Bentley Little - The Mailman

If he was here, she would kill him.

She would slit his fucking throat.

He was not in the bedroom. Knife in front of her, poised to stab, she checked the closet, looked under the bed. Nothing. She poked her head in the bathroom. All clear. She knew he was neither in the kitchen nor in the living room because she had been in both.

That left the loft.

She thought she heard a footstep creak upstairs.

Run, a part of her brain -- the intelligent part of her brain -- was telling her. Get out of here now. But she gripped the knife tighter and headed through the kitchen, through the living room, to the stairway. It was day, but the loft's small lone window was not able to illuminate the entire room, and the top of the stairs was in shadow.

She crept upward as quietly as possible, fingers white on the knife handle. She was almost to the top of the stairs and was bending over to keep her head below the level of the floor so he would not be able to see her approach, when her foot landed on a loose board. The stair groaned. She froze, not daring to breathe, but there was no sound from the loft. Holding the knife before her, she dashed up the last five steps, ready to lash out.

The loft was deserted. There was no one there.

Still holding the knife, she made a quick check of the closet, of the area behind Billy's bed, but the loft was empty.

He had gone.

The house was clean.

She made her way downstairs. In the living room, she peered out the window, trying to spot any unnatural objects in the drive or in the surrounding trees and bushes, but the property was disturbed only by a pair of battling blue jays. She double-checked first the front door, then the back, and when she found that both were locked, she allowed herself to relax a little.

Her bladder had been considerably weakened by the tension, and she walked into the bathroom, still clutching the knife. She no longer had a death grip on the handle, but she was taking no chances -- she might have missed him in her cursory examination of the forest in back. He could have been hiding behind a tree, knowing she would not go out of the house to search for him, and he might be waiting outside right now, listening in at the door, waiting for precisely a moment like this, a moment when she was vulnerable, to come inside and attack.

She left the bathroom door open and quickly pulled down her pants, sitting on the toilet.

The mailman stepped out of the shower.

She screamed in terror, dropping the knife, then immediately reached down with scrambling fingers to pick it up off the floor. He stepped on top of it, his shiny black shoes completely covering the blade. He was fully dressed, wearing his pressed postal uniform, but she could see the huge bulge in his trousers as he stood in front of her. She covered her exposed lap with one hand and held the other tremblingly in front of her to push him away.

She had not stopped screaming, but he did not seem to mind. He smiled at her. "Nice bush," he said, and the crudity of his words, juxtaposed against the smoothness of his voice, was somehow more terrifying than if he had simply come out and attacked her.

Why the hell hadn't she checked the shower?

He bent down to pick up the knife and she leapt off the toilet and out of the bathroom in a frantic, instinctive escape attempt. Her body slammed against his in the constricted space before the doorway, and for a sickening second as she flew past him, she felt his clothed hardness against her naked skin. And then she was across the hall and in the bedroom, slamming the door shut. She fumbled with the knob for a second before turning the lock. Her eyes darted around the room as she searched for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon.

Outside, in the hall, she heard a clattering sound as the mailman threw the knife across the floor into the kitchen. Obviously, he didn't want to kill her. Then what did he want?

She pressed her shoulder against the bedroom door and let out an involuntary sound of raw animal fear. She was too afraid to cross the room to reach the telephone. The door lock was cheap and flimsy, and if she let up on her support for even a second, he would be inside.

_Inside_.

She closed her eyes, willing herself not to be overwhelmed by the fear.

"Get out of my house," she ordered. Her voice was wavering,unforceful . "Get out of here now!"

"You want it," he said, his voice coolly unperturbed. "You know you want it."

"Get the fuck out of here!" she screamed. "I'm calling the police."

His voice dropped an octave to a tone of low insinuating intimacy. "Do you like your mail delivered at the back door?" he asked.

"Help!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. She meant for the scream to be loud and piercing, a cry of terror and rage, but the shout was almost a sob, desperation eating away at its edges, and she abruptly fell silent, unwilling to let the mailman sense her weakness, the stubbornness within her unwilling to concede anything to the monster outside the door.

"Do you like blood?" the mailman asked in that same low intimate tone. He was right next to the crack of the door; she could hear the sound of his dry lips pressing together as he spoke. "Do you like warm, thick, salty blood?"

"Help me!" she cried, and this time it really was a sob. She heard the mailman's low answering chuckle.

And the sound of a zipper being pulled down.

"You know you want it," he repeated.

She held her breath.

There was the quiet slapping sound of skin against skin.

He was playing with himself.

"Billy likes his mail delivered upstairs and at the back door."

That gave her the strength that had been eluding her. White-hot anger coursed through her veins. "You son of a bitch!" she screamed; "Don't you dare touch him!"

From outside the house, from the rear, she heard Doug's voice. "Trish!"

Again: "Trish!" He was running; the amplification of his words came at a pace much faster than it would have had he been moving more slowly. Something had happened. She could hear the fear in his voice, and the burning anger. Something had happened.

But she was just thankful to hear his voice at all. She was saved.

Whatever else had happened, he was here to save her. "In here!" she yelled as loud as she could. "I'm in the bedroom!"

She had not heard the mailman leave, but from the silence on the other side of the door she knew he was gone.

There were heavy running steps on the porch. "Trish!" Doug called frantically. The screen door slammed shut.

"I'm in here!" She fumblingly opened the bedroom door and flew out of the room, sobbing. "I --"

Her sobs stopped when she saw that Doug was carrying Billy into the living room. She stopped breathing. Time stood still. The boy's unmoving body was draped limply over his father's outstretched arms, and for one sick second she was reminded of a scene from _Frankenstein_. She had to will herself into action. She snapped out of her trance and ran forward, putting an ear to her son's chest. "What happened?" she demanded.

"I found him in The Fort." Doug's voice was a shocked emotionless monotone. "The mailman found him first."

Tritia noticed for the first time that Billy was wearing no pants.

Doug placed his son carefully on the couch. Billy's skin was grayish, pale. His lips moved silently in unbroken fever sentences. Tritia could not make out what he was saying.

"When we get to the hospital, I'm calling the police," Doug said in the same flat tone. "And if they won't go after him, I'll kill him myself."

Tritia felt Billy's forehead with a trembling hand. "What happened?"

"I don't know. He was lying in The Fort like this. His pants were off and his underwear was bloody and there was a . . . a wedding dress next to him."