Week 2 results--rough draft, "Personal Effects"
It was a near thing, but I got the story's rough draft done. The bad part is it is VERY rough. The good part is that I added another 2208 words this week. :)
Personal Effects
By Rebecca Lloyd
He stood at the bathroom sink’s cracked mirror, washing his face with a stained towel while pinkish water spiraled down the drain. He’d pulled off his shirt-white belly lopping over his belt and a quartet of nail-marks scabbed over above his left nipple-and shoved it deep down into the trash. The spatter ended cleanly at his neck and wrists, like sunburn; he scrubbed and scrubbed, amazed at how tenaciously blood clung to skin.
Once it was all clean, the towel and his clothes and the Bitch would all have to take a midnight ride down to the docks. She was in the bathtub, thick black hair lopped over the rim and drooling threads of gore down onto the tiles. Her head leaned against the sticky porcelain, face a blank mass of red. She’d gone down with the shower curtain under her, tearing it off its rings; the shattered bat lay in her lap, coated in gore down to the handle. His shoulders hurt from swinging it; he’d pulled a muscle or two putting her down.
His heart still pounded; he was puffing and covered in sweat as he cleaned up the mess she’d left on him. “Why the fuck couldn’t you have just shut up for once?” he snapped at the corpse suddenly, voice echoing in the house’s heavy air. Rage still clung to his insides, knotting up his guts and making his blood burn like battery acid. He’d hoped the beating would purge him of it-destroying the hatred along with its object. It was half of why he’d finally let himself give in. But every time he glanced over at the blood-smeared flower-print dress sticking to her familiar curves, it surged up in him again. He had to get rid of it-get rid of the Bitch’s corpse, her pictures, her clothes; every goddamn thing in the whole place that reminded him of her. Once that was done, he was sure he’d be free.
He couldn’t even remember what the argument was that started things tonight. The Bitch had always been able to find an excuse to yell at him-how he spent his money, his friends, his women, how much he drank. After the first few sentences, all he’d ever been able to hear over his pulse thudding in his ears had been an undifferentiated screeching, like an angry parakeet. Tonight, the only difference was that he’d decided enough was enough. Everything after that had been her fault. He’d warned her twice to shut her fucking mouth and go back to bed. The first backhand across her smartass mouth should have been incentive enough for her to stop bitching and behave. But instead she had just yelled louder. Then she had hit back. And he couldn’t just take that and call himself a man, now could he?
“Fucking cunt.” He was glad her face was so damaged that he couldn’t make out the features; he didn’t want to look at her. Looking at her things was bad enough. Especially some of it. He’d gladly keep the stereo system, but her clothes, her paintings…just thinking about it made him scrub harder. He wanted that shit out-out of his presence, out of his life. The sooner that happened, the sooner he could get rid of all memory that he’d ever been stupid enough to let some woman move in with him.
First thing he did was go straight to that stupid “ancestor altar” to her great-aunt that she’d insisted on sticking in the bedroom. It was just a simple wall shelf with some knickknacks, a photo and a little glass she kept filled with water, but he’d always hated it. Especially the photo, which was ugly and didn’t even show the woman’s face. It was faded and water-damaged in spots, giving it a blurry, half-real look; the tall, gaunt woman in the antique widow’s dress, thick black hair loose past her elbows, had a fade-spot right over her head, obliterating her features entirely. When asked why she’d kept the ugly old thing, the Bitch had said simply that this was the only photo of the woman she had.
“I don’t get it, Barb. Why do you even keep these things? You hate your family.”
“I don’t hate my family. I hate my dad. I can’t be around any of them without being around him; he won’t let that happen.” She reached up and brushed her fingers down the surface of the old photo. “Great-Aunt Catherine would have understood how I felt, anyway.”
“What’s her story?”
“Her husband beat her to death.”
He glared at the photo-the faceless woman in her shapeless black dress, standing against an old fence with trees brooding in the background-and then swept his arm across the altar-top, sending everything flying. The glass of water hit the floor like a bomb; the photo fluttered off gracefully and landed on top of his bloodstained foot. He kicked it free, snatched the wooden shelf off its hooks and threw it down. Pain shot through his bare heel as he did his best to stomp it to pieces; the effort offered a moment’s relief, but then his blood was burning in his veins again.
He grabbed racks of clothes out of the closet, threw them on the floor, and dumped the broken knickknacks on top of them. Then he swept up the whole mess into his arms, heading for the bathroom.
The whole thing was a goddamn mess. He had no idea how he was getting rid of the body and the rest of this crap; he’d gotten as far as “taking it to the dump” but not how he planned to keep the corpse from being discovered. Maybe he should just drop the whole mess off the end of the local pier, he mused as he dumped the pile atop the corpse. Bitch was already starting to smell: loosed bowels and drying blood. He threw the bundled clothes down on top of her, hiding most of her battered form from sight.
The photograph turned up at the top of the pile, smeared with traces of blood from his not-quite-washed-enough hands. He stared at the faceless woman for a moment. Her stiff, dark-clad form seemed closer to the camera than he'd remembered. It gave him pause; then he shook his head and stalked out again to grab more of the Bitch's shit.
It was so goddamned dark in the house. He barked his shins twice on his way through the living room, and soon found himself walking in semi-aimless circles as he squinted around for the last of her belongings. 3AM-after all the screaming and banging it would look suspicious as hell to the neighbors if he left all the lights blazing.
He walked past the photo on the dining-room table twice before pausing to actually glance down at it. Then he stumbled, hip ramming into the table’s edge and sending a shock of pain down his leg. He panted for breath he couldn’t catch as he stared down at the image of the faceless woman again.
I must have been carrying it around and not thought about it, he tried to reassure himself. Then I set it down while I was gathering up other stuff. That’s all.
But no. It had to be another photo. The faceless woman was in the foreground now, turning the picture into a head-and-shoulders portrait. The Bitch had sworn that thing on the altar was the only picture she had of the woman; she must have lied, he realized with a fresh surge of bitterness. But why would she hide the other photographs of her great-aunt? Why in the world would he find it now? And how was it that her face looked just as blank in this one as the last?
“He beat her so hard that her face couldn’t be made out anymore. She died.”
“Jesus fuck, Barb, why would you make a fucking shrine to a domestic violence statistic?”
“Because of what happened to him after she died.”
The whole lot must have been water-damaged. He shrugged it off, grabbed the photo, stuck it on top of the armful of knickknacks he had gathered, and marched back into the bathroom with it.
The photo in the bathtub was missing.
He snatched the picture off the pile in his arms and tried to throw it down onto the piled clothing, but the drying gore on it stuck it to his hand. He stood there a moment, flapping his arm ridiculously in his panic to get the thing off him. Then he grabbed it and threw it down onto the clothes-covered body. It landed face-up. The blank white oval of the woman’s face now filled half the frame.
A thin, whining noise escaped the back of his throat as he backed away from the tub until he was pressed hard to the blood-spattered wall. What the fuck?
“Bullshit,” he snapped suddenly. “Bullshit!” This was crap. He was stressed out, it was just a stupid photograph, and he probably hadn’t remembered its details properly before. It wasn’t like he’d ever paid it much attention. And with three martinis making a cold, sour weight in his stomach, he knew his perception and judgment weren’t the best. Besides, even if the fucking thing had sprouted legs and started dancing a jig on the edge of the tub, he had a corpse to get rid of before dawn, and that was a tad more important than whether a stupid old photograph looked different than it had a few minutes ago. The Bitch was the one who had worshipped old photos. Not him.
“He lost his mind that night in the County lock-up. The guards kept hearing him scream that she was standing outside the bars, waiting for lights-out. He ended up begging them not to turn out the lights.”
“So what happened?”
“There’s a newspaper article about it taped to the back. He…died.” Strange little smirk on her face.
“And you think your dead great-aunt did it?”
“I know she did it.”
The rage surged up in him, and he grabbed the photo, crumpled it up, threw it back down on the pile of stained clothing, and stalked out into the kitchen to grab the box of lawn-and-garden bags. He shoved the crumpled ball down into the bottom of the first bag, then stuffed clothes on top of it until it bulged. Then he tied it off, threw it aside, stuffed more crap into a second bag, and threw that aside as well.
The Bitch’s body was already stiffening. “Shit.” He dropped the trashbags and reached down, struggling to pull her into a foetal position so her outline would be less obvious once he bagged her. Her cooling limbs were rubbery and strange to the touch; he yanked at them angrily, wishing he had some goddamned rope.
He was overheated and sweating by the time he got her into something like a ball. One hand was completely red from holding her by the hair, which he’d finally tied around one knee to keep her head pulled forward. He didn’t want to even see the hole where her face was. The gruesomeness didn’t bother him…it was the reminder. Again. Not that he had killed her, but that she had lived, and breathed, and been part of his life-and been such a fucking bitch, and never submitted properly. Not once. “You are such an amazing waste of my fucking time,” he told her as he straightened up.
A faint rattle of paper caught his attention; he glanced up at the edge of the sink-and stood up quickly. A blood-smeared photograph with newsprint taped to the back was unwadding itself on the porcelain, blooming open and then smoothing itself flat as if smoothed by unseen hands. The blank white blur of the woman’s face filled the image from edge to edge.
He shrieked aloud and stumbled back against the edge of the tub, catching his calves against it and sitting down hard in the mess it was holding. A long sliver of splintered baseball bat dug hard into his thigh and he tried to pull away, but his feet slipped in the mess of blood and water on the floor and he only sat down harder. The Bitch’s corpse made an ugly gurgling sound, its joints cracking stiffly; he thrashed in her limp grip and found himself staring into the gelid red contents of one of her smashed eye-sockets. “Shit! Shit!” He grabbed the tile wall and heaved himself out of the tub, hearing his pants tear a moment before he ass-planted onto the floor hard enough to make him bite his tongue.
He sat there panting for a moment, heart in his ears and the taste of copper filling his mouth. What the fuck is going on?
He reached for the photo with trembling fingers, then turned it over to stare at the yellowed newspaper clipping taped to the back.
“Murder Suspect found Beaten, Mutilated in Cell. Guards Questioned.”
Bitch’s great-uncle had been found without a face. Or balls, for that matter. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ, I think I’m really in trouble here….
Then he saw it. The flash of a dark blur past the bathroom door. Man-sized.
He cringed-and then lowered his hands slowly as something occurred to him. He snorted, a smirk spreading over his hectic red-and-white face. Suddenly his terror seemed small and silly. The rage came back-but this time it had an edge of vindication to it.
Someone’s in the house.
Not a ghost. Not Bitch or Bitch’s dead great-aunt or whatever. Just a human being who was sneaking around his darkened house playing head-games with him.
Which means the intruder knew about what he’d done to Bitch.
Which meant he had to get rid of him too.
Grinning through gritted teeth, he wrapped his hand around the grip of the splintered baseball bat and yanked it free of the sticky mess that had pooled on her belly. As his heartbeat slowed, he listened hard, and was rewarded with a faint rattle and clink from the front room.
He levered himself to his feet and slipped out the door, edging down the hall with his muscles trembling from adrenaline and anticipation. He didn’t turn on the lights; that would have warned the fucker that he was on to them. Maybe if he was lucky he could use this whole “intruder” thing to his advantage.
“I came home from bein’ out with the boys and he had beaten my wife to death. I just lost it. He came at me and I got the bat away and I just started hitting him. It was self-defense, really. Self-defense.” His lips moved silently as he crept toward the living room, rehearsing what he was going to say once the police arrived.
He froze in the doorway, confronted by a blurry black shape standing by the window of the living room. Its back was to him, and it was dressed so darkly that he couldn’t see anything of it but an outline. It was wearing a hood of some kind, or had dark hair past its shoulders; he couldn’t tell. But its back was turned-and it didn’t so much as twitch as he started creeping up on it. That was the important part.
There was nothing like having someone to physically kick the crap out of to push Bitch’s scary-ass superstitions out of his head. He was half drunk, it was ass-early in the morning and he’d just killed someone-of course he was jumpy. Suggestible. And then along came this assclown to play mind-games with him while he was figuring out what to do with the body. He was almost glad of it. It was good to have a fresh target for all this rage.
The figure stood stock-still as he crept across the room, moving so carefully that the bottoms of his feet barely brushed the nap of the carpet as he took each step. Controlling his breathing was hard; it hitched and shuddered in his throat like he was staring at a centerfold. The figure's details didn't resolve themselves any further, even in the pale stripes of streetlight coming in through the Venetian blinds. He lifted the broken bat to shoulder height as he drew within striking distance, then drew his arms back. “Hey. Fuckhead.”
It turned, and his swing lost all strength; his arms went limp halfway to impact, length of jagged wood dropping to the floor as his grip failed. A yelp escaped him as he scrambled back, away from the dark shape with the blank white oval for a face.
It cocked its head slightly, then bent down and wrapped its long, stiff white fingers around the grip of the broken bat. It straightened, hefting the length of wood as it turned its eyeless gaze on him.
And then he was running, scrambling desperately for the comforting bright rectangle of the open bathroom door. Desperation-and maybe the booze-gave him more focus than he would have thought possible. He didn't know if the light from the single bare bulb would really stop it from coming in, but it hadn't killed Bitch's great-uncle until after lights out.
He all but fell into the little room, tripping over the big trashbags of clothes and narrowly avoiding whacking his head against the side of the toilet. The faint smell of rot had already started to permeate the air in there, and he found himself gagging as he pushed himself to his feet.
Bitch's blank red oval face stared back at him from where she still lay slack in a pool of her own fluids. He hunted around for some sort of makeshift weapon, wishing to God he had his cell phone with him. He grabbed the toilet plunger finally, and hadn't even straightened up when he caught a glimpse of the black-and-white figure looming in the doorway.
He shrieked hoarsely and lunged forward to slam the door in its face, not knowing what else to do. But his legs tangled up in the bags again and down he went-facefirst into the red-black mess of Bitch's hair. He pushed away and rolled over-but something had caught his arm.
He yanked hard, but whatever it was held him in an unbreakable grip. He turned his head-and saw Bitch's bloody, broken-fingered hand clamped viselike over his bicep. He tried to pry it loose, but then the other one slithered up and dug its nails into his flesh right above the first.
He wailed and thrashed hard enough to make her body flop wetly against the side of the tub, but he couldn't get loose. As the adrenaline burn in his veins turned to pure terror, he looked up at the doorway just in time to see spidery white fingers reaching for the lightswitch.
Personal Effects
By Rebecca Lloyd
He stood at the bathroom sink’s cracked mirror, washing his face with a stained towel while pinkish water spiraled down the drain. He’d pulled off his shirt-white belly lopping over his belt and a quartet of nail-marks scabbed over above his left nipple-and shoved it deep down into the trash. The spatter ended cleanly at his neck and wrists, like sunburn; he scrubbed and scrubbed, amazed at how tenaciously blood clung to skin.
Once it was all clean, the towel and his clothes and the Bitch would all have to take a midnight ride down to the docks. She was in the bathtub, thick black hair lopped over the rim and drooling threads of gore down onto the tiles. Her head leaned against the sticky porcelain, face a blank mass of red. She’d gone down with the shower curtain under her, tearing it off its rings; the shattered bat lay in her lap, coated in gore down to the handle. His shoulders hurt from swinging it; he’d pulled a muscle or two putting her down.
His heart still pounded; he was puffing and covered in sweat as he cleaned up the mess she’d left on him. “Why the fuck couldn’t you have just shut up for once?” he snapped at the corpse suddenly, voice echoing in the house’s heavy air. Rage still clung to his insides, knotting up his guts and making his blood burn like battery acid. He’d hoped the beating would purge him of it-destroying the hatred along with its object. It was half of why he’d finally let himself give in. But every time he glanced over at the blood-smeared flower-print dress sticking to her familiar curves, it surged up in him again. He had to get rid of it-get rid of the Bitch’s corpse, her pictures, her clothes; every goddamn thing in the whole place that reminded him of her. Once that was done, he was sure he’d be free.
He couldn’t even remember what the argument was that started things tonight. The Bitch had always been able to find an excuse to yell at him-how he spent his money, his friends, his women, how much he drank. After the first few sentences, all he’d ever been able to hear over his pulse thudding in his ears had been an undifferentiated screeching, like an angry parakeet. Tonight, the only difference was that he’d decided enough was enough. Everything after that had been her fault. He’d warned her twice to shut her fucking mouth and go back to bed. The first backhand across her smartass mouth should have been incentive enough for her to stop bitching and behave. But instead she had just yelled louder. Then she had hit back. And he couldn’t just take that and call himself a man, now could he?
“Fucking cunt.” He was glad her face was so damaged that he couldn’t make out the features; he didn’t want to look at her. Looking at her things was bad enough. Especially some of it. He’d gladly keep the stereo system, but her clothes, her paintings…just thinking about it made him scrub harder. He wanted that shit out-out of his presence, out of his life. The sooner that happened, the sooner he could get rid of all memory that he’d ever been stupid enough to let some woman move in with him.
First thing he did was go straight to that stupid “ancestor altar” to her great-aunt that she’d insisted on sticking in the bedroom. It was just a simple wall shelf with some knickknacks, a photo and a little glass she kept filled with water, but he’d always hated it. Especially the photo, which was ugly and didn’t even show the woman’s face. It was faded and water-damaged in spots, giving it a blurry, half-real look; the tall, gaunt woman in the antique widow’s dress, thick black hair loose past her elbows, had a fade-spot right over her head, obliterating her features entirely. When asked why she’d kept the ugly old thing, the Bitch had said simply that this was the only photo of the woman she had.
“I don’t get it, Barb. Why do you even keep these things? You hate your family.”
“I don’t hate my family. I hate my dad. I can’t be around any of them without being around him; he won’t let that happen.” She reached up and brushed her fingers down the surface of the old photo. “Great-Aunt Catherine would have understood how I felt, anyway.”
“What’s her story?”
“Her husband beat her to death.”
He glared at the photo-the faceless woman in her shapeless black dress, standing against an old fence with trees brooding in the background-and then swept his arm across the altar-top, sending everything flying. The glass of water hit the floor like a bomb; the photo fluttered off gracefully and landed on top of his bloodstained foot. He kicked it free, snatched the wooden shelf off its hooks and threw it down. Pain shot through his bare heel as he did his best to stomp it to pieces; the effort offered a moment’s relief, but then his blood was burning in his veins again.
He grabbed racks of clothes out of the closet, threw them on the floor, and dumped the broken knickknacks on top of them. Then he swept up the whole mess into his arms, heading for the bathroom.
The whole thing was a goddamn mess. He had no idea how he was getting rid of the body and the rest of this crap; he’d gotten as far as “taking it to the dump” but not how he planned to keep the corpse from being discovered. Maybe he should just drop the whole mess off the end of the local pier, he mused as he dumped the pile atop the corpse. Bitch was already starting to smell: loosed bowels and drying blood. He threw the bundled clothes down on top of her, hiding most of her battered form from sight.
The photograph turned up at the top of the pile, smeared with traces of blood from his not-quite-washed-enough hands. He stared at the faceless woman for a moment. Her stiff, dark-clad form seemed closer to the camera than he'd remembered. It gave him pause; then he shook his head and stalked out again to grab more of the Bitch's shit.
It was so goddamned dark in the house. He barked his shins twice on his way through the living room, and soon found himself walking in semi-aimless circles as he squinted around for the last of her belongings. 3AM-after all the screaming and banging it would look suspicious as hell to the neighbors if he left all the lights blazing.
He walked past the photo on the dining-room table twice before pausing to actually glance down at it. Then he stumbled, hip ramming into the table’s edge and sending a shock of pain down his leg. He panted for breath he couldn’t catch as he stared down at the image of the faceless woman again.
I must have been carrying it around and not thought about it, he tried to reassure himself. Then I set it down while I was gathering up other stuff. That’s all.
But no. It had to be another photo. The faceless woman was in the foreground now, turning the picture into a head-and-shoulders portrait. The Bitch had sworn that thing on the altar was the only picture she had of the woman; she must have lied, he realized with a fresh surge of bitterness. But why would she hide the other photographs of her great-aunt? Why in the world would he find it now? And how was it that her face looked just as blank in this one as the last?
“He beat her so hard that her face couldn’t be made out anymore. She died.”
“Jesus fuck, Barb, why would you make a fucking shrine to a domestic violence statistic?”
“Because of what happened to him after she died.”
The whole lot must have been water-damaged. He shrugged it off, grabbed the photo, stuck it on top of the armful of knickknacks he had gathered, and marched back into the bathroom with it.
The photo in the bathtub was missing.
He snatched the picture off the pile in his arms and tried to throw it down onto the piled clothing, but the drying gore on it stuck it to his hand. He stood there a moment, flapping his arm ridiculously in his panic to get the thing off him. Then he grabbed it and threw it down onto the clothes-covered body. It landed face-up. The blank white oval of the woman’s face now filled half the frame.
A thin, whining noise escaped the back of his throat as he backed away from the tub until he was pressed hard to the blood-spattered wall. What the fuck?
“Bullshit,” he snapped suddenly. “Bullshit!” This was crap. He was stressed out, it was just a stupid photograph, and he probably hadn’t remembered its details properly before. It wasn’t like he’d ever paid it much attention. And with three martinis making a cold, sour weight in his stomach, he knew his perception and judgment weren’t the best. Besides, even if the fucking thing had sprouted legs and started dancing a jig on the edge of the tub, he had a corpse to get rid of before dawn, and that was a tad more important than whether a stupid old photograph looked different than it had a few minutes ago. The Bitch was the one who had worshipped old photos. Not him.
“He lost his mind that night in the County lock-up. The guards kept hearing him scream that she was standing outside the bars, waiting for lights-out. He ended up begging them not to turn out the lights.”
“So what happened?”
“There’s a newspaper article about it taped to the back. He…died.” Strange little smirk on her face.
“And you think your dead great-aunt did it?”
“I know she did it.”
The rage surged up in him, and he grabbed the photo, crumpled it up, threw it back down on the pile of stained clothing, and stalked out into the kitchen to grab the box of lawn-and-garden bags. He shoved the crumpled ball down into the bottom of the first bag, then stuffed clothes on top of it until it bulged. Then he tied it off, threw it aside, stuffed more crap into a second bag, and threw that aside as well.
The Bitch’s body was already stiffening. “Shit.” He dropped the trashbags and reached down, struggling to pull her into a foetal position so her outline would be less obvious once he bagged her. Her cooling limbs were rubbery and strange to the touch; he yanked at them angrily, wishing he had some goddamned rope.
He was overheated and sweating by the time he got her into something like a ball. One hand was completely red from holding her by the hair, which he’d finally tied around one knee to keep her head pulled forward. He didn’t want to even see the hole where her face was. The gruesomeness didn’t bother him…it was the reminder. Again. Not that he had killed her, but that she had lived, and breathed, and been part of his life-and been such a fucking bitch, and never submitted properly. Not once. “You are such an amazing waste of my fucking time,” he told her as he straightened up.
A faint rattle of paper caught his attention; he glanced up at the edge of the sink-and stood up quickly. A blood-smeared photograph with newsprint taped to the back was unwadding itself on the porcelain, blooming open and then smoothing itself flat as if smoothed by unseen hands. The blank white blur of the woman’s face filled the image from edge to edge.
He shrieked aloud and stumbled back against the edge of the tub, catching his calves against it and sitting down hard in the mess it was holding. A long sliver of splintered baseball bat dug hard into his thigh and he tried to pull away, but his feet slipped in the mess of blood and water on the floor and he only sat down harder. The Bitch’s corpse made an ugly gurgling sound, its joints cracking stiffly; he thrashed in her limp grip and found himself staring into the gelid red contents of one of her smashed eye-sockets. “Shit! Shit!” He grabbed the tile wall and heaved himself out of the tub, hearing his pants tear a moment before he ass-planted onto the floor hard enough to make him bite his tongue.
He sat there panting for a moment, heart in his ears and the taste of copper filling his mouth. What the fuck is going on?
He reached for the photo with trembling fingers, then turned it over to stare at the yellowed newspaper clipping taped to the back.
“Murder Suspect found Beaten, Mutilated in Cell. Guards Questioned.”
Bitch’s great-uncle had been found without a face. Or balls, for that matter. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ, I think I’m really in trouble here….
Then he saw it. The flash of a dark blur past the bathroom door. Man-sized.
He cringed-and then lowered his hands slowly as something occurred to him. He snorted, a smirk spreading over his hectic red-and-white face. Suddenly his terror seemed small and silly. The rage came back-but this time it had an edge of vindication to it.
Someone’s in the house.
Not a ghost. Not Bitch or Bitch’s dead great-aunt or whatever. Just a human being who was sneaking around his darkened house playing head-games with him.
Which means the intruder knew about what he’d done to Bitch.
Which meant he had to get rid of him too.
Grinning through gritted teeth, he wrapped his hand around the grip of the splintered baseball bat and yanked it free of the sticky mess that had pooled on her belly. As his heartbeat slowed, he listened hard, and was rewarded with a faint rattle and clink from the front room.
He levered himself to his feet and slipped out the door, edging down the hall with his muscles trembling from adrenaline and anticipation. He didn’t turn on the lights; that would have warned the fucker that he was on to them. Maybe if he was lucky he could use this whole “intruder” thing to his advantage.
“I came home from bein’ out with the boys and he had beaten my wife to death. I just lost it. He came at me and I got the bat away and I just started hitting him. It was self-defense, really. Self-defense.” His lips moved silently as he crept toward the living room, rehearsing what he was going to say once the police arrived.
He froze in the doorway, confronted by a blurry black shape standing by the window of the living room. Its back was to him, and it was dressed so darkly that he couldn’t see anything of it but an outline. It was wearing a hood of some kind, or had dark hair past its shoulders; he couldn’t tell. But its back was turned-and it didn’t so much as twitch as he started creeping up on it. That was the important part.
There was nothing like having someone to physically kick the crap out of to push Bitch’s scary-ass superstitions out of his head. He was half drunk, it was ass-early in the morning and he’d just killed someone-of course he was jumpy. Suggestible. And then along came this assclown to play mind-games with him while he was figuring out what to do with the body. He was almost glad of it. It was good to have a fresh target for all this rage.
The figure stood stock-still as he crept across the room, moving so carefully that the bottoms of his feet barely brushed the nap of the carpet as he took each step. Controlling his breathing was hard; it hitched and shuddered in his throat like he was staring at a centerfold. The figure's details didn't resolve themselves any further, even in the pale stripes of streetlight coming in through the Venetian blinds. He lifted the broken bat to shoulder height as he drew within striking distance, then drew his arms back. “Hey. Fuckhead.”
It turned, and his swing lost all strength; his arms went limp halfway to impact, length of jagged wood dropping to the floor as his grip failed. A yelp escaped him as he scrambled back, away from the dark shape with the blank white oval for a face.
It cocked its head slightly, then bent down and wrapped its long, stiff white fingers around the grip of the broken bat. It straightened, hefting the length of wood as it turned its eyeless gaze on him.
And then he was running, scrambling desperately for the comforting bright rectangle of the open bathroom door. Desperation-and maybe the booze-gave him more focus than he would have thought possible. He didn't know if the light from the single bare bulb would really stop it from coming in, but it hadn't killed Bitch's great-uncle until after lights out.
He all but fell into the little room, tripping over the big trashbags of clothes and narrowly avoiding whacking his head against the side of the toilet. The faint smell of rot had already started to permeate the air in there, and he found himself gagging as he pushed himself to his feet.
Bitch's blank red oval face stared back at him from where she still lay slack in a pool of her own fluids. He hunted around for some sort of makeshift weapon, wishing to God he had his cell phone with him. He grabbed the toilet plunger finally, and hadn't even straightened up when he caught a glimpse of the black-and-white figure looming in the doorway.
He shrieked hoarsely and lunged forward to slam the door in its face, not knowing what else to do. But his legs tangled up in the bags again and down he went-facefirst into the red-black mess of Bitch's hair. He pushed away and rolled over-but something had caught his arm.
He yanked hard, but whatever it was held him in an unbreakable grip. He turned his head-and saw Bitch's bloody, broken-fingered hand clamped viselike over his bicep. He tried to pry it loose, but then the other one slithered up and dug its nails into his flesh right above the first.
He wailed and thrashed hard enough to make her body flop wetly against the side of the tub, but he couldn't get loose. As the adrenaline burn in his veins turned to pure terror, he looked up at the doorway just in time to see spidery white fingers reaching for the lightswitch.