Amy turned and picked up a long knife from somewhere below the table. Bill’s mind raced as he scanned through every movie he had ever watched, looking for some sort of escape, some reason to hope.
“Because I love you, I will make it quick.” Taking the long knife, Amy lifted it up and was about to bring it down, when a shadow came from the left side, and Amy went flying out of view. He could hear a struggle and cursing. Bill twisted his head as far as he could, but all he could see was shadows beyond the edge of the lights.
“Bill—” It was Dan. He felt a surge of hope flood through his body and he fought against his bonds with everything he had left. Ribs burning and broken wrists pounding, he fought through the pain, but couldn’t get free.
Dan and Amy fought, and Bill could hear someone get hit. The hollow sound was unmistakable. After what seemed like hours, the room grew quiet again. Dan stood up and wiped his shirt and was panting hard. “Bill, my God, are you okay?”
He pulled at the tape that was wrapped around Bill’s arms, legs and body. He searched with his eyes up and down, looking for something to cut away the tape with. “Buddy, you are lucky I came over… I—” Bill watched in horror as the tip of a silver blade stuffed its way through his friend’s neck. Blood squirted out and hit Bill in the eyes. He screamed through his broken jaw and burning throat.
“NO!”
Amy pulled the knife free and Dan slumped out of sight. Her face had a welt forming above her left eye, and a blood smear ran across her cheek. She was still beautiful, and the red blood against her skin seemed to enhance her looks. Her eyes flashed, and she spit.
“Goodbye, Bill.”
Amy plunged the knife down into his chest and pain ran up his arms and the side of his head. She pulled it free and began stabbing in rapid succession. Bill saw his own blood spray up and all over the front of her clothes and face. She laughed, and the last thing he saw was her leering face and the knife pounding up and down like a piston.
Playing with fire is a dangerous game. You may not get burned, but you can’t escape without smelling like smoke.
EPILOGUE
Andrew stood by the pool looking out over the expanse of his backyard. Clean cut grass, flowers of every color and shrubs trimmed to perfection, made the grounds look more like a resort instead of a private backyard in Boise Idaho.
Andrew sipped a Mike’s Hard Lemonade and sucked in a deep breath of the crisp morning air. He felt good this morning, felt like something good was going to happen, and that made him feel even better just at the thought.
He watched a blue bird splash itself in a small puddle of pool water and he took another sip of his drink. He smelled her before he heard her. Sweet perfume of lavender and jasmine.
“Well?” He asked without turning.
Amy walked around to face him. She was bare footed and held her high heels in her left hand. They dangled there loose like forgotten strangers and she smiled up at him. “Done and done.”
“Good girl.” Andrew pulled her close and kissed her on the mouth. She dropped her shoes and they made a hollow sound as they hit the concrete.
So much for happy endings…
Aaron’s Blog: www.TheWorstBookEver.blogspot.com
Twitter: @Mstersmith
Also by Aaron Patterson:
WJA Series:
Sweet Dreams (Book 1)
Dream On (Book 2)
In Your Dreams (Book 3, coming soon)
Teen thrillers
Airel
Michael (coming soon)
Digital Shorts:
19
The eBook on eBooks
Allan Leverone
Allan Leverone is a three-time Derringer Award finalist for excellence in short mystery fiction, as well as a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for his dark short story, Dance Hall Drug. His short fiction has been featured in Needle: A Magazine of Noir, A Twist of Noir, Shroud Magazine, Dark Valentine and many other print and online magazines. His debut thriller, FINAL VECTOR, was released in February, 2011 from Medallion Press, and his upcoming thriller, THE LONELY MILE, will be released this summer from StoneHouse Ink. Allan lives in Londonderry, New Hampshire, with his wife of nearly thirty years, his three children, one beautiful granddaughter, and a cat who has used up eight lives.
Faces
THE DAY JASON SORREL a man was just a regular day. Sunny. Cool. Crisp and clear, the perfect New England fall afternoon. Stereo blasting on the drive home from work. Jonny Lang wailing—ironically, Jason thought looking back at it now—about running a red light. Who said God didn’t have a sense of humor?
***
The faces. Jason Sorrel couldn’t get the faces out of his head. They haunted his dreams at night and his memories during the day. All faces, all the time. The woman in the passenger seat, her face twisted in fury. The driver, the dead guy himself, his face slack and lifeless after hitting the pavement. And the kid in the back seat, good God, the kid in the back seat, face bleached white, eyes wide and terrified, as he watched his daddy get beaten to death.
***
Jason had never quite been able to decipher the insane lane marking system in use on many of New Hampshire’s roads. One lane reserved for the northbound traffic, one lane reserved for the southbound traffic, and then a middle lane, basically a free-for-all lane, a first-come-first-served compromise in which bright yellow arrows painted on the road invited anyone desiring to make a left turn—from either direction!—to cruise into that middle lane, wait for an opening in the traffic speeding past, then, presumably after saying a quick prayer, hit the gas and go for it.
Theoretically, he supposed, it almost made sense, at least in a world where everyone devoted complete attention to the road one hundred percent of the time, a world where soccer moms didn’t apply makeup in the rear view mirror while driving, where arrogant businessmen didn’t multitask by reading the newspaper while doing seventy, where overconfident teens didn’t show off for the benefit of other overconfident teens by drinking and driving, usually much too fast.
A world that didn’t exist, in other words.
***
So on the cool, clear, beautiful New England fall day that Jason Sorrel killed a man, while Jonny Lang sang about running a red light, thereby proving God’s appreciation for the ironic, Jason rounded a corner, driving home, not applying makeup in the mirror or reading a newspaper or trying to impress anyone by drinking while driving too fast.
He was simply driving home.
He rounded the corner and there, in the middle lane with the bright yellow arrows painted on it, the compromise lane which made no sense to Jason, sat a silver minivan, maybe five years old, idling motionless in the middle of the road.
Jason made the assumption that the van was waiting for a break in the opposite direction traffic to make a left turn. It was a reasonable assumption because, after all, that was the purpose of the stupid goddamned lane in the first place. But it was only an assumption because the van’s driver—the soon-to-be dead guy—had not bothered to flick on his turn signal to make his intentions clear.
Then the van started moving forward as Jason approached from behind. Jason tapped the brake, still unsure of what the hell the driver was doing. Was he turning left or was it possible he was accelerating into Jason’s lane? Jason made a snap decision and accelerated, moving past the van, and as he did, it became clear that the driver was trying to merge right rather than turn left. The van began easing right, still with no turn signal, and Jason punched the gas, rocketing his Mustang past the clueless driver to safety.
As he passed the van he glanced left in annoyance, looking straight into the vehicle’s interior and that was when he saw the first of the faces. The woman’s face. She was perhaps mid-thirties, fairly attractive but for the intense hatred etched on her face, a hatred that was directed, incredibly, at Jason! She screamed into her closed window, directing a stream of abuse at Jason, presumably for not allowing her dumbass husband—the soon-to-be dead guy—to pull into the
travel lane in front of him.
The woman didn’t seem to realize, or perhaps just didn’t care, that the purpose of the middle lane was for a left turn, not a right, or—as an added stupidity bonus—that her soon-to-be dead husband had not bothered to use either his right or his left turn signal.
Jason’s shock lasted roughly ten seconds, or approximately the length of time it took for his car to roll to a stop at the traffic signal a short distance ahead. Maybe Jonny Lang wanted to run a red light, but Jason wasn’t about to.
By then surprise had begun morphing into a slow burning self-righteous anger. Who in the hell did that bitch think she was, yelling and screaming when Jason had done nothing wrong? And what in the hell did her stupid husband think he was doing, trying to pull into a lane of fast-moving traffic from a dead stop, all without using his turn signal?
Jason sat at the light and steamed, knowing the minivan was right behind him, refusing to look in the rear view mirror, wallowing in his anger. He wondered if the bitch was still out of control, screaming and yelling. He knew she was.
He refused to look.
He could feel his face reddening in anger.
Finally he looked in the mirror. He couldn’t help himself.
And that was when the situation went from bad to worse.
***
Jason Sorrel had spent most of his life in New England, and like a lot of local kids who loved sports, had played hockey growing up. He was good at it, too, good enough to have earned All-State honors three years running in high school. Good enough that he spent the four years immediately following high school kicking around Canada playing minor league hockey before eventually reaching the conclusion that he was just talented enough at hockey to waste the rest of his youth chasing an impossible dream if he wasn’t careful.
So after those four years of minor league hockey Jason quit the game and moved on with his life and never once regretted doing so. But during that sojourn through Moose Jaw and Saskatoon and dozens of other Canadian backwoods towns, Jason Sorrel discovered that although he was only a decent hockey player, he was an outstanding fighter. He was big and strong and fearless, and despite being a gentle soul off the ice, could be fairly brutal on it when the situation required.
His specialty had been the oldest hockey-fight move in the books: the pull-the-other-guy’s-jersey-over-his-head-and-then-pummel-his-sorry-ass method of dispute resolution. There was a reason it was the oldest hockey-fight move—it was the most effective. And Jason had taken to it like a duck to water, or in this case, a skater to ice. In the twenty years since quitting hockey, Jason had rarely given the move much thought and had never used it.
But the muscle memory lingered inside him, like a rogue cancer cell, just waiting for the right time to strike.
***
Jason couldn’t help himself. He looked in the mirror. He had to know.
And he was right. The stupid bitch was still ranting and raving, the delicate lines of her otherwise pretty face ruined by the mask of fury twisting it into something ugly and repulsive. Her reaction was way out of proportion to the incident that had sparked it and now Jason’s self-righteous anger boiled over. He knew he should just ignore the whole thing and thank the gods of romance he had never been saddled with a chick as crazy as that one, but even as he was telling himself he would just wait for the light to turn green and drive away, even as he was convincing himself to do exactly that, he opened his door and got out of the Mustang and stalked back to the minivan like his legs had a mind of their own.
And that was when he saw the second face, the little boy strapped into the car seat directly behind his lunatic mother’s seat. He was probably four years old and he was scared shitless because he didn’t have a clue what was going on, and the minute Jason saw that face he knew he had made a mistake. He wheeled around to march back to the Mustang and do what he should have done in the first place, which was to get the hell out of here and go home.
But it was too late.
Because the crazy-ass bitch was screaming and cussing and brow-beating her husband, calling him a sap and a little girl and telling him if he was any kind of man he would stand up for himself against this idiot backwoods redneck in the fucking Mustang.
And it still could have turned out okay, because Jason didn’t care about the crazy-ass bitch or anything she had to say to her poor sap of a husband. But then Jason heard the distinctive clunk of a late-model car door opening and the husband got out of the car, and as he did all Jason could hear was that grating voice in the van’s passenger seat goading the guy into a confrontation.
***
Jason had discovered that the trick to a successful pull-the-other-guy’s-jersey-over-his-head-and-then-pummel-his-sorry-ass maneuver was in the proper sequence of events in the first couple of seconds. It wasn’t enough simply to grab the back of his opponent’s jersey and yank, because, for one thing, the guy was probably trying to do the same thing to Jason.
The trick was to grab a fistful of jersey with his left hand while simultaneously shoving his opponent hard in the midsection with his right. This would get the guy moving backward and downward and would provide the momentum necessary to pull his jersey over his head while at the same time inevitably causing the opponent to lose his grip on Jason’s jersey.
Then, although the other guy might have landed a punch or two in the meantime giving him a short-lived advantage, he would be completely helpless and Jason could provide whatever level of punishment he desired until tiring of the beat-down and skating victoriously to the penalty box.
Jason had read once that Derek Sanderson, the old-time Boston Bruins tough guy, used to have the team’s trainer sew his jersey to his hockey pants before every game just so whoever he happened to fight that night couldn’t get the jump on him. It seemed like such a good idea that Jason began doing the same thing.
***
The brow-beaten husband stepped out of the van and the crazy-ass bitch’s ranting followed like an infection—incredibly she was still going at it—and Jason turned to face the guy. He was bigger than Jason had expected but he had a hangdog look on his face and his posture was slumped and defeated like his wife had sucked the fucking life right out of him. Jason almost felt sorry for the poor bastard.
Until the guy tagged him with a roundhouse right.
It didn’t really hurt, Jason had seen it coming and feinted as the guy connected and that had taken most of the sting out of the blow, but it had definitely brought the righteous anger back. With a vengeance, so to speak. And Jason reacted instinctively, as though the last twenty years had never happened. He reached behind the guy with his left hand and grabbed a big fistful of Ecko sweatshirt while at the same time chopping the sucker hard in the solar plexus.
Ecko-man had never played hockey, that was for sure, because the whole thing was just too easy. He scissored forward from the blow and Jason smoothly yanked the sweatshirt over the guy’s head and landed three quick uppercuts to his face, which was now hidden somewhere under the heavy cotton folds of the sweatshirt. He heard as well as felt the facial bones crack and shatter.
Whether it was the first, second or third punch that drove the splinter of bone into the guy’s brain was never determined, and, really, what did it matter? Dead was dead and the guy wasn’t coming back.
It was over in a matter of seconds, five at the most. Jason let go and the man dropped to the pavement next to his minivan like, well, like a dead guy. The sweatshirt fell away and Jason got a good look at the third face, bloody and shattered and lifeless. By now the traffic light had turned green and cars were pulling around the minivan and the Mustang and going along their merry way, no one stopping to investigate, no one wanting to get involved.
The quiet was unnerving. The guy’s wife had finally stopped yapping and sat stiffly in her seat, staring at Jason like she could not quite understand what had just transpired. Jason knew how she felt. The only sound was the quiet sobbing of the little boy in the car seat behind
his mother. He was strapped in, safe and secure, but no safety restraint could protect him from the horrific sight of his father lying dead in the street.
Finally a cruiser eased up behind the crime scene, moving slowly, lights flashing. The patrol officer stepped out of his car and took one look at the body lying in the street at Jason Sorrel’s feet and called for backup and an ambulance. Before long Jason was in the back of the cruiser, hands cuffed together, staring vacantly at the spot where . . . something . . . had just happened.
By now the corpse was surrounded by crime scene techs and cops and medical people, and the widow and her child had been taken away, but it didn’t matter. Not really. Jason could still see their faces as clearly as if they were standing right in front of him. He knew he would always see their faces.
Website: www.allanleverone.com
Email: [email protected]
Bri Clark
Bri is a real-life example of redemption and renewal. Growing up penniless in the South, she learned street smarts while caring for her brother in a broken home, her mother working several jobs to care for their small family. Bri co-owned an extremely successful construction business and lived the high life until the real estate crash, losing everything. She moved west and found herself living with her husband and 4 kids in a 900 square foot apartment. She now fills her time writing, blogging, leading a group of frugal shoppers and sharing her southern culture. Her unique background gives her writing raw sensibility. She understands what it takes to overcome life’s obstacles. She often tells friends, “I can do poor. I’m good at poor. It’s prosperity that I’m not used to.” Bri and her husband Chris live in Boise. Bri is known as the Belle of Boise for her true southern accent, bold demeanor and hospitable nature.
Intrigue (Stories of Suspense) Page 5
