Vicky

I called my sister before I even left.
“Could you walk out a few miles to meet me? I’m heading home now.”

Even just talking to her was comforting. I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder. As Samantha walked me to the door I pulled my red gloves over my fingers and my brown loafers onto my feet.

The distance wasn’t to far, and walking, well I didn’t mind that. It was just that almost three times on the way there I’d felt like I was being followed. Now, on my way back cars seemed to slow down as they passed me by and I would watch their headlights as I walked along the shoulder of the road. The lights would illuminate my feet and I would slow down, fall back, to stay out of the blinding paths cast across the road and into the ditch. My heart would speed up and after the car passed I would walk faster. I wouldn’t allow myself to run. Don’t give in, there’s nothing there. Then once, there was, and I guess I’ll never be able to make up for that.
-
The car slowed down, turned off its headlights and parked on the side of the highway, just ten feet behind me. I could hear the gravel crunching under the tires and I didn’t turn around.
“Hey! Hey!” a man. How typical.
“Do you need a ride? Where you going”
“I didn’t turn around I just kept going.
“Hey!”
He was right there behind me and I could sense his hand reaching out for my shoulder. I swung around and lunged a fist straight into his nose. It crunched beneath my fingers and made a sickening sound that turned my stomach. His face, I can see it now in the moonlight, and he was not happy. He growled at me and grabbed the collar of my jacket.

“You little bitch! I just. . .arrgg!” He was a bear, a wolf, more wild then a living, breathing, hunter of real live pray. Pictures of Zebra carcasses and mauled antelope that I’d seen in National Geographic passed thorough my mind.

He picked me up and swung me under his arm. It was not hard for him, though I struggled with all my strength. I kicked and screamed and apparently my sister had not made it far enough down the road to hear my voice echoing down the highway.
We reached his car and he opened a door. He tried to push me into the back seat as I struggled. The door slammed shut on my head and I heard the crunch through my own bleeding ears. Everything was black, and there was no time of black, no moment of black. It was just there.

I rolled and fell and couldn’t stop. There was sand in my eyes and my mouth and it grated between my teeth as my face rolled over and over. I was in a bowl of sand. My head screamed profanities at me. Get! Run! Push!

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t stand. My ears were warm and dripping down the sides of my neck. I moved my tongue around in my mouth and a tooth fell loose on top of it. The nerve endings under the tooth shot messages of pain to my brain but my body could not jerk or shout out.

There he was. An animal. Crawling, marching, over the lip of the sand bowl. His pants were rolled up above his knees. His knees, my knees they were all scrapped up and bleeding. Blood, maybe the blood I tasted wasn’t my own. He had a rock in his hand.

Not a smooth rock, but a rough sand rock that had probably never been kissed by the hands of flowing waters.
“What’d you go and hit me for? Probably wasn’t a good idea.”

I could hear him, but I couldn’t answer. I felt numb. I felt far away.
“Vicky, that’s your name isn’t it?” He crouched down next to me and moved a sticky warm thread of hair out of my eyes. “You’re going to regret the day you raised that fist against me.”

I could smell his breath. It smelt of beer and pizza, it hadn’t been long sense his dinner. My stomach growled, my dinner waited for me, getting cold.

He picked up my right hand. My knuckles were raw where they had slapped against the skin on his face and the cartilage of his nose. He kissed it and laid it down in the sand.
The rock was above his head.
It moved.
Then stopped.
He smiled.
The rock.
It came slamming down. That body that I knew crunched and split and screamed in my dripping ears. I sprung to life in a flash of hot red pain. I kicked out twice, three times, over and over, and found contact. Sand. Air. Soft, fat stomach. I kicked harder. He groaned. Pizza and beer came gushing out of his throat and streamed down next to my head.
“You little bitch! You’re not getting away with that. Look at this, you’ve made me waste me entire dinner. We don’t waste and we don’t treat friends so poorly.”

The rock was up in the air again. This time there was no hesitation. It came down and sprung right back up, over and over. On my skull, my face. I went blind. I couldn’t breath right. I couldn’t move. My body quit reacting to the pain. I could feel the rock sinking into my flesh. Then he stopped. There was silence. I could feel my heart beating against my chest. “I’m still alive” I told myself, but there was nothing. I didn’t care when he pulled my shirt down to my waist, and my bra along with it. He bent his head down to my chest, pressing his ear against my left breast. If you could even call it that, the small budding little flower was hardly visible yet.

“Still beating.” He said. I didn’t care if he was talking to me. “I’ll still you yet!” He bit into the soft flesh around my nipple and gnawed and shook his head back and forth with the flesh gripped between his teeth.

Then the rock was up again and all I could think about was, “This again? This is getting so old. I just want out,” and my heart it was still beating out its rhythm beneath my breast. I could hear it and feel it and I was embodied in it as the rock pounded into my skull, burrowing deeper and deeper. If I could still see I would have seen his wide-open white eyes. I would have seen white gum and dark red spray all around me, in the sand and on his face and arms and clothing. I only knew my heart though and it was getting quitter. I worked so hard at continuing to beat out that rhythm, and then I grew tired and wanted to give up. I had no reason not to, I slowed down my pace and stopped caring and my heart gave in and stopped dead silent and still.

Vicky floated away above the sand bowl and knew nothing of her killer or her brains splattered around the ground, caking the rock, the animal, the instrument of her death.