"Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Take Me In"

She went on her 7th job interview.  Despite all her smiling, her happy and positive tone, she felt a knot in her stomach everytime they told her the expectations of the job.

But I can’t do that, she thought.  I’m not a Designer.  I’m not a Developer.  Her biggest fear was that she’d have to ask for help on one of the most basic programs.  

She COULD design, draw amazing things, and wished they could just see her potential, dammit!!

She was frozen and broken.  The ride took her by a giant pond.  Frozen over.  All she could think about was her brother. It was right by where he had disappeared.

She couldn’t drive by it everyday.

And that’s the thing that gave her courage.  That’s why she took the job in Cambridge, she wasn’t working FOR MIT, but she’d be passing by it regularly. Missed it by so little. If she hadn’t screwed up her last semester of junior year in high school.  His disappearence drove her crazy, even today, 5 years alater.  Still a fresh wound.

The world was ice.  Black ice on the roads, looking shiny but dangerous slippery. Grey and a hint of blue.  Blue lips, is that how they find you, drowned?

SCENE OF BEING HAUNTED IN THE BEFORE!!

If he were around, she’d ask him for advice.  And because he’s not, she’ll figure it all out on her own. The decision is simple, really, what part of your soul do you want to sell out?

The part that will make you cringe by designing stuff for them, and cringing when they ask you to code?

The part that will be better paid, but will require just more business bullshit.  They taught you how to dress, how to act in a boardroom, at a meeting.

MBA at 24. Genius.

She’s smart.  And doesn’t the degree on her first “real” ie not Vistaprint businesscard indicate her genius before she even walks into a meeting?

They don’t trust me because I’m so young.

In Edinburgh, they ate her up like piranhas.  

Don’t you have any GOOD recommendations?

SCENE

Stuff to get you fired for sure.  Not that she wasn’t doing a “good” job (according to what SHE believed, and everything her teachers had taught her).  No, the guys who were in “control”.  The ones who would report back to her boss.

When she signed on, she kept asking for direction.  “You’ll figure it out,” he kept saying.

“Don’t be scared, you’ll do fine”

All sorts of pandering encouragement, like she was a little puppy.  Or a girl with no self confidence.

The funniest part was that she was SO NERVOUS about that last day in Edinburgh.(Chicago?)

Terrified to get that email from her boss.

And then, she opened it.

And the joke was on him.

He fired THE OTHER GUY.

The one that he had just hired, Hmm, if you are a manager and your first hire has tremendous difficulties trying to read your mind and the second one you hire quits after a few months, doesn’t that tell you something??

SHE LAUGHED.  Closed her computer and at 11:37am went out to enjoy the day properly, like a tourist.  She was growing proud of her Bic City magnet collection.  Something easy to stow away.

Her life, her past.

What if she was born like other people, on the day she graduated?

Take all that stuff off your resume that indicates a “school project”, it doens’t matter in the real world.

And so she put her real past into an imaginary box, tied it up with chains, like Houdini and tossed it into the bottom of the ocean, where it could never get to her.

But like Houdini, her secret broke through to the surface. And it HIT HER IN THE FACE (change!!) just as she was celebrating her 1st anniversary of her new job.

(SHE’s 25)

HE WAS A CODER

SHE WAS A DESIGNER

There’s a website/blog that nobody would know about.  They used their SECRET NAMES with each other.

She’d draw sketches, and the next day, it would be online.  And he’d give her access to a page for a story.  And, like snow, the lines of text would build up.

"Manager"

With this promotion to “Manager”, he had somehow managed to earn himself the power and budget to hire an underling.  Someone who was supposed to be him, as of a year ago.

This is the wonder of the business world, he thought.  Just show up, be the first to establish a department where nobody knows what you do and attach yourself to projects that are destined for success.  I should write a book.

He rearranged the pencil cup and the paper clip holder on his desk.

He took out a company branded notepad and began doing some math.  He attempted to calculate how much money he had made in the past 5 minutes just from rearranging his pencils and paper clips.  Gross and Net.  Both figures made him laugh so loud that everyone turned to hear what the man in the glass corner office was making such a fuss about.  It looked as if he were a madman, laughing to himself, not even on the phone.

Swimming: Above the Bridge

You pull the car over.  Slowly it rumbles over dead leaves and crackling branches until coming to a rest behind a tree leaning out into the street.

The Perfect Secret Parking Spot.

“Focus on the next thing that will kill you”.  Like an astronaut, you transfer your anxieties.  The “Getting Ticketed/Getting Towed”, flows easily into “Forgetting Things”.  Should you leave a towel on a tree in case the car gets towed? And if it does, should you keep your cell phone with the towel?  Why not throw them into a bag with some water.  And a snack.  Maybe some shoes. And what if someone sees you?

And then you decide to just get out of the car.  

This funny, hidden patch of water.  “Hardy” Pond, named after a family, but oddly enough, maybe named for its sturdiness.  The ability to always bounce back.  

Dirty as the Charles River, with nothing to recommend a real estate category of Waterfront View.  All these houses around have turned their backs to the water.  As if it’s just a forest, or a desert. As if everyone looks past it, and not at it.  If you ever got an apartment where you could see this, you’d sit staring at it with all your lights off.  Every night.

Your house was built on the top of the hill, 50 years before you were born.  As a “vacation cabin” for fancy families from Boston. (But there was a couple who lived there, the only owners-the time machine you wish so desperately for could really come in handy to meet them)

Hardy Pond was known as a swimmer’s paradise.  You easily imagine your forefathers as kids skipping down the dirt roads in early April, lilacs blooming like crazy. And they would jump in with no hesitation.  Swim clear across with not a care in the world.

But the entire time you were growing up,all you heard about was pollution.  Drowned shopping carts, all covered with weeds.  And you vaguely remember hearing stories of it being “cleaned up” since then.  Dredged, trash removed.  What do they do to the water to purify it?  If there’s no chemical factory, what’s the worst that could be in the water?  

As long as you don’t put your head under, you’ll be safe, you tell yourself.  No danger of swallowing, or getting that eye disease that Katherine Hepburn got when she was thrown into a canal in Venice (was that sewage?).  She cried constantly for the rest of her life.

And then there’s that ghost story movie about young college boys in the 20’s, in love with a woman.  She hits her head on a stone fireplace and they think she’s dead.  Naturally, they sacrifice their Model T and run it into the lake, with her in the backseat.  

She revives just long enough for them to see her clutching at the back window.

“I’m still alive”

Why didn’t they jump in to save her?

Too much trouble to undo the spats and fling your waistcoat aside.  

===

He had already died once.

She was 14, so he must’ve been 17.  The brink of graduating to Real Life.  The first adult she had known as a child, her first and constant hero.  He was a tall blonde man when he first met her again.

It took a long time for it to register that this was the boy she had played with,  The one she had followed around wherever he would allow her.  And when he began the Games of Cruelty, she was his eager assistant.  She played right along, even when she had to play captive.

What do you call it when you like it?  When you like to see the fire in his eyes?  Like being hurt because it’s for him?  Knowing that he has to do all of this to you.

Because there are the words he can’t say, can’t express all those things like a lover.  But he has his books of philosophy, and he was teaching her well.  All those grand words.

After that, any other boy was ruined for her.   The reason you shouldn’t kiss your brother is  . . .  (nobody else can take his place)

She thought he died at 17.

And he did.

He drank too much, took some pills and went swimming.  Tried everything he could to kill himself without getting hurt.  

No, he saved his hurt for his Note.  But it was talked about, and she never saw him after he walked out of the kitchen. (SCENE!)  He was sad, scrunched, not talking, especially not to her.  And he was screaming just a little too loud.

He was found floating. Which was ironic, because he never could float.  Not when he was alive.

==

This man who was writing to her. Who yes, said he was her brother and yes, he had been found. A sudden new ending to the story.  Not floating, but trying.  In the water.  And rushed to a hospital.  Or was it a jail?

And they didn’t let him out until just now.  4 weeks earlier. That was how long it took to find her.  

And she looked into the eyes of this man, with crinkles around his eyes.  Homeless, dirty blonde hair genuinely dirty.  But still his halo.  And she fell in love with him all over again.  The body she had watched him grow into awkwardly, was now his own.  But he still felt like a giant, too big for normal people furniture.  His beautiful hands and legs sticking out at funny angles, no matter how much he tried to keep himself folded up into a tiny shape.

It was the same man, and an imposter at the same time.  She was eager to greet him, to bring him back, no matter who he was.  He even told her about all his past lives, all the people he was before this moment.  But she knew the scar on his neck, on his wrist (the one that matched hers, when they were first playing at suicide.) These telltale landmarks brought his body back to her.  The mirror of her own body.  

A dream come true, a ghost returning.

==

Before you realize it, your naked feet touch the wet cold shore.  Funny how the transition comes only when the fingers of cold touch your toes.  Everything else is a dream until the water’s edge wakes you up.  Lots of rocks and maybe glass, you keep an eye out and only put your feet down gingerly. Up to your knees now, cold.  The thought of glass makes you more eager to save your feet, you step further and further in, wanting to float.  Your hips.  There is a brown seaweed floating on the top of the water, stringy like hair, but somehow, not as gross.  You clear the water in front of you and soon you find it was only a phenomenon of the shore.  Deep breath, your breasts and your shoulders.  You keep an eye out for anyone who might be watching you.  Anyone who keeps off their lights to look at the water.

The morning is slightly cold, but not so bad.  If you do this at first light, you risk mosquitoes, another reason for quick full body immersion.  You’ll avoid the commuters who want to distinguish their days by calling in an emergency.  An Evil Do-Gooder who wants to “save” you from waters where you must’ve fallen in.  You have no desire to be rescued, or to be interrupted.  

Especially if you are going to swim across today.

There are a family of ducks.  They make ducks sounds to scare you, and then scare themselves enough to fly away.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  No sense of alarm, like you are a crocodile.  Crocodile.  Now, you are well aware that is a false fear.  But there are other critters, a snapping turtle would be the worst.  Probably.  Do they always swim underwater? Do they attack unprovoked?  And now, you’ve been doing strokes for a few minutes now.  Flip over to get a new perspective.  Everything looks different now.  The bumper of your red car is barely visible behind the tall grass by the shore.  You are a good way out now.  There’s no easy way to measure the distance, but it’s further than the kiddie area would be. No safety lines here.  Further than you ventured in your teens.  The first time you swam across any pond was Walden when you were 19.  And even then, you weren’t sure why you waited so long.  Like taking a journey, just put one foot in front of the other.  The main thing to get over was fear.

Don’t think about the turtles.

Next time wear flippers.  You can heal if they nip at your legs, but you want to keep all your toes.

==

if you should tell anyone at all about swimming across all the ponds of Massachusetts?

Why bother?  It only matters to him.

==

You had kept swimming because your parents told you to.  

If you stop now, if you hesitate because of him now, you’ll never go back into the water.  And he wants and wanted you to be happy.  

So you kept swimming.  Swam farther, swam deeper.  Never knowing that he was trapped.  in a white building.  In a white belted jacket.  The hero prince tied up in a fortress, reports of his death greatly exaggerated and believed.  Caught in a colorless world.  Maybe white, maybe in the clouds.

While you were out in the world.  Mooning over him, seeing him in every tree in the North American landscape.  Blooming flowers, the peach tree in the backyard.  Every spring, you imagined he’d return to Earth, like Persephone.  He just didn’t take the form of a human anymore.  It’s a lot harder to be loyal to someone, to be patient, when they cannot ever talk to you again.  When they are only a tree.

The Hut

He has tied my hands together, tightly, this time.  They rest, crossed at the wrists on my lap. My ankles are tied to the chair legs, which is perhaps for the best, as I would now claw through my own skin if it were possible.

This is oddly, exactly the kind of punishment I deserve.  I'm the type of kid who scratches at ALL my bug bites until they become scabs and then pulls off the scabs until they become bigger and bigger.  Like they are the tops of tupperware lids, you just have to find the proper handle to open them.

I asked him to leave the light on, and he does so, kindly, knowing that I am afraid of the dark.  Even with a blindfold on, it is nice to know that the light is on. Somehow it keeps away the monsters.

I really don't mind this, although I know I probably should.  With a blindfold on, I imagine that I am in a cathedral.  Or even in Henry's hut at Walden Pond.  I can sit for hours composing my own genius novel, but somehow, when I get to an actual paper and pen, I seem to disappoint myself.

Blindfolded and tied up, I offer myself the most incredible dreams.  I go somewhere beautiful. The noise of an acorn falling on the tin shed brings me to a squirrel who did it on purpose and maybe the tree he's trying to get even with.  Or maybe it's God.  Or a bullet casing from a war in the deepest jungle.  Or maybe it's just an acorn shell falling on the roof of a tin house that has a little girl tied up inside who is waiting for her brother to come find and release her.

How To Be Quiet

She heard people talking about things. Their lives, their issues, their problems.

"How I've wished, over the years, that I never told anyone about that poke in the butt!"

Raped at 13. But if you write a tell-all about your life, then everyone will always know.

"There comes a time in life when you need to let it go-unless you don't want to. And then, in a sense, it's your problem"

She knew of other people, dear friends and also acquaintances, who spill their life out to each new person. Their life narrative comes out as you shake their hand, a pump already primed. At least Flashers expose & run.

She never understood why anyone would share their grief. Multiplying it, thoughtlessly, like someone idly playing with a calculator. Let me tell you, and then you can carry the One, add it to your own sorrows, dividing your time.

She understood how much easier it was to share love. Like food, like shelter, inviting yet another person to dinner, to the party, into conversation. Not hard. She tried it whenever she could, always in the lookout for other people left alone. Inviting them into her circle of fire.

She felt a chill around others far too often.

She missed her brother.

It was the last and only time she felt complete love. She had boyfriends and girlfriends and best friends and lovers. Circles of support, colleagues, fellow hobbyists, community.

Nothing compared.

She tried to hold his love, who he was and all essences around him, like a glowing orb. If she could have changed him into her sun, she would have. But he was always more fragile, something made of glass, a light hung from the ceiling, a pendant.

She kept him in her life however she could.

There was a trunk. A silver trunk she kept with her through every move. Sometimes, she wouldn't open it for years. It was enough to know it was there.

That summer, she was sent off. It brought her into a new world, no matter how she begged, they wouldn't bring her home. She made friends, learned the patterns of the Big City and forgot her home life.

He never was there when she called. No stories told to get her upset, zero updates. Looking back, she should have been much more suspicious, should have realized that she was the one doing all the talking. The conversations changed from begging and crying to excitement and discoveries. Typical tales from camp. But she was studying Linguistics and was in love with Languages. Nothing else.

She didn't hear the grunts on the other end of the line. Yes, no, that's great honey. Good for you!! No, he's not home right now.

When she came back, they hung their heads. Not wanting to tell her.

First, he had gotten a job in another state. She knew he would keep in touch, even though he was probably still mad at her fir what she did. Then, he had run away. Or then, he had tried to hurt himself.
But he would write me!! He would call!!
Then it came out.
He had died during the summer and they had never told her.
Swimming in a river. Dangerous enough, he knew better. Passive suicide, they said.

But it was more complicated.

He had survived.

Pulled out. He was 18. They had chosen to disown him. (Probably because of what she had said. When she got VERY mad. And talked about The Games)

So he WAS dead to them.

And catatonic.

For years.

They would switch his meds every so often. And he would write her. He'd find her. Not easy, but he did. Never a return address, but because he didn't want to hear her be mad at him. Still couldn't take it.

I'm alive.

That's all he said.

That's what she kept in her silver trunk.

He was diagnosed with Mixed Bipolar; violent episodes and moments of energized depression. Unable to control himself. I'm better off here than out in the world.

He never got to hear her say how much she loved him. All the expressions of live, the range with him was better than the quiet without him.

How tender he was. How perfect.
He took for granted that he had taken something, not given it.

The letters were as follows:

End of Pursuit

She remembered the mornings when she'd be awakened by his music.  Some kind of throbbing through the floorboards, his bedroom above her bedroom.  She'd sneak up the stairs and giggle quietly, her 12 year old self watching him dancing, naked, sometimes, to his favorite music.  Watching him grow into a young man, happy and fresh, was a delight for her beyond her years.

His muscles, contracting and expanding, his back, his legs, they all seemed so pure and so very American.  So of his own time, like he was owning his future.  As if every morning belonged to him, existed for him to be young. As if the world couldn't imagine their front door opening to produce this strong specimen of a man.

Even as a teenager, she loved him and his body for who he was, but everything that he would grow into.  All the people he would mutate into as he grew up.  She read about World War 1 in history class, but only began to cry when her mind fitted him with a British Uniform.  And as history evolved, she understood the meaning of cannon fodder and saw him going to liberate Paris or to wade through the jungles of Vietnam.

Crouched on the stairs to his teenage bedroom, all of his future lay ahead of them both.  She made a vow, over and over, to accept him and everything he became.  Even if he turned into a soldier who killed people.  Even women, even babies.  There would be nothing that he could do to shake her faith in him, even if it was too horrible to tell. She would always understand.

==
Her dreams and nightmares were the same.  Chasing after something and/or being chased.  Trying to get back to that sweet spot in memory, the running taking up space in her brain.  If she ran hard enough, focused on the jungle, focused on not tripping or on tracking the person she needed, she could forget that he was dead.  There would be something to chase and a reason and, if she caught up to it, a glorious moment of reunion.

==
And this is why, when she was wandering around in his empty house, she didn't mind.  She was the pursued or the pursuer, but at least she had found the end of the running.  In all likelihood, she would die; this man-whomever he was- would eventually kill her, probably in a very gruesome way.  But she would stick it out until the end.

In the seven days she stayed trapped in his house, she never had a nightmare once.

January Nightmares

When she had nightmares, she would dream of January.

There was cold, and the sense of being chased, or the feeling that she was the one chasing.

Pine trees, skinny young ones, black against the orange carpet of pine needles beneath.

She’d run until she came to a clearing, and then the clearing always turned out to be a pond.  (No matter how many times she ran from it, or was sure that this time, there was no water, she found herself on the pond.

a sideways gravity pulled her onto ice, skidding her into the middle, the section that was most certainly, the deepest.

No matter if she had just been chased by wolves with glowing eyes, or if she had the strength to create justice by tearing someone limb from limb, she always ended up hovering above the same spot in the ice.

Her brother, in his swimsuit from that summer, beating on the other side of the ice.  “I’m still alive, I’m still alive!” He could only pound, but his voice invaded her mind loud and clear.

"I’m still alive!"

Tense Shootout

The next (last) time she got scared was when he saw her seeing him. (He arrived home to find her not wearing the blindfold.)

Their eyes met.  There was no more room for any denials.  It was her boss, The Suit.  The tireless, insecure manager who had worked hard to drive her from her job.  He was finally in a situation where he felt complete control and and screwed it up again.

She had never seen anger in his eyes, never like this. Never seen a man go from a human to a furious animal.   She had been keeping a plan in the back of her mind,  some casual thing she would say to him.  Look him in the eye and offer a kiss.  Maybe it was his fury which reacted before her plan could click into action.  Maybe it was her primitive instinct of fear, of being a child caught at a game for grownups.   Maybe it was inevitable.

He lunged at her in a way that she only could remember later as defying gravity.  There was the big butcherblock table on wheels between them which should have protected her, but she had no memory of his going around it or pushing it out of the way.  She recalled this fact, even later, even in her darkness because she recalled thinking it was a silly last thought to have right before you are going to die.

“His fingers are on your windpipe, he’s pinning you down and holding you with the rest of his limbs and so somehow you are completely trapped and there is no use fighting because you can’t move anything.  And the butcherblock counter’s casters have not moved an inch.  How did you get in this position, unless he flew over the counter?”

Somehow, there was a struggle and one of you wiggled enough to drop the other to the floor.  Suddenly, you were wrestling, almost as you had wrestled before.  The strange beast with two backs, but now a different kind of beast.


Everything suddenly seemed real to you, nothing more real than the caster wheel right in front of your eye. And the dustbunny on the floor. He did have magic in him. A certain inhuman strength that you were never sure about. Your nose might be broken, the pain is real. It's your nose and your pain. As much as you wish it on someone else, it is YOU pinned to the floor.

The tile rushes to hit your head and you feel the cold, unforgiving whiteness of it. Your blood is slippery on it and you consider it a kindness done by the universe everytime it does not align with the pain between your eyes. There's a hand in your hair, repeatedly causing the pain against the tiles. The tiles are innocent, but the hand still causes all kinds of hurt; as it pulls away, some hairs pull with it. He gets up and off of you.

Mercifully, the woman wrapped in the sheet on the kitchen floor closes her eyes. And she does not see the blood pooling around her head on the white tiles.

==

Earlier that day, things had been quiet.  Except for the light on the side of the shed exploding. She hadn’t even known that he had a gun until hours after she heard it.  

She drank the coffee he had made for her, adding an extra spoon of sugar. The bit he always forgot.  Or if he remembered, it was never enough.  The view was the same as it had been for however many days she had been there.  The rain coated the leaves on the lilac bushes to render them shiny, like a new species she couldn’t quite place.  

 Both hands on her coffee, she could have been any woman looking out on the morning rain dripping into the green of the lush backyard. She had spent last night peeking out from behind her blinds, trying to see into the forest without the benefit of moonlight. Some nights, she had been able to make out an electronic light in the distance, maybe a streetlight? And last night, the rain had been forceful and then misty by turns, more lovely to contemplate than a movie.  

The most exciting event last night was The Deer.  Wind blowing the branches would activate the motion sensor periodically, a reverse act of lightning.  One second of blackness in ratio to 2 minutes of floodlight.  She noticed that the light was mounted on a tiny shed.  The very light which had given her a surprise nighttime view of an even more surprised deer.  Some kind of motion sensor, and the deer had walked into the path. She wondered absent-mindedly, if he had many problems with deer eating his wildflowers.

Somehow there was a pop and suddenly, the light exploded. It set a bunch of sparks into the air, something unnatural and slightly fascinating to watch. A form ran into the bushes.  Maybe it was a deer, like yesterday morning, or was that the day before?  Everything seemed to blend together.  But when she heard his car drive off, she noticed she hadn’t been paying attention this morning.  She had come downstairs BEFORE he had left, clumsy and out of habit, not careful, and could have run into him.  She kept an eye on the disturbed branches, still waving, maybe from the deer, maybe from the rain. The form she had seen had been all black, definately NOT the color of a deer. It might have been a two legged creature.

She froze in place, coffee mug to her lips, knuckles turning white as she began scaring herself. There was no movement in the forest. HIs car was gone. She had another 8 hours of quiet time in the house, all to herself. (SCENE: go online and hunt him down? figure out who he was? Go through the boxes in basement, figure out who he was? Get his old laptop working??)

A muffled pop in the distance, something she wouldn’t have noticed in Cambridge.  Central Square was full of noises and people, crazies and traffic.  Harvard Square was a series of surprises waiting for you around all the curved corners, a ghost or your history professor.  A shock in this sleepy sanctuary either way.  How quickly she found herself getting used to this life, after being fired.

But the explosion, and the pop she heard-was it a moment before-why wasn’t it at the same time?  No, the pop happened right before, like watching a movie with the soundtrack slightly out of sync.

His sportscar was not the type to backfire like a truck.

Why did the light explode?  Like it was hit by something.  Or maybe it was a random short circuit.  Maybe the “Electric Fence” he had warned her about finally electrocuted itself.  But what was that screech of tires. He seemed to speed off this time.  For work? A squeal of tires, was he just jumpy and jittery too?  Never trust a scared dog; you don’t know what they will do.

And then she heard the back door open.
==

Before she knew what she was doing, she was racing up the stairs.  In a flurry of white sheet and blindfold, she was in her Prisoner costume, working hard to control her heavy breathing.  Praying he hadn’t heard her thundering up the stairs.  Or if he had, he would be gentleman enough NOT to bring it up.  He was gentle with The Game, she was certain there had been a thousand sins she had been forgiven for.  

But maybe this was the moment he was going to give up The Game.

She heard him climbing up the stairs, slowly this time.  Maybe he had been testing out a gun on a deer.  He had missed, had hit the streetlight, had driven off, knowing her habit.  Knew that she took off the night mask, the blindfold. He was planning to catch her off guard.  The one Rule of The Game she couldn't laugh away. She couldn't SEE his face. Like Cupid & Psyche, like any other characters out of mythology. Vision equal to knowledge. Eating the fruit and seeing yourself for who you really are.

Seeing his face meant identifying him 100%. Not her brother.

He was almost at the top of the stairs, she could hear him.  He sounded stronger, bigger, heavier, angrier.  She imagined him with a gun.  Something small?  No, a rifle, something that might scrape against the wall.  Her heart was pounding.  She shifted her hands in the loose knot she had tied, wiping the sweat off her palms in the extra material of the sheet behind her.

He opened a door, something close to the top of the stairs. And then closed it.  What was he doing?  Was he getting another gun? Was he looking for her?  Mistrusting her, knowing that every morning she got off her chair.  Expecting her to hide in another room.  What a fool.  She should have hidden in a closet.  Or tried harder to escape. He tried the third door.  The other bedroom, the closet, the bathroom.  She heard him walk over to her room.

Even with the new pile on the carpet, she could hear the wooden floorboards groan slightly as he stood in the doorway.  He didn’t even turn on the light.

She tried hard to smile, making up for the weakness in her voice with extra cheerfulness.

“You came back!”  she heard herself squeak.  “I’m so glad!  My ankles are SO itchy.  Worse than yesterday, even.  Would you do me a favor and spread more of that cortisone cream on them?  Like you did last night?  I forgot to ask before you left today.  I’m SO glad you came back!”

She hoped that an onslaught of words would make him say something, preferably in his deep funny voice.  She longed to hear his laugh, that genuine sound that she had coaxed out of him.  Maybe just a day or two ago.  Even last night, there was certainly a chuckle.  She wondered why he had hesitated last night. If he had been planning to kill her, he at least had the decency not to rape her.  Even though he had plenty of chances.  And she certainly would have done anything to seduce him out of his violent tendencies.  Moments when she actually wanted to stroke him, love him, offer him whatever attention that he had been craving for so long.

Maybe now.  Why wasn’t he turning on the light?  Did he want to shoot her in the dark? Did he think it would be easier if he wasn’t looking at her?

“Please, if you just turn on the light, I’ll bet you left it on the nightstand or something. Come here, please, I’m so awfully itchy.  And you were so sweet when you brought me the cream.  I forgive you, I do.  You didn’t know there was poison ivy by the pond.  How could you know?”

He didn’t move.  It took far too long for him to decide.  And then, after she was holding her breath until it was painful, he moved.  And she exhaled.  She heard his hand moving along the wall, groping, sweeping for the light switch. It flicked on; she saw it through the sleeping mask.  

At least he was honest enough to shoot her with the lights on.

==

The Girl was hiding in the bushes, terrified to reveal herself.  No idea where The Brother was, he’d run off completely for all she knew.  The only thing she knew for certain was that the Suit had a gun.  And that he had driven off down the driveway, turned onto the road and then pulled over.   (Maybe when he saw HER car.  That car that he had last seen with the towel on the windshield) He was walking back through the woods, looking for her, looking for them.  Scooby Doo’s “If it weren’t for you Meddling Kids” ran through her mind, mocking her in the voice of a cartoon character.  She was crouched down in a bush, peering out, for once glad for her hand-me-down camouflage jacket.  She knew enough to watch her prey.  And if one has to choose between watching the crazy man you’ve just sprung from the loony bin and the man with the gun, she was always going to choose the guy with the gun.

The only thing she knew about tracking was to make sure that the prey didn’t know you were following them.  She let him get far ahead of her, he was walking back towards the house.  “Never let the fire get between you and the door.”  She saw him advance on the house, the leading edge of danger.  She could get in the car right now.  Or get in his car.  Or drive both cars away so he couldn’t kidnap anyone anywhere else.  Or escape.  They needed some means of escape.  Or she could escape, let the firefight play itself out.   Her Brother had probably gone in the house.  She had told him about the electric fence, right? No, she had mentioned the barrier, but wasn’t specific.  She wasn’t 100% sure herself.  She needed to catch them, to witness.  To hang back, if needed.

He was picking his way through the undergrowth and branches himself, careful not to stay on the trail back to the house.  

==

(And then she heard another shot./

(And then the upstairs light turned on, making the windows glow through the pulled shades like a halloween lantern.

She heard another shot.  Right through the bedroom window, shattering the glass.

==

He crossed the room, coming closer to her, slower than before.  Walking slowly, she shivered with every step.

Something rattled off to her left, and then he got down close to her, crouching or o his knees.  When he touched the back of her calf, her muscles were so tense that she nearly kicked him.