Another Book

Many years ago, I started writing another book. I got quite a bit done, but lost it all. Until now. I just found part of it in an old e-mail to my friend Heath. I don't know if I'll ever come back to this book, and if I do, I'm not sure if I'll ever use this part of it. Still, I thought it would be cool to share it. I'm not going to edit this, or clean it up. This is what I hurried out with, all of those years ago.

Enjoy!

Prelude:

The sick and twisted fuck was in hell before he even knew he was dead, or at least she hoped so, after the hell he had put her through the past fifteen years. It was not even a full second before his body fell to the floor like the sack of shit he was, the blood pouring from around the dull blade that was sticking through his throat, already pooling up on the faded brown carpeting. The woman standing above the dead man showed no signs of remorse, quite the opposite actually, she looked damn right overjoyed, like at any moment she would dance a jig on her dead husbands lifeless body. She stood above the man for nearly fifteen minutes, the life first draining from her eyes, then coming back with crazed ferocity. There were no thoughts running through her mind, it had been wiped entirely cleared. It was almost as if she had lapsed into some sort of a vegetative state. Her breaths were coming in short, quick, spurts, causing her chest to expand with each inhale, otherwise she was as still as a statue.

Suddenly, without warning, she fell to the floor beside the man dead man, his light brown hair already stained red with his blood. Almost immediately she pulled the knife from the flesh and began stabbing in a crazed frenzy. Blood spattered her entire body, painting her face and arms, instantly hiding her bruises, licking her lips clean with each pointless arc. When she finally stopped stabbing nearly 45 minutes later from pure exhaustion, nearly the entire room was drenched in the red liquid, and not one inch of the body was left un-stabbed. For a time she sat there, on her knees, surveying what her madness had finally drawn her to. She had often fantasized that one day she would murder her husband, and was stunned that today was finally the day. Before she could do anything else the woman fell in a heap next to the mangled corpse, barely recognizable as human, and fell into the first real good sleep she had had in ages.

It was a dream, Samantha was sure of that, but it was a dream of a place she had never seen. It seemed to be a small prison cell, but not like the ones on television or in the movies. Instead of bars, she was being held inside by mangled body parts, arms, legs, even a few torso's. She squinted in the dark light and could just barely make out the room beyond the bars, a room she recognized as her own bathroom. What she saw was likely the most horrifying sight that she had ever seen. Standing before the woman was herself looking into a mirror, a look of utter desperation painted her face. Her legs were drenched with blood and seemed to be coming from under her dress. The woman in the mirror was crying, real crocodile tears, cascading down a face that was also painted red with blood. When the woman, Samantha, looked back at the Samantha being held in the prison cell, it was obvious what had happened to her, where the blood was coming from, and why it was coming from there.

Samantha recoiled from the bars and sat in a corner trying to make sense of what she had seen, though she already knew what had happened. She had lost her baby, the life that had only just begun to grow within' her. With legs that no longer felt her own, Samantha walked to the front of the cell and began tearing at the macabre "bars". She ripped and tore at the human flesh, fighting to free herself from the morbid prison, screaming while she worked. Each time she thought she had made some headway, Samantha found herself in the back of the cell again, only to rush the bars again, and tear at them. She could feel the flesh under her fingernails, and was utterly covered in blood, but Samantha would not give up until she freed herself from the prison her mind had made for her. At this point she was not even aware that she was locked within' a nightmare, this felt too real.

After what felt like an eternity, Samantha finally broke through the bars, only to find that the woman outside was gone, to be replaced by the body of a fetus curled up in front of the bathroom sink. Panicked, Samantha ran to the baby arms outstretched, she knew it was dead, but it was her baby, and mother's instinct kicked in. Samantha picked the baby up and placed it's lifeless body on the bathroom counter. Closing her eyes, she plugged the child's nose and was just about to breathe into it's mouth when the thing sprang to life and bit Sam. Screaming more in shock than in pain, Samantha stumbled, fell backwards into a tub that moments before had been emptied, but was now filled with a clear mucus-like substance. Before she had a chance to fight her way out of the liquid, the baby, her baby, was upon her, making it impossible to lift her head for air. 

Even though it was only a dream, Samantha felt the life rush out of her body. Her chest felt like it was on fire as she fought to gain even one breath. As suddenly as it all happened, the liquid in the tub vanished, as did the baby, and within seconds, Samantha was once again trapped within the prison that she had fought so hard to break free from.

It was nearly two hours later when the smoke alarm began to blare it's hostile warning, waking Samantha from her terrible nightmare. At first, she was too afraid to move, waiting for the baby to jump out of nowhere and exact it's revenge on the mother that had let it die, but after a few moments the threat of what the alarm meant was more immediate and dangerous than the threat of a murderous fetus from a dream. Samantha could smell the smoke even before she had seen it. Still, she was cautious, as her mind was still insistent on holding onto the nightmare.

 Realizing that she was being silly, she jumped up from the floor she ran into the kitchen, without so much as a single glance behind her, where the smoke was coming from, and turned off the oven. "That's strange," she spoke aloud to the empty room, more of a whisper really, "I don't remember cooking anything". She also didn't remember losing her voice, but then who did. When a voice left, it almost always left without warning. Cautiously she reached out a trembling hand and opened the oven door. Her mind blocked out the dried maroon color that covered what she could see of her arm. Flames licked out of the appliance as she jumped back in fear, yelling frantically for her husband. When Sam realized how angry he would be with her, she immediately stopped yelling for help. And although she was panicked, Samantha knew that she would have to do something before she lost her kitchen, and maybe her entire home, to the deadly, hungry, flames.

She turned to run for the sink and froze at the site of the large shape lying on the living room floor in a pool of congealed blood. It was only a few moments, but enough time for the flames to jump from the oven to the surrounding walls. Sudden realization dawned on her face as she looked at the blood that had dried to her tan arms and legs. It all came back in a sudden and horrifying rush, the entire relationship. In a flash before her eyes, Samantha's memories played through her mind like a cheaply made horror movie.

Samantha's family life had been a bit of a nightmare. Her father John was an alcoholic abusive prick, and her mother had left just after Samantha had been born, so she of course could not remember a thing about being in a normal family, that had only lasted ten minutes at most. Samantha had only been at home two days when her mother left, and her father was left to pick up the pieces of his life, while trying to provide for, and raise his newborn daughter. Not exactly the life John Purdue had wanted, so he hid in a bottle and took all of his troubles out on his Sam. Beating her physically and mentally was the norm for their lives, and when Sam had turned six, for her birthday, her drunk father sexually abused her for the first time. By the time Samantha reached her teens, she was a broken shell of a human being, so when Travis came along, Samantha didn't care that he hit her on occasion, or that he called her names constantly, the only thing that mattered to her was that the sex was consensual, and not morally degrading. And not nearly as painful as she had lived with for the past eleven years of her life.

Travis was a bulky man, not fat, but well built. At 6'2" he was tall, and at nearly 280 pounds, all muscle, he was a man that nobody in their right mind would cross. They met while Sam was sitting on the stairs of the public library crying. The day before Samantha lost her first baby. Lucky for her father that the baby died before anyone would ever be able to tell (or suspect) that it was his, but the pain in Samantha's heart was still immense. When he sat down beside the distraught 17 year old, he hadn't been sweet, and it was not love at first site, but he was moderately kind, and a life of ridicule had opened her heart to mediocrity in men, and Travis was as mediocre as they came. At first he didn't hit her hard and with time Samantha learned that she could indeed spend her life with the man.

Against her fathers wishes, Samantha married Travis in a small courtroom proceeding just after her eighteenth birthday. It had been the two of them, and some guy Travis had invited to be a witness, Samantha never knew the mans name. After the brief ceremony, and the even briefer honeymoon, the two settled into the life that Travis chose. This meant that he would earn the money, and Samantha would be a social recluse, locked in the apartment by herself, Travis kept the key that unlocked the door from the outside of the apartment. After only a year, Travis bought the house that he would eventually die in, call it poetic justice if you will. 

The house, if you could call it a house, was more of a one bedroom hovel. The one bedroom made up the entire upstairs of the house, there was barely enough room for their bed (a king size, Travis hated bare skin touching bare skin while sleeping, so they would need distance and separate blankets). Downstairs was a little bigger, it had to be, to make room for the living room, the bathroom, and the one place Samantha ever found any joy, the kitchen. At first there had been a door between the living room and the kitchen, but Travis had taken the thing off the hinges when he realized that Samantha was going in there for quiet reading time. Happiness was something that Travis had kept from Samantha, or so it seemed to her anyhow. So despite it's size, it was a house, but for Samantha it had never been a home.

As the years progressed, Samantha saw more and more of the dark side of the man she would never truly love. It wasn't that she was incapable of love, it was the situation. How could anybody love someone that constantly cut them down, that hurt them both inside and out. Somebody that showed no love of their own, no emotion beyond anger and hate. Did Travis hate Samantha? No, he did not. In fact, ironically, he loved Samantha more than anything in the world. She never knew it, but he did. He spent nearly every waking moment thinking about her. Unfortunately for the both of them, he also saw Samantha as the one thing that was holding him back in life. And with time, he grew to resent her, and so the beating not only grew in frequency, but also in ferocity. 

And so their days passed, Travis working nearly constantly, and Samantha forced to find other things to occupy her time. At first she tried her hand at writing a novel, but after the first 200 pages, Travis found the work in progress and forced Sam to burn the book in the fireplace, how very Stephen King of him she thought. After this failed attempt at creativity, Samantha was forced to do only things that Travis would not see as a waste of time. Anything that would save them money would be deemed an acceptable pastime, such as making blankets and towels, mending holes in the couch, and cleaning. Samantha spent such a large amount of her time cleaning that eventually she came to enjoy the chores, mostly out of necessity. This went on for fifteen years, before the fateful day in which Samantha had had enough.

The weather outside had been absolutely perfect all week. The temperature had not passed 78 degrees, and there had been no rain to dampen people's spirits, not that Samantha had been allowed outside to feel it, but she was allowed to watch television for 120 minutes a day. And still, Travis had been in a terrible mood the whole damn week. Samantha's husband was a manager at McDonalds, and he was always in bad spirits. She knew her husband worked hard, but the mood he was in was equivalent of that of a cop who seen more than his fair share of a deteriorating society. This made the man downright dangerous to be around. Most times he would come in the door complaining about how horrible people were, and then he would show his wife just how horrible a person could be. Occasionally he would apologize for his violent behavior, saying it was caused by an abusive upbringing, but more often than not, he would just wander away to do his own thing (usually watch television), while his wife lay on the floor, bleeding and crying, or unconscious as often was the case. There is something to be said about routine, and after a time, this was the norm, something Samantha began to embrace. Almost a reverse Stockholm Syndrome if you will.

She had been making dinner, ham with all the trimmings, just the way Travis liked, when her husband stormed in the front door. You could almost feel the temperature in the small house drop as the stress level rose, an almost tangible thing. Sam knew she was in trouble the moment he called out her name in his loud booming voice. Panicked, she tried to think of what she had done to set the big man off this time. She wished desperately that she could learn to behave. It may have been that she had been unable to vacuum the living room, but more likely it was nothing she did. Travis had had a bad day at work, and he needed his lovely punching bag to relieve the tension before Monday night football began. Oh how Samantha hated football, it was days that this worthless sport aired that Travis was at his absolute worse. Worse than that was when his favorite team the Kansas City Chiefs lost, and that was most usually. 

It took Travis very little time to make his way to the kitchen and when he stepped onto the linoleum floor, Sam didn't know what to say, but knew she would have to something, fast. Before she even had time to respond he was on her, hitting, kicking and biting, his knees pinning her to the floor like a rug. The biting was the worst for Samantha, always had been, Travis had perfect teeth. And were they sharp? You better believe it. He prided himself on being able to sink his demented teeth into her body and leave her writhing in pain from the puncture. He had also been smart enough to leave the marks in places nobody would ever see unless she showed them, and Samantha knew better than that. A lesson she had learned when she had shown a doctor in Maryland the place at the middle of her left breast where a nipple had once been. When the doctor had asked her what had happened, she quickly came up with a lie, but Travis had been called and questioned anyway. It had been an obvious sign of marital abuse the nurse had said. Later that same evening, her right breast matched its partner again. The pain was horrible, but the lesson she had learned stayed with Samantha forever. Samantha never went to the hospital again, her pains she would suffer quietly.

Long ago Samantha had learned one very important thing to do when her husband was attacking her, nothing. When the beatings had first started fifteen years ago she had mistakenly tried to wriggle away from the giant of a man, but when you have someone who used to be a major member of a high school football team, and had still not let himself go, struggling would only make things worse. The best thing to do was lie as still as the pain would allow and wait for the man to stop. There were times, quite a few actually, that he would beat her until she passed out from the pain, only to wake up later covered in blood and fresh new bruises. Again, the bruises would always be under her clothes, never visible.

Thankfully, after only ten minutes of pummeling Samantha, Travis got off of his wife and walked into the living room like he had done absolutely nothing wrong, the perfect man as always. Travis was God's gift to women, the ultimate alpha-male. Samantha couldn't remember why this particular beating had set her off, maybe it was the fact that she had spent hours preparing his favorite meal, or it could have been the good news that she had bottled up inside her all day, but she remembered picking up the butcher knife she used to cut fresh bread and followed Travis into the living room. The man had no idea that his wife had pursued him, and before she was completely aware of what her arm was doing, Samantha sunk the knife into the back of her husbands neck. The monster that had brought her so much pain that since she had met him her life had been a virtual nightmare. His blood was on her hands, and Samantha couldn't have felt better if she had tried. 

With each landed blow Samantha saw every bite mark, every bruise, she felt every kick, and every punch. Every time the blade slid into his flesh she could hear his name calling and threats. With every second that passed she saw a life of hell flash before her eyes. Samantha no longer even knew what she was doing. Every moment began to pass by in a daze, she was aware of her arm moving, but not really aware of what it was doing. The only thing the beaten woman was aware was the nightmare that she had been living for so very long. A nightmare that had left her nearly dead inside.

So oblivious to what she was doing, Samantha accidentally cut her finger. Nothing bad, but the pain and the exertion of what she was doing caused her to vomit all over what was left of her husbands face. After this, she blacked out, but the end result had been obvious. She had gotten drunk on adrenaline. The last thing that Samantha truly remembers about the incident was screaming at Travis. The words would haunt her for a very long time, giving her nightmares, and even a slight dose of paranoia at times, "I'm pregnant you son of a bitch".

Snapping out of the memory of a very grim situation, Samantha made several quick decisions that would allow her to walk away from the murder a free woman, rather than meeting her fate before a jury of her peers. Instead of putting out the fire, which had now engulfed much of the kitchen, the slender blonde woman grabbed her purse from the coffee table by the front door of the house, and with a single quick glance behind her, left the place she had spent the last fifteen years of her life making the home she had hoped to raise a family within'. Her mind was a frenzy of thoughts and plans, but not remorse. There was never a single ounce of regret, not one moment of it. Before setting off down the gravel road, the distraught woman went out to the garage, stripped and washed herself off with the hose that was usually reserved to water the garden. Afterwards she stopped in the garage and changed into some clothes she had stored out there. Finally, she opened the secret door and went down the narrow flight of stairs, before leaving the garage.

Samantha needed some time to come up with a solid plan. So with her house burning down, her husband's corpse lying in the middle of the living room floor, and her mind in a rush of alibis and getaways, Samantha walked the five miles back to town to see a movie at the Cineplex. The walk was very therapeutic, and by the time she reached the theatre her head was almost completely clear. Samantha had a plan that she was fully confident in. Now her only worry was escaping the crime. That one left her awake all evening, as she slept like a hobo under the bridge at the east end of town.

When she awoke the following day, she ambled on stiff legs to a corner store to buy a paper. With arms that felt less like hers and more like putty, Samantha placed the paper in front of the store clerk, along with a Diet Pepsi and a pack of smokes, and opened the newspaper. She found what she was looking for on page 2B of the local newspaper. The following story was printed:

Fire Takes Two Lives - Sherman Oakward

Tragedy struck our small town last night around 5 PM, as a fire broke out in the home of Travis and Samantha Streeter. The fire broke out, officials believe, in the kitchen of the three-bedroom home. The fire burned for nearly three hours before authorities were notified. The house out on county road 15 totally destroyed. Due to the amount of time the fire was allowed to burn, fire officials stated in a press conference early this morning that there was no chance of recovering any bodies. After some questioning, it was determined that the Streeter's had been at home when the fire broke out. Both are presumed dead. Funeral services will be held for the couple this Wednesday at Smith and Woodrin Funeral Home.  

When Samantha read this, her soul smiled. She had actually gotten away with murder. Not that she saw it as murder, exactly, but justice. An eye for an eye, and all that jazz. When nobody else could do anything about the pain that Travis had wrought upon her day in and day out, her own impulsive acts and decisions had cut the sick bastard down. She was from from a nightmare she never fully thought she could escape. From this day forward, Samantha would live the life she had always dreamed. And she would live it for two. She reached a hand down and rubbed her stomach, and the life that was growing within'.

Samantha strolled down the street with her hands in the pockets of the faded jeans she was wearing. They were actually Travis' jeans, but he had outgrown them nearly ten years ago, they were still a little big for her slender frame, but they would do until she was in the frame of mind for clothes shopping. For now, Samantha Weaver (Weaver was the name of a friend of a friend from high school. She never liked the girl, but name would be perfect for her new life) needed a car.

As the sun was setting over the small town in which she lived, leaving her silhouette in it's golden glaze, Samantha smiled, truly smiled, for the first time in over five years. With her husband dead, and a life she despised behind her, Samantha started the long walk to the neighboring town for a car, a change of clothes, and a brand new reality.