Dead Echo

  *

  At one minute past midnight she heard the faint knock on her door. She sat, waiting, in complete darkness because she’d known he’d come. And now he was here. She stood up in the coal darkness of the living room (she’d been sitting for hours staring straight ahead, waiting for the laughter, the footsteps, the cold hand around her throat) and moved into the kitchen, pacing everything with her hand out in front, unwilling to shed light on what she knew would come.

  Again, the faint rapping.

  Her hand was on the knob (for just a moment her mind railed at her to let it go, for God’s sake, just let it go!) and then she was turning the deadbolt. She didn’t bother peeking through the slat. She pulled the door back into darkness, stepped deeper into the black herself. A man’s shaggy head was silhouetted in the moonlight which cast a spectral glow throughout the neighborhood. A phosphorescent ghostly white shimmering on the grass tops. He came in and the smell followed. Something carrion. A dog after rolling in something dead.

  He stepped closer and Patsy saw he was naked. Sweaty. Darker smears on his white belly could have been tracks of blood. His voice was hoarse when he spoke.

  “I need you,” he said.

  She nodded. Made no move toward him.

  He went down on his knees on the kitchen floor. His eyes were like two white diamonds shining in a jeweler’s carpet. Laced through with red. He smiled and his teeth were those of a dog. A shiver passed through her.

  “You’re frightened,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  The eyes flashed again in the darkness. Silence. Then, “Take my hand,” and she did, coming a step closer. Shivered again.

  “So cold,” she protested and he placed his other hand over hers.

  “I’ve come to warm you,” he said seductively. Pulled her down to the floor with him. Pulled her T-shirt over her head and grasped a breast in one dirty hand.

  “Terri,” she begged, but his finger was to her mouth.

  “Shhh,” he said. “Everything in good time. Can’t you feel her getting closer? Are you blind to the things taking place around us?”

  “No…I just want her. That’s all.” By now Tomas was undoing and sliding her jeans down around her ankles. His hands still rough and cold. He pushed her legs into a V and crawled on all fours into the valley. She looked down at him, wondering at the seduction of insanity, trying to form reason here in this envelope of madness. Lost it in the minutiae.

  “And you’ll have her,” he said, working himself stiff with his hand. “You’ll have her,” and he rose up from the floor, pressing his sweaty body against hers. The smell increased, divided, her reason (what very little was left) swept away. Then he was pushing hard inside her, driving past her reluctance. His mouth at her throat, his slavering tongue running the gauntlet of her chin. “Yes, ma’m, you’ll have her,” he grunted savagely and began his pig-thrusting while she did her best to imagine other worlds and the peace that could inhabit them.