Norman Partridge - Slippin' into Darkness

Amy’s heels clicked lightly over the parking lot blacktop, marking a completely confident rhythm that came to an abrupt end the moment she noticed the man sitting on the front bumper of her Mercedes.

Cautiously, Amy moved forward. She threaded the keys between her fingers and made a fist around the key ring, a tip she’d gleaned from a rape-prevention video.

Political correctness aside, Amy generally believed in non-racial stereotypes. The guy sitting on the Mercedes was fat. Not just a little tubby. He was gross. The Mercedes actually leaned to one side under his bulk.

Amy concluded that the man was perfect rapist material.

He glanced up at Amy as if she’d spoken. There was something familiar about his blue eyes, which were somehow scheming and innocent at the same time.

The fat man was the first to look away. Amy had won the stare-down. The blob had recognized her strength, just in that glance. Maybe he would shuffle off, knowing that she would put up a fight.

Okay. Maybe he knew that. But, very suddenly, even with the sharp keys fisted in her grip. Amy wasn’t so sure that she knew-

The fat man removed his left shoe.

He held it up, at arm’s length, well away from his nose.

He shook out a pebble.

Amy almost laughed. Sighing, the man slipped on his shoe and rose from the bumper. The Mercedes suspension groaned in perfect harmony.

Amy hurried by, unlocked the door, and got in. Didn’t bother to lock the door. Keyed the engine. Shoved the Sade tape into the cassette deck.

A sphere of light exploded before her eyes. She blinked. Glowing white spots danced around the fat man. The spots faded. The fat man didn’t.

Sade was singing about a finger on a trigger. Amy was shaking. There was a camera in the fat man’s hands, and that was bad.

His hauntingly blue eyes were all over her.

That was worse.

The fat man grinned, leaning on the hood, the fingers of his big hands tapping as if he could crumple the metal.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. This couldn’t be happening. Amy had been so careful. Her husband hadn’t shown the slightest indication of suspicion.

The fat man came around the driver’s side of the car.

Amy was tempted to floor the gas pedal, speed away.

But nothing could be wrong. There had to be a mistake. She’d been careful. Her husband called every evening at seven. She’d never missed a single call. There was nothing to worry-

The fat man tapped on the window, his grin holding firm.

The camera lens glinted. Impulsively, Amy lowered the window. “I don’t know what my husband is paying you,” she began, “but I’m willing to pay more for your silence.”

The fat man’s eyes narrowed. His doughy face seemed to sag.

His big voice trembled with sudden disappointment.

“You don’t remember me,” he said.

The scene was a perennial favorite in the Elizabeth Montgomery TV movies that dominated the airwaves in the seventies. Elizabeth-she of the perky WASP nose and voluptuous WASP body and honey-blonde WASP hair-is alone in the house, and suddenly there’s a home invasion by four dangerous men. Peril, beer commercial. Titillation, tampon commercial. An ABC-TV Movie of the Week. Only Shutterbug wasn’t Elizabeth Montgomery. His hair was ginger-brown and kinky, his nose was flat and wide…and he couldn’t thumb a remote and escape this scenario.

A beer can whizzed past Shutterbug’s head. He jerked backward reflexively, a jumpy batter knocked easily out of the box.

Resembling a spacecraft from a very small planet, the beer can entered the living room. It soared across the pool table and then did a neat little dip, avoiding Griz Cody’s flailing hands as if they were deadly asteroids. Griz missed the catch by a good two inches. The beer continued on until it hit a wall as solid as the shields of the Starship Enterprise. By some measure of physics that no one in the room could begin to understand, the tab burst and suds showered Shutterbug’s stereo, which was pounding out the rhythm of some ersatz Beach Boys’ paean to beach babies in old L.A.

From the kitchen, Bat Bautista laughed.

“High and outside,” Griz Cody grunted, embarrassment coloring his face.

Bat sneered. “It caught the corner, easy. I haven’t lost my touch. Haven’t lost a second since high school. Still have an arm like Nolan Ryan’s.”

“C’mon, Bat. I’m thirsty.”

“Shit. You catch your beer like Derwin and Todd did, then. Bare-hand that little fucker. Or else you admit that the last one was a strike, and I’ll go easy with the next one, you wuss.”

“Like I said: high and out-”

Another can whizzed past Shutterbug’s head. Griz Cody made a pathetic dive for it. The sound of his knees popping was unfortunate percussion to the twangy surfer beat. Cody missed the catch by a mile. The house shook as he hit the floor. The beer can smacked against the CD player, and suddenly the ersatz Beach Boys were history.

There was a brief moment of silence.

“Hey!” Shutterbug’s voice quavered. “C’mon, now! This is my house!”

Nobody noticed Shutterbug’s dismay. Nobody even heard him. In fact, Todd Gould was still listening to the music even though the CD player had died. He was laughing at his own joke, singing “Breach baby breach baby” to the accompaniment of a nonexistent Fender beat.

Wild laughter erupted from the kitchen. Another beer sailed past Shutterbug and hit Griz Cody in the back, burrowing into the former football lineman’s flabby love handles, bouncing free as if launched from a sentient trampoline.

A startled yelp escaped from the human trampoline’s lips. He jiggled on the floor, his nearly feminine breasts seizing up. Then he swore and tried to rise, but his knees popped again and that only made him swear some more. But he kept at it, cartilage grinding audibly, one chubby hand on the floor, the other on a stereo shelf and- “Hey!” Shutterbug said. “Watch it!”-the shelf tore loose from the wall and sent a seven hundred and fifty dollar German turntable crashing onto the hardwood floor.

As Shutterbug watched, horrified, the tone-arm kicked off and swept to one side, leaving a long white scratch on the white pine floorboards.

Dead needle, too. The turntable had cost seven-fifty, but the needle itself was priced at-

“Think fast, ’bug!”

The words came from the kitchen. Shutterbug whirled, but the beer can was already there, a hard metal punch collapsing his solar plexus. Shutterbug caved in. He couldn’t breathe. He bumped the pool table. The eight ball tumbled into the side pocket as Shutterbug went down hard, cracking his head on the floor. He was out for a second or two, but just a second or two, because the first thing he was aware of when he came to was Todd Gould shouting, “Three Mississippi…four Mississippi…”

Shutterbug didn’t move. He had the wild idea that if he moved his head he would leave a big scratch on the floor and ruin his needle. Then he realized that idea was just plain crazy and he tried to move and found that he couldn’t. He lay there on the floor, prone and helpless as a bug turned on its back, Todd Gould’s face hanging over his like a big white moon.

Like a cue ball, Shutterbug thought. Todd was a cue ball and Shutterbug was a big black-

No. That was crazy, too. Shutterbug blinked back tears. Man, how it hurt. Not his gut, but his head. A divot of pain throbbed on his skull. The spot where his head had smacked the floorboards was-

“Five motherfucker!” Derwin MacAskill picked up the count. “Six motherfucker!”

– not floorboards, cement. That was right. It was a cement floor. And it wasn’t a beer can that had hit him, it was Joaquin “Bat” Bautista’s fist.