Excerpt
From Mindy in Chapter 1:

My first and only memory, from three days ago, was waking up and opening my eyes to see trees waving their branches at me as if they were trying to get my attention. The clear, cloudless sky was in the background. I recall fighting hard to stay awake.

It felt as though there were sand bags pinning me to the ground. I was lying on my back on a bed of unblunted stones. My head, which had come to rest on a boulder, was pounding out a steady tune. I tried to rise but my limbs refused to obey. I turned my head to the side to avoid the sun and paid for the movement.

That's when I saw her. A girl was lying ten feet away from me. She was on her side and her left arm was bent at a strange angle. Or maybe it was just my view of her. She had long blond hair, a petite frame and...blood. She was covered in blood.


From the killer in Chapter 6:

She was still crying as he dragged her to her feet holding her around the neck from behind. He took a dagger out of the back pocket of his pants and stabbed her once. He thought he had gotten her in the kidney but couldn't be sure. She had arched her back as the knife slid into her.

Just as he was arching his back now, getting closer to exploding by the minute, reminiscing over his actions of six days ago. Thinking about how he had slid into her just moments before the knife had. He couldn't decide which act had felt better. They were both sublime! Just a few more minutes, he told himself. Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!

The last part had been easy, too. In fact, the whole thing seemed to be comical to him. He felt like a stage actor in a play of his own creation. The audience was applauding every spectacular move he made and they wanted more. He wanted more!

He had wiped the blade with a rag he had cached in his front pocket. He knocked Winter over the head with his trusty flashlight, opened the back door of her Jetta, and threw her unceremoniously across the seat. He slammed the door shut.

He did what he needed to do to rig the thing to drive itself. He shot a last look at Melinda on the front seat. He felt a little bad about that. She was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong fucking time.

He finished up with his chore, got out of the car, and slammed that door too. Then he raced back to his car, got in, backed the car up, and took the necessary left turn onto Plummer Hill Road. The Jetta did not. The Jetta had shot forward, crashed through a fence and started the descent downhill.

Finishing his reverie in his favorite chair, he gave in to the throbbing. Working himself faster. Release! That had been what he felt then when he saw the Jetta disappear from view and that's what he felt now as he jerked himself to a finish.

He reveled in the ecstasy for a few long moments. Then he chugged the rest of his beer, did up his pants, and started for the fridge for number three.