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Cut And Run

Chapter 10

4/3/2004

The final chapter.
The fiction begins...

She got into her little grey VW, started the engine and warmed it up. She was in a really foul mood. She’s not sure where these moods come from. She always thought her father she never really knew, was bi-polar, or manic/depressive in "old school" terms. She got along OK with him and thought it was because she had gone to all the effort to find him, was his only child, and he was careful around her. He did not bad talk her mother much – unlike her mother who bad talked about everyone the minute they walked out of the room. Her mother had raised her. She only knew her dad a few years of her whole life. They were both dead now and she knew this: she missed her dad way more. He had never really done anything unkind to her, and accepted and loved her no matter what. He did not smother her with his opinions. “Jeez, where did all this crap come from this morning?,” she muttered to her self. She put her car in gear, took off, headed for the valley, still muttering to her self. She wondered, does everyone talk to themselves like this? She figured out a long time ago, she said things out loud, because she did not think she would really hear her own feelings if she just let them race through her mind in the lightening quick fashion that her thoughts raced. She also thought that’s why she liked downers and painkillers so much. They helped slow things down for her, and helped dull the pain of some of her memories.

She eased her car onto Highway 101, going south. As she crossed over the bridge over Santa Clara River, and passed the never ending reconstruction over the river, she "felt" a car go by on her right side, and it seemed the driver had his head turned hard, her way, staring at her. When she looked directly at him, he was staring ahead. “Shit, I am so miserable today that my head is gonna start playing games with me,” she muttered. But she was starting to feel those old familiar alarms starting to ring inside her head again. They had never been wrong so far... Maybe it was time to go and get her head checked and shrunk again... Freaking paranoid.

“You know, some day I gotta do something about this gutter mouth of mine, but what would people do if I stopped talking like this? Been doing it all my life, and it’s part of how I express myself.” Wow, the committee in her head was alive and working overtime today. She could not wait till she could afford a radio for this car. She got the car for 400 bucks and it was one of the best little cars she ever bought, but there were things to fix. The little engine was sound, and it could race like a bat out of hell. Once she got the heating problem fixed, she could haul ass all over the place. The creep was looking at her again; she could feel it. She shot her head left and he was staring forward! But the alarms in her head got a few decibels louder...

“Crap! Why am I getting paranoid at this stage of my life? Old man was nuts, I do better than him but I’m probably freaking nuts too! Shit, if I’m not how come my life has always been so hard?!” This is not the first time those thoughts crossed her mind and escaped her lips, into words on the flight. Her old man had been in and out of Camarillo State Hospital as a psych patient almost all of his life. Is sadness genetic, she wondered???

She shifted gears almost absent mindedly as traffic pulsed, first slower, then quicker, on the 101 South. And she would take sips of her Diet Coke. Like a few measly calories were really gonna make a difference to her bulky little frame. Rubenisk is how she described herself. Ift sounded better than "fat." But at least she was trying.

Somewhere near southern Camarillo, almost at the bottom of the Conejo grade, she felt him again, and she snapped her head to the right and there he was, this time staring at her with a sick kind of smile on his face. He had sunglasses on and she could not see his eyes, but she thought if she could, they would be as sick as his grin. “What the hell is his problem?!” She gunned her engine up the grade and she was gone. She hated to do that, because as well as it ran, she did what ever she could to not force it to heat up more, till she gets the new radiator and thermostat it needed. His car could not get up to her speed, and she looked in her rear view mirror in time to see two semi trucks changing lanes, blocking him, and forcing him to slow down even more. And he could not see her pull clear to the right and race down the hill, and take the first exit. She whipped to the right and pulled into the gas station, and behind the building and waited, for about 20 minutes. What was his problem? Her heart was pounding and the committee in her head was babbling at high speed about all the possibilities… Someone she knew? Someone the vato loco had finally sent? Naw, things were cool between them by this time in their relationship. They understood each other and were down for one another. Who? Why were the alarms in her head screaming at her now...???

She finally got back on Highway 101 South, and started towards the valley again. She had to hook up there on time. Loco was counting on her. He always did. And it’s always something. This was not helping her ugly mood. Then, she started thinking about the freaks she had dealt with before in her life. The old man, in his seventies, who used to French kiss her, in his garage, when she was just about 5 years old. There was the husband of one of her mother’s friends, who used to expose himself to her, about the same time in her early childhood life. Then, there was the father of her one of her best friends, who molested her for years. Her two step-brothers, who both had assaulted her at different times, and the rape, and then the guys she dated, who used her, and then called her promiscuious! And they weren't? Nope. Men who sleep around are MEN.

What was it about her??? Or was the world that full of sick people that she just kept bumping into them. But when she got right down to her feelings, she blamed her mother for not caring enough to keep her out of harms’ way. When she had tried to talk to her mother about it. Her mother had said she had put up with stuff like that when she lived at the orphanage and got farmed out to local families, when crops had to be harvested. Shit! If she knew these things happened in the world, how could she not protect her against this sickness in the world? Her radar worked great, though it had not always kept her out of trouble. Sometimes her radar went off just in time to tell her some sick shit was gonna happen, like right now... What the hell was wrong with her mother?

She finally arrived in the valley, and headed towards North Hills. They said this was going to be at a remote spot, so she had printed her map out on Map-quest. She picked the map up off of the passenger seat, where she had put it last night, to make sure she did not forget it today. And she laughed - cuz in some ways, she was like a freaking girl scout. Always prepared. Well at least she tried to be. She started to read the map. She made every turn, remembering all the land marks they had told her to look for. She was stressing now, because she hated to be late. She had made such a fuss, and really pitched a fit when they kept her waiting. She always was worried about being too obsious. Like everyone in the world paid as much attention to their surroundings, just like she did. She grew up in a household that the minute you walked in the door, your radar better be on, and you better know which way to move, and how fast, in order to avoid any thing bad going down. Finally! She arrived at the first security gate they had told her about. There would be three, total. This place was deep into one of the canyons, but it was very private. “I bet they pay through the nose for this real estate!” she thought to herself.

She got out of her car, she worked the key pad with the codes they had given her and the gate swung open. She hurried back to her car and got in and drove. They said it would be about 5 miles into the canyon to the second gate. It was a nice little dirt road, well traveled so not much dust, lots of oak trees, lots of scrub brush, and a little bit of wild life on the sides of the road, and lots of trash dumping. “Hmmm, bet that drops the price tag some.” She could hear birds singing in the trees. She loved birds. Man, they better get somebody to wash her car for her when she gets back, and oh yeah, tell him you won't ever make this trip again. She was getting a case of shakey nerves. Made her wonder just how big the pick up was gonna be, if they put her through all this? Better be worth it and they better give her, her fair share.

She slowed the car down, no sense in kicking up more dust than she had to. She took her mind of her worries, by singing some old songs she knew, she slowed her breathing down, and he was beginning to relax a little, now that she knew she would not be late after all. maybe that's what was getting to her, that freak had spooked her and made her take some time off of the run and she was absolutely anal about being on time. Chronically early, everywhere she went. She had an aversion to being late. Soon she was at the 2nd gate. She put her car in neutral, pulled up hard on the hand brake and got out of the car with paper in hand and was looking at the code, walking up to the gate.

Suddenly off to the left, she heard a man’s voice, “Nice day to get some, huh?”

She flet like she had just jumped out of her skin! Nerves raw, and the voice sounded much louder than he had intended, she was sure. When she turned to the left, to see what freak would start off a conversation like that, her heart thumped hard once in her chest, and then took off racing. It was the freeway freak. Shit! How had he known where she was going??? Was he from her neighborhood, had he seen the map that had lain on her passenger seat all night the night befor??? Who was he??? She had never seen him before, she knew that. Where the hell was his car? How had he known the gate codes, unless he got here early enough to hike, or bike his way in? Crap!!!!! And he was ugly, in the way, that is not about physical aspects of a person. There was this aura around him, this sick aura, that she could only liken to the smell of death. She had worked with death, when she was an ambulance technician, way back when...

He advanced on her, and she squared her shoulders some and barked at him, “So, what the fuck! What is your problem???? You better back the fuck up dude, you don’t know who you are messing with! And I got friends up in this canyon, and they are expecting me like right now! Back up!!! And he kept advancing towards her.

He laughed. More like a noise like a laugh escaped his vocal cords, but it did not really sound human. His laugh was as sick as his smile. Then he pulled off his sunglasses and she gazed into the eyes of the sickest man she had ever met in her life. She knew that, the instant she looked into the windows of his soul from hell. This was going to be rough and she broke out into an instant sweat. And she tensed and she tried to make her self look bigger and tougher than she ever had in her whole life. And she knew deep down inside, that would not matter at all. This was one she was only gonna get out alive from, by outwitting this deamon that was on her trail and closing the gap between them.

She started backing up towards her car, even though she knew, she would not be able to use it to get away. There was no where to flip a u-turn, and there was the other gate, and this dirt road. The odds were really against her this time. “O.K. God! Is this the day I die? Is this the way it’s gonna be for me???" her voice screamed inside her head.

“Well, what’s the problem little lady. You don’t want none today? Well, where I come from, if a man wants something, he just takes it!” He slowly advanced towards her. He was enjoying scaring the crap out of her. It was part of his game. And she knew, if he got a hold of her, she was dead. She backed up closer to her car, she turned head just to get a glimpse of her car, more in her periphial vision, she did not see anything that would help. Finally, she took her eyes off of him for a second, cuz her stomach was starting to roll. She shot a quick look to her right, and caught glimpse of her tire iron right behind her drivers seat in her car. One of those things she was supposed to do, put everything where it belonged and tighten it all down, but she had been too busy to take care of these little things...

She took a chance. She bolted for her car, and he was on her! He tackeled her. But she fell close enough, and the little VW was low enough, and close to the to the ground, so that she wrapped her hand around the tire iron, and yanked it from the back of her little car and she turned and hit him! Bang, right upside his head! But it was not hard enough. Damn! She was too close, and she saw, now he was even more angry than he was, with his sickness alone, that made him stalk and capture people, like a hunter that enjoys the kill. But she looked into his sick eyes, and screamed, screamed so loud that it felt like her throat would be raw and sore for the rest of her life, “Fuck you! I ain’t gonna run no more!”

She took aim at his throat, and grabbed the iron harder, and she smashed him, hard, right across the front of his throat! She saw shock and surprise looking back at her. She then started jabbing the front of his neck with the flatter end of the iron, like a boxer delivering one sharp jab after another, she kept punching at this throat. She atabbed at him again, and again, and again, till he went limp, and his hands and arms let go of her. She slipped out of his arms, and looked at him as blood ran from his neck, spreading out onto the dirt, she watched his back to see if he was breathing at all. There were nasty deep cuts and gouges to his throat, and she figured his larnyx had been crushed by the iron. He was not even gurgling now. She had crushed his airway, for sure, and blood ran from the cuts, and from his mouth. The shear force of the iron hitting him again and again, probably made him bite his own tounge. He had not expected her to fight back that hard. She was covered in his blood. She looked at him and said in a deadly calm voice, “Nope. I ain’t gonna run no more.”

She scooted on the ground, hearing her own ragged breath, still holding onto the iron, and she sat with her knees drawn up close to her chest leaning her back against her car, and she just stared at the body on the ground in front of her, while she caught her breath. When she had watched him for a while and there was no movement at all, (she was in shock and finding it hard to believe that she had just fought and won, a fight to the death of one of them) she got into her car, turned it off, and reached into her purse. She took out her cell phone, and dialed 911. Words just kind of poured out her, and tears welled in her eyes, “Yeah. I just got attacked. I think he’s dead. I couldn’t run, he trapped me in this canyon, he followed me here. I tried to tell him, but he jumped me and I just couldn’t take it and I slashed him. I cut him and the blood is still running. Yeah, I need help. Well, yeah I can tell you where I am, you know where the dirt roads run off of Mullholland, and there’s the road with the private gates, three of them yeah… No he's not moving anymore. Yeah, I think he's dead. No, I don't know who he is, but he followed me here, No, I told you I don't know who he is, Hell no, I'm not gonna take my eyes off of him! Could you just ask me the rest of the questions when you get here? Please, just get here.”

They told her help would soon be there, to stay on the phone with them and not to go anywhere near the guy. She smiled in a very sad way, took a long slow breath and said, “I don't think you need to worry about me. Just get here, OK?"

The End.

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"There was a child went forth every day, and the first object he looked upon and recieved with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became... And that object became part of him for the day... or for many years or stretching cycles of years." Walt Whitman