BooBerry
02-06-2009, 05:34 PM
THE BAD HIT - BIG BEAR, CA - 2 HOURS AFTER RISING
The private cabin sat in the California forest, about a mile or so from the lake. Towering pines rose up overhead and surrounded the vacation home, hiding it from the rest of the world.
But Denny had found it easily enough, and now he sat waiting, the silenced revolver Max had given him back in L.A resting in his lap.
‘50,000 for him and whoever is there with him. Go in, shoot, get out. I’ll handle the rest.’
That’s what he’d been told before getting into the private plane that took him to Big Bear Lake. Beyond that he knew nothing about what was going on, and that was the way everyone, including himself, wanted it.
The hour changed on the young man’s cell phone and Denny got out of the rented car. He double checked the gun, making sure that the bullets were loaded properly and the silencer was fastened correctly, then looked to the front door of the quiet cabin.
Inside, one would might expect to find a happy family, taking a relaxing weekend vacation together. Or even an older couple, long past retired, who sought to spend their last few summers in the placidity of the lake town.
But Denny knew otherwise. He knew inside he’d find Milton Andrews, one of the new premier porn kings of Southern California, an maybe an actor or two. He would find them, round them up, and take care of them all.
Denny walked up to the front porch and wiped his sweaty palms against his shirt. He giggled the handle and found the door unlocked. It told him that either Milton was comfortably unaware here, or that he was expecting someone. Denny hoped that the man wasn’t expecting him. That would’ve complicated everything.
Willing his senses to work in overdrive, Denny took in a deep breath and pushed the door open.
Immediately, he knew Milton wasn’t alone in the cabin. He could hear a woman’s heavy moans coming from one of the back rooms, accompanied by a man’s throaty grunts. There was talking too, but Denny couldn’t make out the words. Still, there was no denying the unmistakable sounds of profitable sex.
Both nervous and excited, Denny stepped inside and let the gun lead the way.
He followed it into the living room, and past the open wall kitchen to his right. The wood furniture gave the home a natural scent that threatened to make Denny, a city boy always and forever, sneeze. He held his breath and wrinkled his nose, and the feeling disappeared.
The hallway was darker than the rest of the cabin and made Denny feel like it was suddenly hours later. He walked much slower and gave his eyes enough time to adjust to the sudden absence of light.
The sounds from the back room grew louder and he knew it was almost time. At the end of the hall, Denny saw a door that was cracked open just the slightest bit. Yellow light poured out of it
“There. Flip over,” he heard Milton’s nasally voice instruct one of the actors. “Nice. Very good.”
When he reached the end of the hall, Denny stopped and peered through the open door with one eye.
There were three of them. Milton of course, busy filming, and two actors who were busy fucking on a large, flannel covered bed. The woman, a boring blonde bombshell type, still wore red cowboy boots, and the man, a muscled hunk probably twice her age, still had on his Stetson hat.
Denny was turned on. He’d seen hundreds of porn flicks since working for Max, but watching the filming of one had always different, always more stimulating than the finished product. He yearned to keep watching until they finished, but knew he couldn’t. As excited as he already was, this was going to be difficult enough. He pushed the door open with the nuzzle of his revolver. It creaked.
The actors, both who’d been facing the door at the time, stopped mid-scene when they saw Denny and the gun.
“Oh God!,” the woman screamed, nearly throwing the man off of her as she backed up against the headboard of the bed, “Help!”
Milton pulled his eyes away from his camera’s viewfinder and turned around. He saw the gun first, Denny second, but the portly man looked more confused than afraid.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Denny shot Milton point blank in the head, just above the right eye. The two on the bed began to scream and call for help.
Denny looked back at the bed and watched the couple cower next to each other. Together, they held a sheet up over their naked bodies, suddenly modest. Or maybe they think it would protect them? Denny didn’t care to think about it any longer than that, it was time to end this and go home.
He aimed the gun at them and squeezed off the remaining rounds. The bullets bore into the actors and their screams died along with them. The bodies slumped into each other and blood began soaking through the sheet that covered them. The man’s Stetson hat slid off his head and covered his face.
Denny waited for a second, just in case one of them was still alive somehow, then shoved the empty gun into the waistband of his jeans. He walked back into the hall, stopping just before the front door, and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. He flipped it open and dialed the only number that was programmed into it.
It rang, and after a moment Max‘s voicemail picked up. “Leave a message.”
“It’s done,” Denny said plainly, “No problems. Just tell your guys not to forget anything. Especially the tapes.”
Denny hung up and wondered if he should go back for Milton’s recordings himself. Max had said to touch nothing, but if those tapes every got out, Denny’s face was going to be on them.
He decided against it. Max was a real asshole sometimes, and Denny had thought about plugging him a few times as well, but the man was also smart. And he’d never gone back on his word or broken a promise. At least as far as Denny knew. He trusted Max to take care of the situation and stepped back out onto the front porch.
A noise came from the bedroom just as he moved to pull the front door shut. Denny froze and looked back inside, down the hall. He heard the noise again.
A heavy sighing sound, like a long loud yawn. Had he left someone alive?
Denny desperately just wanted to get back into the car and go, but he fought the urge. If anyone had survived, they could go to the police. They could testify. Denny could be locked up for the rest of his life, sentenced to death even. And that was assuming Max’s other punks didn’t handle him first.
Denny drew the gun out again and dug deep into his pocket. Inside, he fished out the four extra bullets he‘d brought along with him and loaded them into the chamber. Then, he walked down the hall and stepped back into the room.
Impossible.
It was the only way he could explain it. How in the hell could he have left one alive, much less two. It was simply impossible.
But there they were, the two porn stars, wriggling around on the mattress, their bodies caught up in the blood-drenched sheet.
The man who’d worn the Stetson saw him first and groaned. He reached out for Denny and rose up on the bed, only to tumble off and smack his face into the wooden floor. The woman noticed him too, and she held her arms out to him as if she wanted a hug.
Denny aimed at her first and fired another round into her breast. She jerked back, and her head knocked into the headboard, but she didn’t die. Her eyes stayed on him, and she still moved. Her legs still twisted up in the sheet, her fingers all moving like tiny snakes.
The man was suddenly up now, and charging into Denny, slamming him against the doorframe.
Denny yelled and fought to hold the other man back as he clawed and gnashed at him. Back on the bed, he saw the woman crawl off the bed and head for them. He knew he needed to get out.
The gun, although pinned between the two of them, was angled more so at the other man. Denny feared shooting himself, but fired anyway. He could feel the heat of from the two bullets that shot up and into the man’s chest.
The naked and bullet ridden man stumbled back. Denny shoved him further and sent him flying into the dresser. He aimed the barrel of the gun back down at him, ready to fire off the last bullet he had, when the woman below him grabbed his leg.
“Shit!”
As she tried to bite, Denny ripped his leg out of her hands and backed out of the room. As he ran down the hall, he could hear the others still moving around back in the room. They seemed to moan as well.
Nearly jumping off the porch, Denny ran back to the car, fumbling for the keys in back pocket. He pulled them free and pressed Unlock on the control key. The vehicle beeped and he yanked the driver’s door open and threw himself inside. As he slammed the door shut and locked it back, he saw the bloody porn stars come out of the cabin. They spotted him immediately.
Denny tried to put the key into the ignition, but his shaking hands turned the mundane task into a science. The keys fell from his hand and into the cup holder.
The people he killed slammed into the side of the car.
“Fuck!”
They began to hammer on it, clawing at the glass, eager to get to him. Denny gripped the key tightly and shoved it into the ignition. He wasted no time. As the engine rumbled to life, he peeled away from the cabin, leaving a cloud of dust and leaves in the air behind him.
In the rearview mirror, he saw the naked couple still chasing after him, their mouths open wide and their arms up and reaching. They vanished from sight as Denny pulled off the cabin’s dirt drive and back onto the main road.
As he sped down through the woods, he pulled the cell back out. He dialed Max’s number again but, just like before, got his voicemail.
“Fuck, Max! Listen, I don’t know what happened, but I shot those fuckers okay!? I shot them and they’re still up and moving around. This is so fucked up…I… I don‘t…”
Denny stopped for a second, thinking about what had just happened. There had to be an explanation to this and, along with it, a solution. He and Max could sort this out, just like all those times before. Denny regained his composure and finished his message.
“Look, I’m going to disappear for a while Max, and I’ll call you. Or you call me if you hear anything.”
He shut the phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat. As he headed further down the road, he saw more and more cabins. He knew he was getting closer to the lake. He cut his speed in half, careful to avoid any unwanted attention.
Driving past a clearing in the forest, a flicker of bright orange light caught the corner of his eye. He glanced over and he watched it glimmer against the large blue lake.
Denny slowed the car down even more, focusing on the strange light, then eventually pulled over on the shoulder of the road. He stepped out of the car and walked around to the passenger side for a better view of the lake below.
A black trail rose from the orange light, and it took him a second to realize it was a fire. A boat sat in the water, burning to all hell, right in the middle of the lake. And there were people all around it, fifty of them at least, swimming.
Denny knew this wasn’t right. He knew that there was something going on down there that he couldn’t see from this far away. He moved down the hillside for a closer look.
Carefully, he used the rocks and trees to make his way down, and within five minutes he found himself only a hundred feet from the shoreline.
Denny looked out into the water, saw the people splashing and realized that they weren’t just swimming. They were trying to reach the other boats and yachts that littered the lake. He heard some of them screaming, others yelling. Some of the people already on their boats helps those in the water get onboard. They tossed ropes and leaned over to pull them up. But some didn’t. Some of them ignored those people who swam around their floating vehicles.
There were gunshots. Denny searched the lake and saw a man near the shore, standing on a tiny boat. He was aiming down into the water, at the people crying out for his help, and firing at them.
Soon enough, bodies began to float freely on the surface of the water.
“What the fuck…,” Denny sighed.
He heard splashing nearby. To his right, he saw a young couple run into the water, seemingly coming from the small camp ground that was set up close by.
“Hey!” he called out to them, “ What’s going on?”
The woman ignored him and dove into the water, but the man looked back at him. His face was full of worry and fear. “Get to one of the boats! Hurry!”
“Why?”
“They’re coming! They’re in the woods!”
The guy dived into the water and Denny watched the couple swim to the nearest yacht. An older man helped pull them onboard, and they all looked back at him. They called out to him, yelling something, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He saw them point and he suddenly realized they wanted him to turn around.
He looked back.
A woman was tumbling down the hill. She wore nothing but a nightshirt and her arms and legs were scratched and smeared with mud. Behind her were two children, moving much more swiftly down the hill. Their faces were nothing more than crushed, bloody messes, yet they snarled at the sight of him.
Denny backed himself away from the woods and quickly found himself standing in the water. The people back on the yacht beckoned him, and he stepped deeper into the lake.
His clothes wrapped around him and Denny found he was barely able to move. He kicked free from his shoes and let his gun sink to the bottom of the lake. He peeled out of his windbreaker and let it float away.
The woman and children crashed into the water behind him. Denny heard them, but he didn’t dare turn around to look.
Swimming now, he began to move faster through the water. He kept himself aimed for the same yacht the young couple had boarded and swam for it like it were the last safe place on Earth.
He took in a mouthful of water, but swallowed it. His legs and arms already ached, but he couldn’t slow down. He couldn’t stop.
A hand grabbed his head and Denny stopped swimming. He righted himself and looked up from the water, right into the eyes of a woman not unlike his own grandmother.
Her white and silver hair was pasted to the front of her face and her skin was wrinkled from both old age and the water. The hag wrapped her arms around him and pulled. She was stronger than Denny expected.
Together, they began to sink.
Under the water, thrashing against the woman who struggled to keep her hold on him, Denny opened his eyes. Through the murkiness, he could see bottom halves of the two children coming towards him.
Denny felt a surge of adrenaline and began to fight. He grabbed the old woman’s arms and spun around like an alligator. Managing to slip free from her grasp, he shot back to the surface. Breaking through, he gasped for fresh air. But the children were close, and they each grabbed a fistful of his hair. The hag was back up again too, and she coiled her arms around his face. They all began to play tug-of-war with Denny, pulling him back and forth between them.
Then the game passed, and they were all upon him; pounding, ripping, biting. Once again, he found himself under water. He tried to ignore the pain as he searched for a way out.
A withered hand crawled across his face and sought out his eyes, then they began to claw. Denny screamed beneath they lake as his lungs began filling with water instead of air. He was drowning.
One of the children bit into his head and he felt a chunk of his scalp tear free. He swallowed more and more water and his vision began to fade. The last thing he felt before he died, was the old woman’s fingers digging out his eyes.
The private cabin sat in the California forest, about a mile or so from the lake. Towering pines rose up overhead and surrounded the vacation home, hiding it from the rest of the world.
But Denny had found it easily enough, and now he sat waiting, the silenced revolver Max had given him back in L.A resting in his lap.
‘50,000 for him and whoever is there with him. Go in, shoot, get out. I’ll handle the rest.’
That’s what he’d been told before getting into the private plane that took him to Big Bear Lake. Beyond that he knew nothing about what was going on, and that was the way everyone, including himself, wanted it.
The hour changed on the young man’s cell phone and Denny got out of the rented car. He double checked the gun, making sure that the bullets were loaded properly and the silencer was fastened correctly, then looked to the front door of the quiet cabin.
Inside, one would might expect to find a happy family, taking a relaxing weekend vacation together. Or even an older couple, long past retired, who sought to spend their last few summers in the placidity of the lake town.
But Denny knew otherwise. He knew inside he’d find Milton Andrews, one of the new premier porn kings of Southern California, an maybe an actor or two. He would find them, round them up, and take care of them all.
Denny walked up to the front porch and wiped his sweaty palms against his shirt. He giggled the handle and found the door unlocked. It told him that either Milton was comfortably unaware here, or that he was expecting someone. Denny hoped that the man wasn’t expecting him. That would’ve complicated everything.
Willing his senses to work in overdrive, Denny took in a deep breath and pushed the door open.
Immediately, he knew Milton wasn’t alone in the cabin. He could hear a woman’s heavy moans coming from one of the back rooms, accompanied by a man’s throaty grunts. There was talking too, but Denny couldn’t make out the words. Still, there was no denying the unmistakable sounds of profitable sex.
Both nervous and excited, Denny stepped inside and let the gun lead the way.
He followed it into the living room, and past the open wall kitchen to his right. The wood furniture gave the home a natural scent that threatened to make Denny, a city boy always and forever, sneeze. He held his breath and wrinkled his nose, and the feeling disappeared.
The hallway was darker than the rest of the cabin and made Denny feel like it was suddenly hours later. He walked much slower and gave his eyes enough time to adjust to the sudden absence of light.
The sounds from the back room grew louder and he knew it was almost time. At the end of the hall, Denny saw a door that was cracked open just the slightest bit. Yellow light poured out of it
“There. Flip over,” he heard Milton’s nasally voice instruct one of the actors. “Nice. Very good.”
When he reached the end of the hall, Denny stopped and peered through the open door with one eye.
There were three of them. Milton of course, busy filming, and two actors who were busy fucking on a large, flannel covered bed. The woman, a boring blonde bombshell type, still wore red cowboy boots, and the man, a muscled hunk probably twice her age, still had on his Stetson hat.
Denny was turned on. He’d seen hundreds of porn flicks since working for Max, but watching the filming of one had always different, always more stimulating than the finished product. He yearned to keep watching until they finished, but knew he couldn’t. As excited as he already was, this was going to be difficult enough. He pushed the door open with the nuzzle of his revolver. It creaked.
The actors, both who’d been facing the door at the time, stopped mid-scene when they saw Denny and the gun.
“Oh God!,” the woman screamed, nearly throwing the man off of her as she backed up against the headboard of the bed, “Help!”
Milton pulled his eyes away from his camera’s viewfinder and turned around. He saw the gun first, Denny second, but the portly man looked more confused than afraid.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Denny shot Milton point blank in the head, just above the right eye. The two on the bed began to scream and call for help.
Denny looked back at the bed and watched the couple cower next to each other. Together, they held a sheet up over their naked bodies, suddenly modest. Or maybe they think it would protect them? Denny didn’t care to think about it any longer than that, it was time to end this and go home.
He aimed the gun at them and squeezed off the remaining rounds. The bullets bore into the actors and their screams died along with them. The bodies slumped into each other and blood began soaking through the sheet that covered them. The man’s Stetson hat slid off his head and covered his face.
Denny waited for a second, just in case one of them was still alive somehow, then shoved the empty gun into the waistband of his jeans. He walked back into the hall, stopping just before the front door, and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. He flipped it open and dialed the only number that was programmed into it.
It rang, and after a moment Max‘s voicemail picked up. “Leave a message.”
“It’s done,” Denny said plainly, “No problems. Just tell your guys not to forget anything. Especially the tapes.”
Denny hung up and wondered if he should go back for Milton’s recordings himself. Max had said to touch nothing, but if those tapes every got out, Denny’s face was going to be on them.
He decided against it. Max was a real asshole sometimes, and Denny had thought about plugging him a few times as well, but the man was also smart. And he’d never gone back on his word or broken a promise. At least as far as Denny knew. He trusted Max to take care of the situation and stepped back out onto the front porch.
A noise came from the bedroom just as he moved to pull the front door shut. Denny froze and looked back inside, down the hall. He heard the noise again.
A heavy sighing sound, like a long loud yawn. Had he left someone alive?
Denny desperately just wanted to get back into the car and go, but he fought the urge. If anyone had survived, they could go to the police. They could testify. Denny could be locked up for the rest of his life, sentenced to death even. And that was assuming Max’s other punks didn’t handle him first.
Denny drew the gun out again and dug deep into his pocket. Inside, he fished out the four extra bullets he‘d brought along with him and loaded them into the chamber. Then, he walked down the hall and stepped back into the room.
Impossible.
It was the only way he could explain it. How in the hell could he have left one alive, much less two. It was simply impossible.
But there they were, the two porn stars, wriggling around on the mattress, their bodies caught up in the blood-drenched sheet.
The man who’d worn the Stetson saw him first and groaned. He reached out for Denny and rose up on the bed, only to tumble off and smack his face into the wooden floor. The woman noticed him too, and she held her arms out to him as if she wanted a hug.
Denny aimed at her first and fired another round into her breast. She jerked back, and her head knocked into the headboard, but she didn’t die. Her eyes stayed on him, and she still moved. Her legs still twisted up in the sheet, her fingers all moving like tiny snakes.
The man was suddenly up now, and charging into Denny, slamming him against the doorframe.
Denny yelled and fought to hold the other man back as he clawed and gnashed at him. Back on the bed, he saw the woman crawl off the bed and head for them. He knew he needed to get out.
The gun, although pinned between the two of them, was angled more so at the other man. Denny feared shooting himself, but fired anyway. He could feel the heat of from the two bullets that shot up and into the man’s chest.
The naked and bullet ridden man stumbled back. Denny shoved him further and sent him flying into the dresser. He aimed the barrel of the gun back down at him, ready to fire off the last bullet he had, when the woman below him grabbed his leg.
“Shit!”
As she tried to bite, Denny ripped his leg out of her hands and backed out of the room. As he ran down the hall, he could hear the others still moving around back in the room. They seemed to moan as well.
Nearly jumping off the porch, Denny ran back to the car, fumbling for the keys in back pocket. He pulled them free and pressed Unlock on the control key. The vehicle beeped and he yanked the driver’s door open and threw himself inside. As he slammed the door shut and locked it back, he saw the bloody porn stars come out of the cabin. They spotted him immediately.
Denny tried to put the key into the ignition, but his shaking hands turned the mundane task into a science. The keys fell from his hand and into the cup holder.
The people he killed slammed into the side of the car.
“Fuck!”
They began to hammer on it, clawing at the glass, eager to get to him. Denny gripped the key tightly and shoved it into the ignition. He wasted no time. As the engine rumbled to life, he peeled away from the cabin, leaving a cloud of dust and leaves in the air behind him.
In the rearview mirror, he saw the naked couple still chasing after him, their mouths open wide and their arms up and reaching. They vanished from sight as Denny pulled off the cabin’s dirt drive and back onto the main road.
As he sped down through the woods, he pulled the cell back out. He dialed Max’s number again but, just like before, got his voicemail.
“Fuck, Max! Listen, I don’t know what happened, but I shot those fuckers okay!? I shot them and they’re still up and moving around. This is so fucked up…I… I don‘t…”
Denny stopped for a second, thinking about what had just happened. There had to be an explanation to this and, along with it, a solution. He and Max could sort this out, just like all those times before. Denny regained his composure and finished his message.
“Look, I’m going to disappear for a while Max, and I’ll call you. Or you call me if you hear anything.”
He shut the phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat. As he headed further down the road, he saw more and more cabins. He knew he was getting closer to the lake. He cut his speed in half, careful to avoid any unwanted attention.
Driving past a clearing in the forest, a flicker of bright orange light caught the corner of his eye. He glanced over and he watched it glimmer against the large blue lake.
Denny slowed the car down even more, focusing on the strange light, then eventually pulled over on the shoulder of the road. He stepped out of the car and walked around to the passenger side for a better view of the lake below.
A black trail rose from the orange light, and it took him a second to realize it was a fire. A boat sat in the water, burning to all hell, right in the middle of the lake. And there were people all around it, fifty of them at least, swimming.
Denny knew this wasn’t right. He knew that there was something going on down there that he couldn’t see from this far away. He moved down the hillside for a closer look.
Carefully, he used the rocks and trees to make his way down, and within five minutes he found himself only a hundred feet from the shoreline.
Denny looked out into the water, saw the people splashing and realized that they weren’t just swimming. They were trying to reach the other boats and yachts that littered the lake. He heard some of them screaming, others yelling. Some of the people already on their boats helps those in the water get onboard. They tossed ropes and leaned over to pull them up. But some didn’t. Some of them ignored those people who swam around their floating vehicles.
There were gunshots. Denny searched the lake and saw a man near the shore, standing on a tiny boat. He was aiming down into the water, at the people crying out for his help, and firing at them.
Soon enough, bodies began to float freely on the surface of the water.
“What the fuck…,” Denny sighed.
He heard splashing nearby. To his right, he saw a young couple run into the water, seemingly coming from the small camp ground that was set up close by.
“Hey!” he called out to them, “ What’s going on?”
The woman ignored him and dove into the water, but the man looked back at him. His face was full of worry and fear. “Get to one of the boats! Hurry!”
“Why?”
“They’re coming! They’re in the woods!”
The guy dived into the water and Denny watched the couple swim to the nearest yacht. An older man helped pull them onboard, and they all looked back at him. They called out to him, yelling something, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He saw them point and he suddenly realized they wanted him to turn around.
He looked back.
A woman was tumbling down the hill. She wore nothing but a nightshirt and her arms and legs were scratched and smeared with mud. Behind her were two children, moving much more swiftly down the hill. Their faces were nothing more than crushed, bloody messes, yet they snarled at the sight of him.
Denny backed himself away from the woods and quickly found himself standing in the water. The people back on the yacht beckoned him, and he stepped deeper into the lake.
His clothes wrapped around him and Denny found he was barely able to move. He kicked free from his shoes and let his gun sink to the bottom of the lake. He peeled out of his windbreaker and let it float away.
The woman and children crashed into the water behind him. Denny heard them, but he didn’t dare turn around to look.
Swimming now, he began to move faster through the water. He kept himself aimed for the same yacht the young couple had boarded and swam for it like it were the last safe place on Earth.
He took in a mouthful of water, but swallowed it. His legs and arms already ached, but he couldn’t slow down. He couldn’t stop.
A hand grabbed his head and Denny stopped swimming. He righted himself and looked up from the water, right into the eyes of a woman not unlike his own grandmother.
Her white and silver hair was pasted to the front of her face and her skin was wrinkled from both old age and the water. The hag wrapped her arms around him and pulled. She was stronger than Denny expected.
Together, they began to sink.
Under the water, thrashing against the woman who struggled to keep her hold on him, Denny opened his eyes. Through the murkiness, he could see bottom halves of the two children coming towards him.
Denny felt a surge of adrenaline and began to fight. He grabbed the old woman’s arms and spun around like an alligator. Managing to slip free from her grasp, he shot back to the surface. Breaking through, he gasped for fresh air. But the children were close, and they each grabbed a fistful of his hair. The hag was back up again too, and she coiled her arms around his face. They all began to play tug-of-war with Denny, pulling him back and forth between them.
Then the game passed, and they were all upon him; pounding, ripping, biting. Once again, he found himself under water. He tried to ignore the pain as he searched for a way out.
A withered hand crawled across his face and sought out his eyes, then they began to claw. Denny screamed beneath they lake as his lungs began filling with water instead of air. He was drowning.
One of the children bit into his head and he felt a chunk of his scalp tear free. He swallowed more and more water and his vision began to fade. The last thing he felt before he died, was the old woman’s fingers digging out his eyes.