Copyright 2018 MillieAnne Lowe, Oceanside, California
Brian’s fear raced through his mind as he ran down the hall. How could I leave Marilyn alone tonight, especially after how she had been so nervous running into that guy down at the Buena Vista Cafe? Then he heard her scream as he was inches away. He slammed through the apartment’s frosted glass door and found her bloodied body slumped in a heap at the end of the couch by the window. He knelt by her side. “Marilyn!”
“You can’t have her, she’s mine now. Just as soon as I do away with you!” said Steele as he came up behind Brian and pulled back on Brian’s shirt collar.
The flickering light from the broken lamp on the floor shined on the blade as it headed down toward his chest. Brian saw it coming and with both hands, grabbed Steele’s wrist and twisted left as he pulled the arm under.
Steele, thrown over to the corner by the door, was fast to recover. He hunched over low and alert like an animal
The broken lamp on the floor flickered again, its plug still in the wall. The ceiling light went out, and in a moment of darkness, Brian sensed movement. He raised his left arm, blocking Steele’s approach. The lamp light flickered on and Brian’s fist landed on Steele’s jaw. Steele stumbled back against the carpenter’s table, causing more drawers to fly open. Paper clips, Xacto knives, black photo corners, and bottles of glue spilled in all directions.
Once again, the killer recovered into a crouched attack position, waving his sharp weapon side to side in a figure eight, taunting and daring Brian to come at him. “You’d better hurry. She’s going to die if we take too long to settle this,” said Steele.
Next to where the Xacto knives had fallen, a bloodied blade from the broken silver scissors he and Marilyn had used that night for news clippings caught Brian’s eye. “There’s nothing to settle!” Brian moved to his right and grabbed the bloodstained blade off the floor. He brought his left arm up for another block, and struck out toward Steele’s mid-section.
Steele turned his left side back, and smiled as Brian’s lunge missed him by inches. He took the advantage and rounded his hand around Brian’s left wrist, stepped in close and pierced Brian in the ribs. “You’re not quick enough,” he said and gave a quick turn of his blade to cause the fatal injury.
“Ai,” came a final sigh from Brian. Searing pain and the shock of his defeat brought him down to his knees. Marilyn…Marilyn…
The scissor’s blade that had missed its mark dropped from Brian’s hand, with a soft thump, and as if on cue, Marilyn, semiconscious, saw Brian falling on his knees in front of the crazed killer who had come for her. “Brian! Brian!”
Fury overflowed in Steele’s mind as he listened to Marilyn’s emotional cry for another man. Steele jerked out his knife and thrust his blade into Brian repeatedly. “I told you I would kill him. You belong to me!”
Marilyn clawed at the arm of the couch and managed to stand. In her hand, she held an old-fashioned wooden knob pick, which had also fallen out from the carpenter’s table. She tightened her fist around the worn round ball of wood with her thumb on the top as she steadied herself, leaning her left side on the back of a chair. Tremors in her left arm made her wobbly. A deep anguished cry accompanied her charge at Steele with the sharp point of the pick raised up in the air directed at the crazed intruder who had just killed the man she loved. The man she had intended to marry.
Steele saw her coming, his mouth opened but no sound came… Deep rage and the desire for revenge were spread on her face…she’s wanting to kill me. Disbelief made him pause, but only for a second, as he once again met head-on with danger. He instinctively moved to stand and at the same time, his switchblade plunged upward into the heart of the girl he thought would love him back forever.
He caught her as she fell and held her rumpled body in his arms. Her eyes were still open. These are the blue eyes of the girl I thought fate had intended for me. His fingers combed through the tangled mass of blonde hair that framed her face. Her features reminded Steele of Alicia, his first love. They looked so much alike. However, the similarity disappeared like a spark as he heard a guttural sound coming from her throat, a trickle of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth, and he felt her delicate fingers sliding down the front of his leather jacket. Marilyn then became another dead body at his feet. This was not supposed to happen.
Copyright 2018 MillieAnne Lowe, Oceanside, California
millieanne lowe 