Blood Red

Looking down at the ruins of a girl he’d stopped for driving badly, Brian Freemont felt at peace for the first time in several days.

IV

A house is not always a home.

Angie Freemont was learning that and learning to live with it. Brian used to be a sweet man, attentive and loving. Something about working on the police force had changed him, and not for the better.

She was in the kitchen and cooking for him, preparing his early morning dinner. It was something she always insisted on doing, having his meals ready for him. She felt she had to, not because it was her wifely duty, but because he was the one providing for her and he was the one working his ass off.

She chopped the onions with the skill of a chef, which was appropriate enough. She’d worked as a line cook all the way through high school and had done it through her three years of college, too. In her mother’s words, she came from a long line of have-nots and in order to get what she wanted she had to work for a living.

Not working was driving her crazy, but the baby’s health had to be considered and even now her unborn child was considered at risk. The pregnancy had not been an easy one, and it wasn’t getting any less difficult. Something about the blood types for her and Brian put their child at risk. There were medicines to take, and endless warnings that she couldn’t get too active.

That hadn’t made Brian a very happy man. He was constantly horny. She was too, but now with the baby on the way, she normally felt too crappy to do anything about it. Besides, it was hard to get down and get funky all over her husband when there was a basketball stuck inside her stomach and her back felt like she’d been wearing a damned saddle all day.

She sautéed the onions in butter and tossed in the meat she’d been marinating. He liked cheese steaks. It was Friday night and he was stuck working the worst shift the department could throw at him. He told her he’d asked for a switch to dayshift half a dozen times, but so far he was still stuck with the shit detail.

The peppers went in next, and their aroma permeated the air. The spatula cut through the already sliced meat and blended in the vegetables as the steak cooked. Next came a little olive oil, and then the white American cheese. The crusty bread was done already, and merely waited for her husband’s return to the house. Finally she tossed in the finely sliced mushrooms and stirred again before deftly flipping the meat into the hard rolls.

He would be home soon, and dinner was done. She slipped on her jacket after everything was set up and then stepped outside to catch a breath of clean air and to cool off. The house was nice, but she always felt like she was going to melt if she spent too much time in the kitchen.

They came for her in the darkness; a little boy of maybe nine or ten and a young girl who was only a few years older.

She never even had a chance to scream before they attacked, inhumanly strong hands clutching at her arms and pinning her to the hard wood of the porch, pressing her belly into the wood as they tore at her coat.

Angie fought hard; straining her wrists to break free of the demons and grunting as the girl finally ripped the fabric of her jacket away and bared her skin.

She should have been able to take them, should have been able to at least slap the little boy away from her and fight the girl. She had never been a weak woman, physically, and she could still put a hurting on a man a hundred pounds bigger than she was, as Brian had learned the one time he decided to slap her.

But the kids were too strong and seemed to feel nothing when she managed to land a kick. The girl looked at her with dead eyes. Dead, as in glazed over and dry enough that it looked painful to stare into them.

Angie finally found enough breath to scream, wrenching her hands free of the monster’s grasp. She landed a beautiful punch in the girl’s face and felt the delicate, teenaged nose break under her knuckles.

The little boy only seemed intent on getting her clothes off of her, and his fingers found purchase enough to rip her blouse open in an explosion of buttons and thread.

The girl she’d hit kept moving in, her hands bruising Angie’s flesh, and Angie screamed again as she was pinned for the second time. Her breasts were tender, made sensitive by the changes brought on from her pregnancy. She screamed a third time when she felt the boy’s teeth break the skin around her nipple.

And then the teenaged girl with the blond hair and mashed nose hit her hard enough to knock her unconscious.

She felt herself moved, heard the girl tell the boy to stop being a pig and heard the boy make a rude comment that had both of them laughing. The world faded in and out for her, an endless blur of motion that ceased only when the ringing in her head got too extreme.

The wind around her became a roaring voice. No, not the wind: the sound of crashing waves.