collision with a tree.
A glint of light up ahead—the Honda’s windshield catching a piece of moonlight.
Lucy emerged from the woods, her hands throbbing from circulation loss. She stumbled into the car and turned around to watch the treeline.
“Come on, big boy! I’m right here! You can make it!”
Donaldson staggered out of the woods holding a tire iron, and when the moon struck his eyes, they were already half-closed.
He froze.
He opened his mouth to say something, but fell over instead, dropping like an old, fat tree.
Donaldson opened his eyes and lifted his head. Dawn and freezing cold. He lay in weeds at the edge of the woods, his head resting in a padded helmet. His wrists had been cuffed, hands purple from lack of blood flow, and his ankles were similarly bound. He was naked and glazed with dew, and as the world came into focus, he saw that one of those carabiners from Lucy’s guitar case had been clipped to his ankle cuffs. A climbing rope ran from that carabiner to another carabiner, which was clipped to a chain which was wrapped around the trailer hitch of his Honda.
The driver-side door opened and Lucy got out, walked down through the weeds. She came over and sat on his chest, giving him a missing-toothed smile.
“Morning, Donaldson. You of all people will appreciate what’s about to happen.”
Donaldson yawned, then winked at her. “Aren’t you just the prettiest thing to wake up to?”
Lucy batted her eyelashes.
“Thank you. That’s sweet. Now, the helmet is so you don’t die too fast. Head injuries ruin the fun. We’ll go slow in the beginning. Barely walking speed. Then we’ll speed up a bit when we get you onto asphalt. The last ones screamed for five miles. They where skeletons when I finally pulled over. But you’re so heavy, I think you just might break that record.”
“I have some bleach spray in the trunk,” Donaldson said. “You might want to spritz me with that first, make it hurt even more.”
“I prefer lemon juice, but it’s no good until after the first half mile.”
Donaldson laughed.
“You think this is a joke?”
He shook his head. “No. But when you have the opportunity to kill, you should kill. Not talk.”
Donaldson sat up, quick for a man his size, and rammed his helmet into Lucy’s face. As she reeled back, he caught her shirt with his swollen hands and rolled on top of her, his bulk making her gasp.
“The keys,” he ordered. “Undo my hands, right now.”
Lucy tried to talk, but her lungs were crushed. Donaldson shifted and she gulped in some air.
“In…the…guitar case…”
“That’s a shame. That means you die right here. Personally, I think suffocation is the way to go. All that panic and struggle. Dragging some poor sap behind you? Where’s the fun in that? Hell, you can’t even see it without taking your eyes off the road, and that’s a dangerous way to drive, girl.”
Lucy’s eyes bulged, her face turning scarlet.
“Poc…ket.”
“Take your time. I’ll wait.”
Lucy managed to fish out the handcuff keys. Donaldson shifted again, giving her a fraction more room, and she unlocked a cuff from one of his wrists.
He winced, his face getting mean.
“Now let me tell you about the survival of the fittest, little lady. There’s a…”
The chain suddenly jerked, tugging Donaldson across the ground. He clutched Lucy.
“Where are the car keys, you stupid bitch?”
“In the ignition…”
“You didn’t set the parking brake! Give me the handcuff key!”
The car crept forward, beginning to pick up speed as it rolled quietly down the road.
The skin of Donaldson’s right leg tore against the ground, peeling off, and the girl pounded on him, fighting to get away.
“The key!” he howled, losing his grip on her. He clawed at her waist, her hips, and snagged her foot.
Lucy screamed when the cuff snicked tightly around her ankle.
“No! No no no!” She tried to sit up, to work the key into the lock, but they hit a hole and it bounced from her grasp.
They were dragged off the dirt and onto the road.
Lucy felt the pavement eating through her trench coat, Donaldson in hysterics as it chewed through the fat of his ass, and the car still accelerating down the five-percent grade.
At thirty miles per hour, the fibers of Lucy’s trench coat were sanded away, along with her camouflage panties, and just as she tugged a folding knife out of her pocket and began to hack at her ankle, the rough county road began to grind through her coccyx.
She dropped the knife and they screamed together for two of the longest miles of their wretched lives, until the road curved and the Honda didn’t, and the car and Lucy and Donaldson all punched together through a guardrail and took the fastest route down the mountain.
THE END
A SOUND OF BLUNDER
“We’re dead! We’re freakin’ dead!”
Mick Brady, known by the criminal underground of Arkham, Pennsylvania as “Mick the Mick,” held a shaking fist in front of Willie Corrigan’s face. Willie recoiled like a dog accustomed to being kicked.
“I’m sorry, Mick!”
Mick the Mick raised his arm and realized that smacking Willie wasn’t going to help their situation. He smacked him anyway, a punch to the gut that made the larger man double over and grunt like a pig.
“Jesus, Mick! You hit me in my hernia! You know I got a bulge there!”
Mick the Mick grabbed a shock of Willie’s greasy brown hair and jerked back his head so they were staring eye-to-eye.
“What do you think Nate the Nose is going to do to us when he finds out we lost his shit? We’re both going to be eating
Willie’s eyes got wide. Apparently the idea of having his dick cut off, boiled, and fed to him on a bun with a side of fries was several times worse than a whack to the hernia.
“We’ll…we’ll tell him the truth. Maybe he’ll understand.”
“You want to tell the biggest mobster in the state that your Nana used a key of uncut Columbian to make a pound cake?”
“It was an accident,” Willie whined. “She thought it was flour. Hey, is that a spider on the wall? Spiders give me the creeps, Mick. Why do they need eight legs? Other bugs only got six.”
Mick the Mick realized that hitting Willie again wouldn’t help anything. He hit him anyway, a slap across his face that echoed off the concrete floor and walls of Willie’s basement.
“Jesus, Mick! You hit me in my bad tooth! You know I got a cavity there!”
Mick the Mick was considering where he would belt his friend next, even though it wasn’t doing either of them any good, when he heard the basement door open.
“You boys playing nice down there?”
“Yes, Nana,” Willie called up the stairs. He nudged Mick the Mick and whispered, “Tell Nana yes.”
Mick the Mick rolled his eyes, but managed to say, “Yes, Nana.”
“Would you like some pound cake? It didn’t turn out very well for some reason, but Bruno seems to like it.”
