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The Headlights

Christopher Frost

    Rain erupted from the overcast sky; slanting lines of perpetual liquid streamed over the streets. Enormous gusts of wind, “35 mile per hour to 50 mile per hour gusts this evening,” the meteorologist spoke over the radio between songs, screamed through the streets like a banshee, capturing leaves and discarded garbage and tossing them aimlessly around. A severe weather warning had been issued across the state. Trees were being uprooted, power-lines tumbled over onto busy streets, electricity out for the greater metropolitan area, and two deaths already reported. One of the deaths, a kayaker who drowned in the Merrimack River, another, a quicker death, struck by a falling tree branch that exploded through the driver’s windshield and splattered his head against the headrest of his Lexus. Three inches of rain had already fallen over the town of Oak Bridge. There were flood warnings in effect for most of the area, and already ponds, rivers, and streams were rising up their banks threatening to overflow.
    Blakely Bax sat in the driver’s seat of a ’68 Trans Am. The heater didn’t work but she wasn’t fazed by the drop in temperature; her body temperature was reaching critical as she sat in anticipation staring out the driver’s side window. Blakely had been watching the front doors of the Municipal Building for the last forty-five minutes. People had come and gone, one guy shackled at the wrists and ankles in an orange jumpsuit surrounded by four state troopers, a few lawyers, and other common folk. Every time the heavy glass doors swung open and a figure emerged from the heated Municipal Building her heart skipped a beat and her adrenaline raced, only to be let down when a mere nobody walked through. Blakely looked in the rear view mirror and checked her appearance for the hundredth time. She applied another coat of lipstick to her already crimson lips and tugged on her eye lashes to make them appear more exuberant. Her hands stretched over her body and cupped her breasts, tugging them closer together inside her too small bra, to get the ample amount of cleavage desired. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Blakely Box was one of the most – if not the most – beautiful girl in Oak Bridge, but it came with a price.
    For the last few years Blakely had worked as a stripper at the Blue Moon in Black Harbor; she had even taken a few jobs under the table that required more then taking off her clothes, but it was all for a good cause. The money that she had earned from her after school job had gotten her 34 D tits that made men salivate, and their rusty cocks rise in their khakis. Her lips were injected with collagen, and her eyes were falsely blue. Fake or not, she was still a sight that lingered in men’s minds until they were alone in the bathroom with a bottle of Lubriderm.
    “How fucken long we gonna wait, Blakely?” She could see his bored, blood shot eyes from the rear view mirror, wasted from smoking a joint five minutes ago.
    Deke Sanders was even poorer than her, fortunately he didn’t have to live her life to hang with those of higher class. In fact, the only reason he was in the car right now as a pseudo friend was because he was a dealer, small time, and supplied the rest of the posse with their weed, E, and coke.
    “Shut up, Deke,” Blakely said with a dark, firm tone.
    “I’m just saying,” Deke started in.
    Blakely turned to face him, peering over her shoulder into the back seat. “I told you to shut your fucking mouth.” She didn’t have to raise her voice to get a point across, only lower her voice in a tone that suggested ‘don’t fuck with me right now’.
    Deke sat back. He pulled a bag of weed from his jacket pocket and some rolling papers. He began rolling another joint.
    “Is that really a good idea? I mean we are in front of the court house, cops are coming and going,” Sasha Baur gingerly said. Sasha was the girl that no one expected to hang with the foursome. She was quiet, mouse like, but when she was rolling or stoned there was a side to her that no one at school ever saw. The wild girl unleashed by the dark side of her soul, the girl who would get naked and fuck a beer bottle for everyone’s enjoyment or go down on anyone if they would get her a drink or another hit of E. Blakely had been privy more than a dozen times to Sasha’s amazing tongue.
    “Shut up,” Deke demanded. She did as she was told like the good little slut- mouse that she was. “This is fucken lame.”
    “Shut up! Here he comes,” Blakely exclaimed, jumping up in her seat and plastering her face against the glass of the driver side window. Her hands were pressed so tightly against the glass that her knuckles had turned white. Her heart was skipping beats as she watched her man walk out of the Municipal Building, out of the courthouse, a free man. It had worked. All his money and his father’s influence had gotten him off the hook. Now they could be together again.
    At the top of the stairs, leading out of the Municipal Building, Cain Dainger stepped through the glass doors and stood on the top step. He ruffled the collar of his peacoat and pulled it up so it protected his neck; the buttons were fastened on the dark jacket screening the torrential downpour. He lit a cigarette beneath the awning of the building. His eyes were a dark shade of brown, just shy of being black as coal. His face was stubbly with a five o’clock shadow, and his short cropped black hair was styled in an intentional mess. When Cain saw Blakely he gave her a half cocked smirk.
    Cain ran against the wind and through the rain to the driver’s side door of the Trans Am. Blakely crawled over the shifter into the passenger seat just as Cain threw open the door and jumped into the driver’s seat escaping the rain.
    “Sup biatch!” Deke exclaimed, clamping his hand on Cain’s shoulder. Blakely immediately threw herself in his arms and kissed him deeply, her hands coursing over his scruff covered face. Those perfect manicured nails scratched down his neck and over his chest with lustful want.
    “Jesus, get a room,” Deke laughed as he sat back and took a lung full from his joint.
    Like two lost lovers Blakely could not break away from Cain’s embrace, her hands firmly clasped to his face for fear if she let go he would dematerialize like an apparition.
     “I thought I would never see you again,” she whispered with tears threatening at the corners of her eyes.
    “I’m out, that’s all that matters,” Cain said darkly.
    “What was the sentence?” Sasha asked.
    Blakely didn’t care. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that Cain hadn’t been sent off to the state penitentiary to spend his next ten to twenty years of life, if not longer. He was here; he was really here, beside her with his strong hands clasping her abdomen just below her breasts that he loved so much.
    “Probation and time served for the two weeks I had to do when my asshole father didn’t post bail. He thought he was trying to teach me a lesson, but in the end he didn’t want his only heir thrown in lock up. It would give the Dainger family a bad reputation,” Cain said. “Besides, I don’t think the judge really thought the death of some trash girl was more important than someone of my high standard. Our family has done too much for this damn town to send away one of their potential benefactors.” His voice grew darker as he talked about the dead girl, no remorse in his tone. Cain revved the engine and thrust the shifter into first gear. He tore out of the parking space down the rain soaked street, running through a red light and spinning the car around a corner.
    “Woooo Hoooo! Where we heading niggas?” Deke yelled with excitement while he pounded his fists against the roof of the car.
     “Any thoughts?” Blakely asked.
    “As far from that jail cell as possible,” Cain responded.
    “The Shack?” Sasha suggested.
     “Yeah, man, the fucken Shack!” Deke laughed and pounded his fists against the roof of the car.
    From behind them a ’73 Camaro, black as midnight with a moonless sky, turned on its headlights and pulled out of its respective parking spot. It drove in the same lane as Cain and headed in the same direction. Traffic wasn’t heavy but the Camaro was behind a few other cars as Cain swerved through traffic.
    It was only the second week of November, daylight savings time had been the last Saturday of October, and now the sun was setting earlier. The red LED clock read 4:54 pm. With the overcast and the rain the sky was already dark and soon it would be night. The Shack was on the far side of town, down back roads, at least a twenty minute drive. Most of Oak Bridge was rural suburbia, but the outskirts were farm land, long stretches of nothingness. The perfect places to go for sex when you couldn’t do it at a parents’ house. Hell, even the parking lot of The Shack, on any given night, was littered with teenagers steaming up the windows of their cars. The men’s bathroom at The Shack had a wall with knife scratches that marked the number of girls who had lost their virginity in the parking lot. Unbeknownst, there was a notch for Blakely on that wall, carved with the same knife that was under the driver’s seat of the Trans Am.
    The foursome had been on the road for only five minutes and already the gloomy sky had turned to utter darkness. The cab of the car was only illuminated by the heads of cigarettes and the soft glow of the LED on the radio. Blakely leaned over to Cain, her hand swept over his body and down between his thighs. She cupped his groan and massaged it with the palm of her hand. “Wouldn’t you rather go somewhere...more private?” Her voice was husky and filled with promises of taboo passion. She began to nibble on Cain’s ear, breathing heavily as her arousal grew. She cupped his dick in her hand through his pants and squeezed.
    “Soon,” he said, his eyes still focused on the road in a dark trance. “I need something first.”
    “We can stop at Trembly’s Quick Stop, he doesn’t card me,” she told him.
    “Later.”
    Blakely settled back in her seat defeated. She couldn’t understand why Cain had dismissed her, after all it had been weeks since they had last been together, not to mention the eternal time that had passed while she had waited to know if he was going to jail or not. Pissed, she turned to look out the window, and took a cigarette from her purse. When she rolled down the window rain splattered across her face. Blakely lit the cigarette and smoked it in silence. From the backseat she could hear muffled moans and could only guess that Sasha had been smoking the “good stuff’ and paying for it in Sasha-Currency.
    Everything had changed since that night almost a year ago. All because of one dead girl. Now she wasn’t even sure that Cain was the same or if he even wanted her at all. One of his friends, another rich kid from old money, had once told Cain that he was slumming with Blakely and his family would never accept him being with a trailer trash stripper, a girl that was one notch below a whore. Had he finally taken that advice to heart? Just as she thought that might be the case she felt Cain’s hand on her thigh; it crept up her soft leg until it was under her skirt and between her legs. Blakely scootched forward on the seat and casually spread her legs. She moaned as Cain pushed two fingers into her and twirled them around inside her body which caused her to openly moan. Blakely could feel her wetness seeping over her thighs, his fingers, and forming a small puddle beneath her ass on the leather seat. Within minutes she grasped the seat with her fingernails and an exhausted moan of an orgasm slipped between her lips. It was the first orgasm she had had in weeks that wasn’t perpetuated by her own doing.
    Cain pulled his fingers out of Blakely and returned his right hand to the gear shift. His eyes were locked on the rear view mirror; he squinted to look behind them.
    “What is it?” Blakely asked as she turned around to look out the back window. When she turned her head Deke looked back as well and Sasha lifted her head from his lap.
    “What’s got everyone’s panties in a bunch?” Deke asked.
    “Cop,” Cain said.
    Blakely tried to focus through the rain to make out the headlights of the oncoming car that was rushing up toward them. The lights didn’t resemble any cop car she had ever seen. They were too square. One thing a teenager learned as soon as they got a license was how to spot a cop car, even in the dark, all you had to do was focus on the lights, the boxy beams that were a dead giveaway. And the vehicle that was coming up on them certainly didn’t have anything that looked like cop lights.
    “I don’t think it’s a cop,” Sasha said, her eyes still fixed on the headlights behind them.
    “Yeah, man, chill out, it ain’t no pig,” Deke laughed.
    Cain dropped the car into a lower gear and pressed down on the accelerator. The Trans Am burst in speed, swerving in the rain down the road, the speedometer creeping up, 40, 45, 50, 55 miles per hour. Blakely was watching Cain and what she saw in his eyes was both familiar and frightening. Though she couldn’t place where she remembered seeing that look in his eyes before. If it were a cop, unlikely as that was, she could understand why Cain would like to put as much distance between the headlights behind them and the foursome. There was that concealed knife under the driver’s seat and a pistol in the glove-compartment. Not to mention that Deke had a bag of weed on him, and probably even more drugs hidden in his jacket and pants pocket.
    “You’re only drawing attention to us,” Sasha said in her collected voice while she watched the speedometer climb.
    Behind them, the car seemed to be gaining, almost matching their speed. Blakely squinted to try and see the car but was blinded by the headlights. Whoever it was, their high beams were on and the car was moving fast, gaining on them. She turned back to face Cain, “What’s going on, Cain?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Cain?”
    He turned to look at her with those dark, penetrating eyes. She sat back against the passenger side window, frightened.
    “I said nothing!”
    Blakely looked back at Deke and Sasha. For the first time she could remember Deke was speechless, no sarcastic comeback or pointless comment. He looked as frightened as Blakely and his eyes motioned for her attention. She followed his gaze to the speedometer and saw that it had crept up over seventy miles per hour. The road was covered in a thick blanket of leaves. Mixed with the rain and the racing tires of the Trans Am those factors made for a dangerous combination.
    “I think you should slow down, man,” Deke said.
    Cain paid them no attention. In fact he only touched the brakes when he wound around a corner. Once around the corner, and at another straight shot, he gunned the car again.
    The cab of the car filled with light. Blakely looked back to see the headlights of the car almost upon them, only ten or fifteen feet behind. How had the car caught up to them so fast?
    “Cain, I think you should let him pass,” Sasha said, a hint of fear now scratching at her voice.
    “We’re almost at The Shack,” he said.
    “C’mon, Cain, let ‘em pass,” Deke told him.
    Blakely was about to join the chorus to try and convince Cain to do as their friends were asking but as she opened her mouth to speak they were rammed from behind. The Trans Am swiveled back and fourth on the road, Cain trying to spin the wheel to keep them straight. A large maple tree came inches from striking the car and wrapping them around it, but Cain maintained control. He was forced to pump the brakes, to slow the car so it didn’t go into a full out spin, as he did the car behind them struck again. Everyone jerked forward. Blakely violently struck her head on the dashboard then slammed back into her seat. Her hands went up to cover her head and the throbbing pain. There was something wrong. She could feel wetness between her fingers. The headlights of the car behind them were still illuminating the cab and Blakely held her hands up in front of her face to see they were stained crimson.
    “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Blakely screamed on the verge of hysterics. The blood poured over her face, running into her eyes and into her mouth, it melted over her white skin, giving her a deep red complexion.
    “Shit, Blakely, you’re fucken bleeding,” Deke yelled from the backseat.
    “Call the police,” Sasha screamed, “Call the police!”
    Blakely sat staring at her blood soaked hands, mesmerized by the sight of the blood.
    Some trash girl.
    “No cops! Do you hear me!” Cain yelled.
    Someone was calling her name but the voices seemed distant, so out of focus. The pain in her head was no longer evident, only the sight of the blood; her blood all over her hands.
    Some trash girl.
    Dead girl.
    It was coming back to her now. That look she had seen in Cain’s eyes, that passive darkness when he spoke of the poor dead girl, which he referred to as trash. The blood. Her blood. Their blood. It was like that French word, what was it? Deja, dija, something. Blakely couldn’t reach into her memory and pull out the exact word. She had failed French, but somehow that shouldn’t have mattered. What the hell was the word she was looking for?
    “There’s The Shack,” Cain said in the most calm voice, as though he were completely detached from the events that were transpiring. As the car came up towards the turn into The Shack’s parking lot, the car behind swerved to the right and sideswiped them at the exact moment they could have pulled into The Shack, forcing them back on the road.
    “Shit!” Deke screamed in fear, his eyes darted back to the car that was beside them. Blakely was looking too. It was a Camaro, an old one. She couldn’t place the date but recognized the car from the auto shows that Cain would take her to in the summer. The driver’s side was adjacent to her and she could see the faint outline of a man behind the wheel. His head turned to her, and though his face was a mask of shadow, she knew he was looking dead into her eyes. Cain gunned the car forward and the Camaro dropped behind them. There was a grin on Cain’s face, as if he just won some prize. Blakely knew that wasn’t the case, there wasn’t going to be a prize given out because Cain had maneuvered ahead of the Camaro. The driver behind them was calculating the pursuit. Whoever the driver was wanted to fall behind. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.
    A gap was widening between the two cars. Cain’s foot pressed the accelerator to the floor, hands shaking on the wheel. It took all his strength and skill to keep the car on the road. Blinding headlights still blared through the rear windshield turning night to day inside the cab. Blakely tried to peer through the light, hoping that she could see the face of the driver, though in the back of her mind she knew it to be impossible. Deke and Sasha were screaming something at Cain and he drove eerily silent. Then there was nothing. The car had disappeared. The headlights were gone, and once again they were alone on the wet, leaf covered road.
     “Where the fuck did he go?” Deke screamed, his hands plastered to the rear window while his panic struck eyes searched the bleakness.
    Cars don’t just disappear but that seemed to be exactly what happened.
    “Stop the car, Cain,” Sasha said.
    Cain said nothing and continued to drive.
    “Stop the car, Cain,” she told him again. “Stop the DAMN CAR!”
    Cain looked over at Blakely, then back to the road. He took his foot off the accelerator and pressed on the brake pedal just as the blistering beam of headlights ignited again. The Camaro lurched forward and slammed the car. Blakely went crashing into the dash board again. The loud crack of her ribs breaking echoed through the cabin and her scream caught in her throat stolen by fear.
    The car was struck again; it swerved in the wet road, tail spinning.
    One of the headlights was out on the Camaro as it raced towards them once more. BAM!
    Everyone lunged forward; Cain hit his head on the steering wheel, Blakely on the dash board again, Deke and Sasha against the back of the front seats. The Camaro gave them some distance and then sped up ramming them again.
    “Oh my god!” Sasha cried.
    “Do something!” Deke exclaimed. Both Deke and Sasha sounded like a chorus from the backseat, chanting their pleas for Cain to do something, yelling over the sound of screeching tires and revving engines, the clash of metal on metal as the Camaro struck the rear bumper repeatedly, in an attempt to do...what? Drive them off the road? Kill them? Blakely was transfixed on her lover, his white knuckles clenched around the steering wheel. Those penetrating dark eyes of his flickered from the rear view mirror to the road, back and forth, as he continued to keep the Trans Am on the road.
    “We’re going to die, man, we’re all gonna fucken die!” Deke whined.
    Cain turned around to face his friend and screamed, “WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Deke recoiled from Cain, who at the moment, was more frightening than the driver in the other car.
    “Cain?” Blakely said.
    He didn’t respond. He appeared to be more determined, more attuned to his driving than previously, solely focused on pushing his car to its limits along this narrow stretch of wet, sleek road.
    “Cain?” she said again. This time his head turned and the face that looked upon hers was one that she didn’t recognize. He was still human, she knew that for sure, but there was something else there as well, something that was not quite human at all. It was as though he were possessed by some maniacal demon. His gaunt eyes were sunken, grave. He didn’t speak and Blakely was thankful for that, if he had she might have opened the door and leapt out of the car. What frightened her most was his smile. His tongue was clenched between his teeth drawing a dam of blood that pooled over his lip and drooled down his chin.
    The Camaro had backed off again, probably to gain momentum to strike the car once more. Just as she predicted the Camaro began picking up speed. The dim light in the cabin of the car began to grow in intensity until they were surrounded in white light. As Blakely braced for the impact the car pulled up along the driver side and matched their speed.
    Cain looked over at the Camaro.
    Blakely was too afraid.
    One look at the shadowed figure was enough. She was too frightened to steal another glance. Cain, however, couldn’t keep his eyes off the shadowed cabin of the other car, to the point where he was no longer watching the road. He spun the wheel hurling the Trans Am at the Camaro but the other driver, who must have been expecting this, easily avoided being struck, and raced ahead of them.
    “Got you,” Cain hissed through clenched teeth, splatters of blood spitting out his mouth and marking the windshield like squashed mosquitos. The car accelerated. Blakely looked to Cain who appeared more determined than ever to catch up with the Camaro. Two red blotches of light on the dark night were all that was visible of the Camaro and its dark driver.
     “What are you doing?” Blakely asked.
    He remained silent.
    “Dammit, Cain, he’s gone. Let it fucken go!” Deke pleaded with a panic stricken voice that broke like a prepubescent teenager.
    Silence.
    “Cain –” Before she knew what had happened Cain’s hand flung from the steering wheel and struck her across the face. Her face ricocheted off the passenger window from the force of his violence. When she pulled away, there was a stain of blood dribbling in thick clots down the pane of glass.
    Cain glared out the windshield with renewed determination.
    The girl, Blakely remembered, all because of the...
    The dead girl.
    Stupid dead girl.
    That night, so long ago it seemed, the car accident and that poor girl sprawled on the hood of a car, half her body limply strung over the dashboard, her body – no she couldn’t think about. To remember meant that it had actually happened and Blakely couldn’t bring herself to do that. An image burned into Blakely’s memory and she suddenly felt warm. No that wasn’t it, she wasn’t just warm she was hot, scalding, as if her body was burning from the inside out. A flash of –
    The dead girl.
    Stupid dead girl.
    The poor girl that Cain had been acquitted of killing. Vehicular homicide the affidavit had said. But it wasn’t vehicular homicide, she knew that now, seeing him this way...again. Blakely had suppressed those memories, believed what Cain had wanted her to believe about that night. It was all returning to her now. The memories, his appearance, the same appearance, same gleam in his eye that was present now. And her part in it all.
    “I know where he’s going,” Cain grumbled. Blakely looked at him from the corner of her eye, then back to the blacktop street. Even through the thick darkness, the oil colored road dampened by the rain with wet slippery leaves and the billowing tree limbs overhanging to create a canopy, she knew where he was going and where they were being led to.
    “Turn around, Cain,” Blakely insisted. He said nothing. “Turn around!” She reached for him. Something deep down inside her extracted the courage that she was not aware of having, and she grabbed for the steering wheel. The pain was excruciating, more painful than being struck in the face. Blakely grasped her stomach and tried to inhale but could only take in short, quick breaths. She never saw his elbow go under her arm and strike her in the gut. All she had wanted to do was stop the car, even if it meant driving it into a tree. Anything to get away from where they were headed. If Deke and Sasha had put it together yet, she couldn’t be sure, but it was too late.
    The canopy of trees disappeared into a large clearing as the Trans Am slid across the road sideways, careening into the open landscape. Before the car had even come to a complete stop Cain had popped open the glove box and withdrawn his revolver.
    “Jesus Christ,” Sasha whispered.
     “Dude, what the fuck are we doing here?” Deke was panicking now, hunched at the edge of his seat, anticipating the moment he could run away from the situation. Blakely felt the same way.
    She looked around at the train depot. The tracks were just ahead of them and were blockaded with large wooden planks, a KEEP OUT sign nailed to the wood. To her right was the old wooden train station, abandoned since the last car rolled out back in the early nineteen-hundreds. Rain dropped with thunderous volume on the roof of the car. The wind whistled overhead and the darkness swept around like a cloak. There were no headlights but those of the Trans Am. The Camaro, for all intents, was gone.
    “Where are you?” Cain hissed with a voice that didn’t sound like him. It was too deep, too dark. Something that didn’t come out of human vocal cords. His head turned from one direction to another in search of the nonexistent headlights. “I know you’re here. I can feel it.”
    Sasha cried in the backseat, her hands firmly planted over her mouth to make as little noise as possible, but it made her sound like a whimpering, frightened dog. Blakely understood Sasha’s fear, it was all too real to her as well, and if she had broken down as Sasha had, if she could have allowed herself to weep and lose control, they could’ve comforted each other in this moment of terror, but Blakely had to be strong, not just for herself but for poor Sasha, because she knew as the car approached that warning sign, keep out it said, stay away, danger here, she knew that nothing good was coming.
     “I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna – ” Deke didn’t have time to finish his pleading before Cain whirled around in his seat and pointed the barrel of the gun at his friend. There was a deafening pop and a flash of light. Where Deke’s multi-pierced face once was, now was only a gaping, sopping hole of tissue membrane and splattered blood. Blakely could see through Deke’s face to the hole the bullet made in the rear window.
    “OH MY GOD!” Sasha screamed, covered in Deke’s blood. She wiped at her eyes, at her face, doing the best she could to rub off the blood which only made it smear more into her skin. “Let me out! Let me out!” she spat in hysteria as she pushed on Blakely’s seat.
    Blakely fumbled with the door lock, her bloody fingers slipping over the protrusion, while her other hand tugged on the door handle. Cain was going to kill them all and she only wanted to get out of the car, grab Sasha, and run as far away from here as possible. She was screaming as she pulled on the door and tried to free herself and her friend, but for all her will could not get a grasp on the lock as her slick, blood soaked fingers continued to slip off the metal protrusion.
    Headlights blared behind them. Cain’s head whipped around. The Camaro struck them so hard from behind that the Trans Am rear end was lifted off the ground as the car was pushed forward across the gravely dirt road that led to the train tracks. Cain was pushing on the accelerator as he tried to break free, but the rear tires were off the ground. It sounded like one might have been on the wet hood of the Camaro and was spinning in a frenzy. The car pushed them, thirty miles and hour, into the old train depot.
    Together, the two cars crashed through the wall of the train depot, planks of wood burying the cars. A large plank speared through the windshield between Cain and Blakely and into the backseat. The weight of the two cars inside the old train station was too much for the eroded floor and the boards let loose plunging both cars into the concrete basement.
    For a span of seconds that seemed to stretch for infinity, there was silence. More debris fell around the car and dust swirled in the headlights of the Trans Am. The Camaro’s lights beamed through the rear window casting large shadows of the victims inside the Trans Am across the dashboard and then they went out. Whether this was from the driver of that car or from damage inflicted from the falling debris, Blakely couldn’t be sure.
    Blakely was slow to get up, her body was hunched over the dashboard and her right leg was broken. Searing pain shot through her body just trying to move. Cain’s head was pressed against the steering wheel as heavy streams of blood spewed over the wheel to the floor mat beneath his feet, drenching his pants and shoes. One hand was curled over his head, fingers entwined in his blood matted hair. The other hand hung limply at his side, the revolver dangling from his fingertips. He looked dead, but Blakely didn’t want to touch him, not even to check and make sure that he might still be alive. Part of her, the strongest part that no longer loved him, hoped that he was dead.
     “Sasha?” Blakely wheezed, “Sasha, we have to get out of here.” She pulled herself up onto the seat and turned to her friend. Sasha sat wide eyed staring at Blakely; her mouth making silent words as blood trailed over her lips down her chin. The plank of wood that had just barely missed she and Cain had struck Sasha through the abdomen, pinning her to the backseat. Her tiny, white hands, now crimson, were clasped over the plank. Her mouth formed mute words for another second before it went eternally silent.
    Those beautiful brown eyes that had intoxicated so many young men were still staring blankly into death’s abyss.
    “No,” Blakely cried. “No, Sasha, hold on. Hold on, Sasha.” She reached into the back seat and touched Sasha’s hand. It rolled off the plank to rest on her thigh. Blakely gingerly cupped her face and cried. They were all dead and she was alone.
    The cabin ignited in light. The headlights of the Camaro came on again. He wasn’t dead either. Blakely grabbed for the door handle, pushing on it as she struggled to force it open. Forgetting that it was still locked, she pulled on the blood stained metal spike of the lock with the sleeve of her shirt until she disengaged it. Still the door wouldn’t budge; it was wedged against the fallen floor panels. Her only escape would be through the window. As quickly as possible she rolled down the window and lugged herself through it, grabbing onto the support beams around her for leverage, pulling herself from the cab of the Trans Am. She was almost out when something grabbed her foot and pulled her back inside to her waist. Cain was still alive and he was sucking her back into Hell with him. Even as fucked up as he looked, he was far stronger than her and she was slowly being dragged inch after inch back into the Trans Am. With one violent kick of her good leg she struck him on the bridge of his nose. The scream that emitted from his vocal cords filled the night with ungodly rage; his red splattered face and dark eyes made him look like a demon and he snarled at her as she wedged herself out of the car and onto a support beam. Blakely began to climb. Away from whatever the man she had loved had become, the headlights of the Camaro, and the thing that was behind those blistering lights.
    There was no place to run, no place to go. With one broken leg, the best that Blakely could possibly do would be to crawl, drag herself out of the train station and into the rain, maybe she could find some shelter beneath a tree until daylight. Her fingernails dug into the wooden support beam as she tried to lift herself up. One nail after another peeled off in stabbing pain as she climbed. But she had to move beyond the pain; it was a matter of life and death.
    “Blakely!” Cain screamed beneath her. “BLAKELY!”
    “Stop it,” she cried, “stop it, leave me alone.” Her whispered and panicked gilded words wouldn’t reach him but the fear she felt encouraged her to go on, to push herself harder than she ever had before. This wasn’t how her life was supposed to end. She didn’t want to be remembered as a stripper that died in an old abandoned train station. There was more for her out there. More for her to do. She wasn’t a stripper. She was Blakely Bax, just a girl working through life to be something better than her mother, even if she had to compromise herself along the way. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. She was Blakely Bax. She had dreams, ambitions, a life waiting to be unwrapped.
    “Blakely.” Her name whispered on the tongue of a shadow. A hand wrapped around her wrist and helped to lift her off the support beam and onto the remnants of the train station floor. She was dropped onto the dust ridden floor of the train station, the taste of decaying woodchips inhaled into her mouth coating it; a putrid taste clung to her taste-buds. Her eyes looked up at the man, the one behind the headlights. He stood over her like a messenger of death, clad in black, dark soaked jeans and a tight fitting black t-shirt that accentuated the strong muscles beneath. His hair was long and scraggly. A thick, dark beard covered the lines of scars on his face. She could see one piercing blue eye. The other was white, cataract, like that of a dead fish.
    “Why are you doing this?” she asked.
    The man bent down, perched on the balls of his feet, his elbows resting on his knees. A finger extended toward her and brushed a strand of her hair out of her face.
    “Because I was a good man once, Blakely, because once I was a husband and expectant father. Once upon a time I knew what unconditional love felt like and I was a better man for it. You and yours raped me of that. You, Blakely Bax, Cain Dainger, Deke Sanders, and Sasha Baur murdered my soul, darkened my heart, made me into what kneels before you,” he whispered.
    “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t want it to happen. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.”
    “Yet, you did nothing to fix it.” His thumb caressed her face, wiping away the blood around her eyes in a sensual, caring manner.
    “Do you know the definition of empathy?” he asked.
    Blakely shook her head, tears streaming down her clean cheeks.
    “It is the ability to identify and understand another’s feelings. I’m not without empathy, Blakely Bax,” he said.
    She felt assured, safe. He wasn’t going to kill her. She wasn’t the one that he was after. It was Cain. It was Cain who had done it.
    Stupid dead girl.
    It was Cain who had killed that girl. They had all watched, terrified. Unable to understand what he was doing until it was done. They had all been drunk and shouldn’t have been driving but they had, and the car had crashed. They had crashed into a Camaro.
    Stupid dead girl.
    He wasn’t here for her; he was here for Cain, and Cain was still alive, trapped beneath the floor still inside the car. All she had to do was tell him that and he would let her go. Right? After all it hadn’t been her driving that night. Cain was the one behind the wheel, the one that stood over that girl and watched with awe struck eyes as the flames danced across the hood of the car and over her white flesh.
    It wasn’t her that he was after. It was Cain. It was all about Cain.
    The driver was smiling at her now, still wiping away the blood from her face, licking his fingers to clear away the blood stained on her porcelain skin. He brushed her hair with his fingertips and touched her soft skin and it made her smile. He leaned in close to her so his lips were next to her ear.
    “I’m not without empathy, Blakely...just without compassion.” Her eyes went wide as she felt his hands grip her neck and then—
    Cain struggled to pull himself free from behind the wheel of his car. The large plank of wood that had crashed through the windshield and impaled Sasha had forced the steering wheel against his chest and lodged his seat in a manner that he couldn’t get it to recede. With all his might he pushed on the plank hoping to move it only a few inches so he could crawl under it and out the way that Blakely had escaped. Fucking Blakely, leaving him in the car like that. When he got out he was going to make sure that bitch paid. Damn whore. He would teach her what it was to be a whore. There were men he knew that would enjoy a young piece of ass like her. He would tie her to a bed, ball gag in mouth, and let his friend’s gang rape her for hours for her betrayal and when they were done he would cut her, disfigure her, take away her beauty and leave her a scarred hag of a whore. First things first. He had to escape the car and kill the sonofabitch that put him in this situation to begin with.
    There was a loud thud on the hood of the Trans Am. More falling debris. This whole place was going to fall in on him if he didn’t get out of here soon.
    “What’s the matter, Cain? Stuck?” A voice spoke.
    Cain looked up from the steering wheel through the spider-webbed windshield. A man knelt on the hood, a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. He took a sip, pulled the bottle away from his lips and looked at it inquisitively.
     “Never had a taste for whiskey,” he said.
    “You’re fucking dead!” Cain roared.
    “I died a long time ago, Dainger. I have you to thank for that.”
    “Do you hear me, you fucking psycho, you’re dead. I’m going to eviscerate you!”
    “You’re a whiskey fan aren’t you, Dainger?” he asked.
    Cain looked at him, not understanding what he was talking about.
    “It’s what you were drinking the night of the accident, the night you murdered my wife and unborn child.”
    For a minute Cain just looked up at the driver, his mind racing around what this man was talking about. When it clicked he began to laugh. The man showed no emotion, no rage at the fact Cain was laughing at the death of his wife and child.
    “Not guilty, asshole!” Cain yelled. “Don’t you read the paper? The accident wasn’t my fault. Jury let me off. Acquittal, look it up.”
    “I read the paper, Dainger. I know what the jury said. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re a murderer. You and your friends.”
    “Fuck you, who cares about some white trash piece of shit. Obviously the jury didn’t, so get fucked asshole,” Cain said.
    The man stood up, walked over the hood of the Trans Am until he was standing over the vents and windshield wipers, then he bent down and peered into the cabin directly into Cain’s eyes.
    “We both know what you did,” he said. He rammed his hand through the windshield, glass falling on the dashboard in heavy shards, and into the cabin. He grabbed Cain by the hair dragging his head forward then slammed the mouth of the Jack Daniels bottle between Cain’s lips, smashing a few teeth in the process. The man tilted the bottle and poured the whiskey down Cain’s throat. The liquid seeped from the corners of his mouth and dribbled onto his shirt in dark circles.
    “Drink up,” he said, as he poured the rest of the bottle over Cain’s head and over his body. The liquor soaked into the fabric of Cain’s clothes and welled between his thighs as though he had let his bladder go. Unable to comprehend what the driver of the black Camaro was doing, Cain felt no fear, and pissing himself was the furthest thing from his mind. This man was going to pay. As soon as he was able to get free of the car Cain was going to put his piece between this fuckhead’s eyes and gleefully pull the trigger. One squeeze of the trigger and the man’s brain would splatter out of the softball size hole in the back of his head. Cain wasn’t the one who should have been afraid, oh no, it wasn’t him.
    After emptying the contents of ol’ Jack Daniels, the man haphazardly dropped the bottle into Cain’s lap. Slumping back on his ass, he withdrew a Zippo from his pocket and flung open the lid. With a swift motion, he ran his palm over the flint barrel and ignited the Zippo, then closed the cover, extinguishing the flame. Again, he ignited the Zippo and closed it. Ignited. Closed. Ignited, and looked through the gleaming flame.
     “What are you doing?” Cain asked with a sudden realization. His voice was laced with fear as he put two and two together. Whatever he had thought the booze was for had been wrong. His fingers plied at the revolver on the floor, the tips only barely touching the gun, unable to grasp it.
    “Justice is blind.” The driver said and paused while inching himself closer to Cain so the two were eye to eye, “So I want to see justice for myself with eyes wide open,” the man behind the headlights said, and tossed the ignited Zippo onto Cain Dainger’s lap. His clothes began to burn, the flames climbed up his body and over his face. “Scream for me.”

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