Eric Dimbleby - White Out

“Get the fuck out of my house. I know who you are. I know your face,” Sanford said, putting his face close to the door, squinting his eyes as he expected a gunshot blast to come through at any moment. “I know your reputation.”

Silence. Men like Marcus got overly silent when they were about to do something rash. Sanford kneeled in the corner of the closet, taking in the whiff of his old work boots, still covered in mud from the muddy treks around the property, looking for deer to gun down.

“Mr. Pepper,” said Marcus, serene in tone and suddenly polite once again. “Don’t make me kill you and then go looking for the guns. I know you’ve got them. We brought you steaks and booze, as a trade.”

Bullshit, thought Sanford. They wouldn’t trade anything. Men like this only knew how to take.

“We’ll even grill ’em up for you,” one of the other men said. It sounded like he was standing right behind Marcus, probably his number one henchman. “Honest Injun.”

Bullshit.

Marcus spoke again, and Sanford couldn’t help but notice the click of the gun. It spoke much more truth than any of the invaders’ mouths dared to speak. “Listen to me, Mr. Pepper. We’re not here to do you harm. You know that. You old coot, tell us where the guns are. I already said I wouldn’t ask twice, so it looks a lot like you’ve gone and made me a liar. I don’t like to feel like that, you know, like a liar.”

Another click, this one coming from behind Marcus, and then a third click.

Sanford closed his eyes, trying to imagine his life. People always said that a dying person would see their life flash before their eyes right before they passed into the Great Unknown, but it wasn’t happening that way. Try as he might, he could only picture the horrible men on the other side of the door, glaring and plotting. He couldn’t picture his dead wife. He couldn’t picture his kids or grandkids. But he could picture the pain that awaited him, and he could only pray that it would be quick. Painless wasn’t to be expected, but quick would be a blessing.

“Pepperrrrrrrrrr,” Marcus called out now, his voice low and dismal.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sanford Pepper announced, trying to hold his head high even though he was cowering inside of his broom closet.

“Pepperrrrrr,” Marcus repeated, as Sanford heard the door rattle.

A blast of sound crashed in Sanford’s ears. They’d blown out the doorknob, leaving a gaping hole of light spilling on to his face. An eyeball appeared in that hole. Though he couldn’t see anything more than the eye, he knew that the face Marcus made was wholly devious.

“Pepperrrrrrrr.”

The door swung open and Sanford was blinded for a moment. Then came the loud crashing, like thunder inside of a metal box, and Sanford Pepper was no more.

It took longer than expected, but soon enough sleep overtook The Midget Man. His subtle snore was as diminutive as his whole being, just barely a whisper in a world of loud-mouthed men. As she looked up at him, she couldn’t help but think that he was kind of cute when he slept, sort of like a teddy bear nestled inside of a child’s warm bed. Paulie had cuddled many a teddy bear in much the same way that The Midget Man curled up his knees and dozed. He had let his guard down the moment that Annie fell asleep, staring at the dying fire, slumped in his warm chair, probably drunk as a skunk and well fed.

Annie counted to a thousand. As she counted, she kept a monitor on his snore. If it was interrupted before she made it to one thousand, she’d start over again. She wanted to be damn sure he was deep into R.E.M style sleep.

The Midget Man was left as the solitary guard of their piece-of-unwilling-ass trophy, and he was anything but vigilant. It didn’t really matter whether she escaped or not, because what the hell could she do? Report it to the police? No. She had bigger fish to fry, as did they all. It was safe to assume that the world of law and order would not return for some time and when it did, the whole debacle would be wiped away from the slate, as if it never happened. People get crazy in crazy times , the Mayor might say. Or the Governor would pardon all crimes during the storm as being “acts of pure survival.” Both would be applauded for their open mindedness, but neither would have a target on bullish thugs like The Shiny Bald One and his pack of frothy-mouthed wolves. Even if law and order returned in full force, it would be years until these mongrels saw a trial, given the circumstances of processing crimes that happened during the time that God took a snowy white shit on all of mankind.

Annie gathered her strength, pushing her body off the floor. Her muscles cried for relief, but it wouldn’t come. She had to push through. In a way, it felt like being in labor, readying her body to let loose a screaming pink baby out of her birth canal. Even though she’d ended up with a C-Section, she went through enough contractions to know the feeling of a purist test of endurance.

A sticky suction sound made her cringe as she pushed herself into an elevated pushup position. She didn’t dare to assess the damage for fear that it would take away the gusto inside of her.

An echo released inside of her: Paulie.

Paulie.

Paulie was that gusto, riveting her into action.

The Midget Man still snored as Annie came up on to her knees, staring him down. If looks could kill, he might have spontaneously incinerated right then and there. And that thought gave Annie what she needed to attack.

Reaching next to the fire, huddled over like a shell that had just learned to walk, Annie picked up the fire poker and then stuck it into the fire, slowly so as not to stir up the quietude. They always said that the embers and coals at the bottom of a fire pit were the hottest part of the fire, so Annie heeded that advice and jammed the curved tip into it directly, holding it in place for more than a minute. She still stared at her hateful Rapist Number One, pondering where she would stick the hot poker when it was ready.

The poker soon gave off a pulsing glow and Annie knew that the time had come.

She turned towards The Midget Man, careful of her silent footsteps. He still snoozed, deeper than ever. He surely dreamed of something inanely macho; high-fiving his sports heroes or eating a bloody steak off the barbecue, but soon he would be dreaming of something different.

Soon he’d be dreaming of whatever heathen god he worshipped.

Before she could gather her consciousness, to understand the gravity of what she was about to do, she lunged forward with the poker, sinking it deep into The Midget Man’s tender throat. It gave a hot sizzle as it punctured right beneath his Adam’s apple, sinking deeper and reaching the back of his neck. She could feel it push against the top of his backbone. His eyes popped open. His jaw widened as big as an unhinged snake and the tendons in his neck stretched long and tight. The Midget Man tried to say something, but the sound was drowned out by the violent simmer of the skin and tendons on his neck.

“How does it feel?” she asked, nonplussed by the instantaneous feeling of bliss that the kill gave her. It was something she had yearned for all her life, though she knew not the words to express it until now. It was better than sex, remorselessly to exterminate this Lilliputian bug without any remorse. He had taken something pleasant and dreamy away from her. The Midget Man had turned her into a twisted witch, but part of her sort of liked it. Sure, she’d judge herself when the time was right and tranquility overtook her again, when the shit stopped hitting the fan, but in the here and now… she felt like a fucking vamp, like a goddamned rock star.