, I wasn’t paying attention to the food. I was thinking of Carly.

  A few times, I risked peeking up to get a glimpse of her talking and laughing with her friends.

  She was pretty. The prettiest girl in the whole school. And her attitude made her even prettier. I couldn’t remember a single time that she’d ever made fun of me like everyone else did. She talked to me when I talked to her. Everything was just different with her.

  Her warm smile, kind blue eyes, and adorable dimples made her cute. But the way she treated me made her beautiful.

  I finished my lunch and walked over to dump my tray. Had I not been so preoccupied with thoughts of Carly, I might’ve seen Dominic rushing toward me with his tray.

  Before I noticed him, he slammed his tray into my chest, pretending to have tripped.

  “Oh, Boozer. That sucks.” He laughed. The three buttholes behind him laughed too.

  Dominic pulled his tray away from my chest, revealing the mess. Lasagna and chocolate pudding covered the upper half of my shirt. Here and there, a green bean was stuck to the goo.

  “You did that on purpose,” I said quietly.

  “Did I?” Dominic asked, stepping toward me. “Prove it.” He jabbed his finger into my forehead and walked away.

  I looked at Carly, hoping she hadn’t seen what just happened. She was looking directly at me. So were all her friends. So was everyone else in the cafeteria. But out of all those people, Carly was the only one not laughing.

  The following is an excerpt from Held. Look for the Smashwords Edition soon.

  Held

  1

  Most horror stories begin on a dark and stormy night in some spooky old house. Mine began on a sunny Tuesday afternoon in the parking lot of the Lakewood Mall. That’s where I was abducted at gunpoint while walking to my car.

  I hadn’t even had time to register his approach from between two large SUVs.

  “Keep walking,” he said. He simultaneously wrapped his left arm around me and squeezed my left shoulder, and used his right hand to shove the gun into my ribs.

  So here we were, walking to my car. With his arm around me, we looked like a normal couple. I knew no one could see the gun. The handful of other people we passed along the way didn’t even glance at us.

  I thought of screaming. I thought of struggling. I thought of turning and running. But I also thought of my husband. And my son. If I turned and ran, he’d shoot me. If I struggled, he’d shoot me. If I screamed, he’d probably beat me and then shoot me. I couldn’t leave them without a wife and mother.

  Before I could make a choice, we were at my car. I considered just walking on by it, pretending I forgot where I parked. That would buy me a few more minutes. But he led me to the driver’s side door.

  He knew this was my car.

  “Open it,” he commanded.

  I dug through my purse, wishing like hell I carried bear spray or Mace or hairspray or anything that would give me the second I needed to get away from him. But I didn’t carry anything like that. I felt the pack of gum, the tampon, the extra pacifier, my wallet, and finally my keys.

  I jerked them out of my purse, nearly dropped them, and clumsily began to unlock the door.

  The closer we got to getting in the car, the harder he pushed on the gun. He’d soon crack a rib if he kept on.

  When the door was unlocked, he tightened his grip on my shoulder. He leaned into my ear, which would look to others as if he were whispering sweet nothings to me.

  But that’s not even close to what he said.

  “You’re going to get into this car, slide over to the passenger seat and nothing more. Got it?”

  I didn’t even look at him. I just stood there.

  “If you do anything, and I mean anything at all, other than what I’ve told you to do, I’ll kill you. And if you manage to get away from me, I’ll kill your husband. And then, I’ll kill that pretty little boy of yours. And I’ll take my sweet time doing it. Got it?”

  This time, I nodded. I wouldn’t let anything happen to my family.

  He kissed me on the cheek quickly.

  “Good. Now get in.”

  I did as I was told, though the urge to open the passenger side door and flee was overwhelming.

  He got in quickly, took the keys from me and started the car. I watched through the door window as we drove through the parking lot and away, to wherever we were going. I fought to keep from vomiting as I realized that no one was going to save me. No one was going to stop him from taking me away.

  Even if I could somehow manage to escape him at some point, everything was going to be different. Assuming he didn’t kill me first, life as I knew it was over and gone forever.

  In the side mirror, I watched as the parking lot slipped away, taking me further and further away from hope.

  The following is an excerpt from Annie’s Revenge. Look for the Smashwords Edition in summer 2011.

  Annie’s Revenge

  Chapter One

  I ran. I heard laughing and yelling in the distance behind me. “Annie! Annie!” Repeatedly, they kept calling for me, taunting me. I ran faster in the complete darkness. I had no idea where I was or where I was going, but I knew for sure that I had to get away from them. My heart pounded against my chest. My breathing came and went in raspy puffs, my lungs afire and my ribs aching fiercely. I had to keep going. Stopping was not an option.

  My mouth filled with blood, its metallic taste nauseating me. Missing teeth, a busted lip, and a bitten tongue were all sources of the bitter blood. I also felt blood running down my thighs. My left eye was swollen shut and th
robbing, and the other was attaining a haze. My unseeing eyes mattered little, as the darkness around me was so absolute, I couldn’t have seen under normal circumstances. The sky stood moonless, but moonlight wouldn’t have reached the thick forest floor to illuminate my way had it been in its fullest phase.

  My head ached and I felt blood pouring out of the gash above my right ear. I was dizzy, but I couldn’t let myself lose consciousness. I couldn’t let them get me again.

  I kept telling myself that people had lived through far worse than this, so I would too, but every step jarred my entire body and reminded me of how bad this experience really was.

  I knew my jaw was broken. There was a large lump in the middle of my forearm, which I presumed was another broken bone. My ankle was sprained. My ribs were aching. My swollen face was covered with scrapes and scratches, not all of which I received from the limbs and branches that I ran into blindly.

  I was aware of the aches, but I was so worried about getting away that my mind numbed the pain, or at least pushed it down into my subconscious so I could go on. It was a good thing it did. I knew that if my mind let the pain in, I’d probably stop right where I was, sit down and cry, and they would get me again.

  I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t let it happen.

  I was nearly naked now, as my blouse was ripped to shreds, and they had taken my pants and panties. I was even missing a shoe. My hair was in knots, some of it having been torn out in handfuls. My scalp was burning. I smelled a sweet, unfamiliar smell coming from my lower body. My stomach turned. My whole body ached.

  I was filthy and smelled horrible, and I couldn’t help but cry as I stumbled on into the darkness. The salty tears ran down into some of the cuts on my face and made them sting worse than they already did. Still, I barely noticed. That pain was nothing compared to the constant burning and stinging that emanated from between my legs. It felt like those monsters were still ripping apart my tender flesh.

  Of all the times in my life that I wished I wasn’t fat and was in better shape, this one counted the most. I needed to be able to run quickly, but the extra weight I carried held me back, slowing me down. I hated myself so much for being fat at that moment that I almost stopped running. I wanted to let them come find me and start all over again with their torture and torment. It would almost be better anyway. Wouldn’t I rather die now than live the rest of my life knowing what they had done to me, and with knowing that it was all because I was fat? If they found me, the torment would continue, but I also knew that I would not escape twice. They would kill me, and death wasn’t looking like such a bad thing at this point. At least the pain and misery would end.

  While I was thinking of dying to end my suffering, my steps slowed to no more than a jog. For another minute, I thought of whether to pick up my pace or stop altogether. I thought about what my father would do and say once he found out what happened. I couldn’t keep this a secret. I shuddered to think of how I must look. My father would blame me, and he’d look at me for the rest of my life with disdain and disgust. He’d looked at me with little more than that my whole life. I’d always felt that he was ashamed of me and this would surely only add to that. My mother was what made me run. No matter what my father said or did, my mother would be crushed if she lost me. My mother never acted ashamed of me. She was never afraid to let me know that she loved me, and I’d always appreciated that. My father never showed any love or affection for me, but my mother had made up for it as best as she could. I couldn’t let her down. So I ran harder than before.

  My legs were weak, and getting weaker by the second. I needed to stop and catch my breath, but I couldn’t risk it. I had to get help. If they caught me, it would be over.

  I don’t know how long I ran, but it felt like days. My feet were sore and blistering, especially the one missing a shoe. I couldn’t hear them cheering and calling out my name anymore, but faintly, somewhere up ahead in the distance, I could hear a vehicle pass occasionally. I knew I was near a highway and if I wanted to live, I had to get to it.

  Every time I thought I should be at the highway, I’d hear a vehicle and realize I’d been running in the wrong direction. I’d turn and run in the direction where I’d heard the last vehicle, only to hear the next one off to the right or left. I was going in circles and I knew it. I fought to keep from panicking.

  I was sure I was running in the right direction until I came to the top of a small hill. What I saw at the bottom of the hill stopped me. My knees quivered and nearly buckled beneath me. My heart stopped pounding. In fact, it seemed to stop beating altogether. The forest grew silent, though only in my mind. There were no sounds, not even my labored breathing. Then, I realized I wasn’t breathing. I blinked quickly, trying to clear my vision in the eye with which I could still see. I wanted to make sure that what I thought I was seeing was what I was really seeing, and it was. It was the three of them.

  They’d heard me run up the other side of the hill. They looked at me and time seemed to stop. The three of them in unison stood and stared at me. Suddenly, my heart and the world started again, only both were going too fast. I screamed.

  Panic took hold of my body. I ran harder than before; faster than I had ever ran in my life. I was scared. I expected my heart to pound the flesh open on my chest and beat its way out. It was hard to take a breath and it hurt like hell when I let it out, but I was running to save my life. I could recover later, but I had to move now.

  I heard them coming up the hill after me! I tripped and fell several times, but I was up as soon as I hit the ground.

  “Annie! Annie!” They called repeatedly. They were still taunting me, still laughing at me, and still cursing me. If they caught me, they’d kill me for sure. There were many times in my life that I’d wished I were dead and there would surely be many more, but right now, I was certain that I did not want to die. Especially not this way. It would mean that they won, and worse than that, no one would miss me other than my mother.

  The next thing I knew, bright lights shone directly into my eyes. I heard tires squealing on the asphalt. I was relieved. They couldn’t get me now.

  I stopped running.

  A man jumped out of his truck and ran around to the front where I stood paralyzed by shock.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, sounding nearly as scared as I was.

  I felt him take my elbow in his hand. I tried to tell him what had happened to me in the woods, and that I needed to get to the hospital. I needed to tell him that I had to get away from them – and that they were coming – but I couldn’t find my voice.

  Then, everything went black.