This is going to hurt

The sound of shattering glass—much like that of a window being hit with a blunt instrument—woke Pearl Gillespie out of a dreamless sleep.

Ba-dum, Ba-dum, Ba-dum went hear heart.

The nervous system kicked into gear before her thoughts did.

Bertrand the cat came to mind first.

That damned tabby. He’s finally knocked over my crystal vases.

Then a second shatter came and glass exploded into the house, or perhaps it was another vase. She flinched, levitating off the bed. That would do no good for her sciatica, which was destined to wake her up even if the glass hadn’t. She reach out reflexively and patted for Charles, finding only a space that had been empty for 15 years. It was just her and the hideous darkness, full of unspeakable possibilities. She held her breath and listened.

There was only the familiar sounds of her mansion; wind rapping at the windows and floorboards that creaked of their volition. The air was pregnant with ordinary silence, a white noise in the empty space of her sprawling bedrooms and vast hallways; her fancy bathrooms and walk-in wardrobes. Her nerve endings sizzled, drunk on adrenaline. She waited for the sound of footsteps creeping through the darkness.

Pearl was a slight of a thing, laying alone in her huge bed and garbed in silk pyjamas. At 75, she still fancied herself healthy, but the hammering in her chest made her twitch for the medicine cabinet. Both knees—replaced— ached and she wondered how they would fare if she had to make a run for it.

Breath Pearly. Just breathe. A woman of 70 doesn’t need this much excitement. Look where it got Charles.

Memories of Charles—who she tried to purge from her mind like a gardener weeding his lawn—pushed to the fore. He was a reminder of mortality and her loneliness.

She took in deep breaths until her heart began to soften.

Ba-dum, Ba-dum…Baaa-duuum.…Baaa-duuum……….Baaaa-duuuum.

The shutters gently pattered all down the hallway, reminding her just how big her house was. Things sounded louder in big houses, perhaps her mind had exaggerated to volume of the shatter. A trick of the mind to ensure her survival.

After a few seconds of baited breath and no footsteps she let out a croaky sigh. The endorphins that come after a spike in cortisol flushed her system with calm and she softened back into the bed. Her thinning, grey-blonde hair was stuck in wet clumps to her head. The silk pyjamas clung to her bony frame.

Damned cat. Maybe I should give him a fright of his own.

She chuckled then pulled her mouth into a tight line. The fear that someone was inside the house, waiting in the darkness was unshakeable.

The bedroom door was open, illuminated by a floor to ceiling slit of blue light where the curtains hadn’t quite reached each other. A last bastion against the darkness that enveloped the room. She thought of a gloved hand holding the door, maniacal eyes peering round at her. The rattling window made her flinch again.

Get it together Pearl. This is a nice neighbourhood.

The fantasy wasn't unreasonable. The world was full of evil things. The neighbouring town of Derry had been plagued by a spree of child murders 30 years back, and in recent times there had been reports of a mass rapist in Tunsdel. He broke into homes in the dead of night and committed unspeakable acts. His identity had never discovered but the papers call him ‘The Prowler’.

Things like that don’t happen here.

Pearl had read about it. The paper reported an 80 year old woman waking to a dark figure creeping across the bedroom of her trailer. The man concealed his face with gloved hands. ‘I could see one of his cruel eyes staring though his fingers’ she had said. Before proceeding to rape and torturing her The Prowler said ‘This is going to hurt’. The rest of it made Pearl’s stomach turn and she was glad to put it down. Gladder still she didn’t live in some crap-shack trailer off white-trash nowhere, at the mercy of the poverty line.

Her town—Hillsborough—was old money. Charles left her generations of wealth and to Pearl, money was equal to safety. Tomorrow she’d be sipping imported tea in the garden and laughing at what a scaredy cat she had been.

She tried not to think about Charles’ death. Catching herself before she replayed the events of that night and ruminated on the emotions it welled up in her. Feelings she had spent years trying to bury.

Pearl I am having a heart attack.

There was a noise from below; boots hitting the floor. An emotionless thud, just in ear shot. Glass crunching under thick soles. For a second her heart stopped and she froze in utter terror. Sickness lurched in her stomach.

She thought of the article. ‘80 year old woman assaulted by The Prowler’.

That kind of thing does happen here.

Footsteps came up the stairwell. Each step creaked as the heavy boot paused, then shifted the weight of the intruder up to the next.

Her body was frozen. Ravaged by a soupy fear that soaked her brow and thickened as the footsteps approached.

When the stranger reach the top he stopped and the ordinary sounds of the house resumed.

Fear strangled her heart.

Pearl please call me an ambulance.

It took perhaps 10 seconds before the footsteps resumed. In the short reprieve she gathered her thoughts and assessed the situation with the modicum of rationality she had left. Assuming The Stranger was orderly, there were four bedrooms to check before hers and the hallway of about 50 feet. This gave her a window. She would grab her gun, pull the telephone under the bedsheet so as to not advertise her presence and then call the authorities. She would find a hiding place and position the gun facing outward, ready to blast whoever it was into the afterlife.

She scurried across her bed and retrieving the gun from her night stand with delicacy. Then, very softly, she pulled the telephone from the receiver up to her ear. The line was dead.

New plan. Turn on the lamp and hold the gun up.

She cupped the lamp switch in her sweaty hand, pressing carefully in an attempt to muffle the snap of it clicking into place. No light. The power was out. Whoever the stranger had cut her power and left her alone in the dark.

The footsteps creeped towards her, fear thickening as they approached. She could hear him opening the guest bedroom doors in his approach then pausing to check for life.

Please do something Pearly, I’m dying.

The footsteps continued to the next door, pushing it open.

Her mind raced along three tracks.

On one track—and despite a double knee replacement—she would make a run for the other stairwell. In one minds eye, she saw him catching her before she even reached the stairs and dragging her into one of the guest beds where he would say ‘this is going to hurt’. In the other eye, he pushed her down the stairs. She could see herself bouncing off each step and shattering at the bottom, laying like a smashed bag of glass, waiting for him to come and enjoy her.

On the second track, she hid under the bed. She saw herself being dragged out feet first, trying to shoot at a man she couldn’t see. His fist would find her face before the barrel of the gun found his, and she would be knocked unconscious before even taking a shot.

On the third track, she saw herself staying put, pulling the sheets over the gun and waiting for him to get close enough to unload the chamber into his stomach, saving a bullet for his cock if she had any to spare.

Pearl, please. I need an ambulance.

The footsteps continued to creep closer. Another door opened.

‘Pearl’, called the man in a sing-song sort of voice. Her blood curdled.

The footsteps stopped and the silence resumed. She put a hand over her mouth to catch a scream, the other shook under the sheets, finger on the trigger.

Through the crack of her door he whispered ‘Pearllll!’.

The slip of blue light illuminated his eye, black and glossy as it started into hers, then it darted about, surveying the room.

He screamed with a booming voice.

‘PEARL!’.

She jolted, almost pulling the trigger.

He stepped into the dark room, a towering shadow. The outline of a fire poker protruded from his hand. He closed in with animal-like poise, chuckling.

’Hello Pearly’.

She raised the gun and fired three shots.

As the gun flashed she saw his face. Black eyes bulged in cavernous sockets. Deep wells of cruelty fixed on her with predatory aim. His mouth snarled and there was a scar running from its corner up to his ear. The first bullet hit the door, exploding it into a cloud of splinters. The second hit her wardrobe. The third hit flesh, knocking him back by the shoulder. He dropped to the floor and rolled under her bed with military precision.

He roared and stomped his feet. ‘I’m going to tear your into fucking pieces Pearl!’

Her legs moved before her brain thought, animated by some ancient part of the brain tasked with keeping her alive. Despite the pain of her knees she made it out the bedroom, headed for the stairwell.

It was but three seconds before he was on his feet sprinting after her. She looked down the stairwell to the platform where stairs turned the corner to the kitchen, glass confettied across the wooden flooring. Wind whistled in from the window above. This is where he had broken in.

Before she could descend a gloved hand seized her mouth and yanked her into a vice-like grip. Something in her jaw clicked. How brittle you became in your twilight years she thought, as pain searing through her face. With as much force as she could muster she brought the gun down into his crotch. He howled, then folded like all men who experience blunt trauma to the cahonies, flopped forward and toppled them both down the stairs.

Pearl was cocooned by his sinewy body, which took the blow of each step. Her leg twisted, and she felt the explosive agony of her knee snapping out of its place. As they hit the mid platform they came apart. The stranger sprawled onto the glass pocked platform. Pearl fell over him and down again towards the kitchen floor, breaking the fall, and her arm, with her out-stretched hand. The bones shattered as easily as snapping twigs.

Pain intoxicated her, dragging her into unconsciousness. She could see him on the platform, wobbling to his feet like a drunkard. She pulled herself from the brink of oblivion observing his form come into her milky vision.

The stranger stood on the platform where the stairs turned the corner. A looming black silhouette outlined by the moonlight coming through the smashed window. He stood strong—legs apart—arms wide, fire poker still in hand, breathing deep. Little shards of glass fell from his head as he cocked it side to side. He smashed the poker against the wall twice, then raised it above his head and leapt toward her.

The poker came down with sickening force. Pearl—governed now by her survival instinct—pushed off with her good foot and slide backwards. Her silk pyjamas and the wooden floor lubricating her trajectory. The poker landed between her legs, splitting the wood like a crack of lightening.

She kicked again, sliding backwards towards the dining table. He negotiated the poker out of the floor with brute force and raised it again, but before he could bring it down and split her head in two, she raised the gun and he leapt over her onto the table. She gave one last push and slid backwards under the table, it thick wooden top offering her temporary safety.

The pots and pans hanging above the table fell and crushed neatly placed crockery and glassware, reserved for guests that rarely visited. Pearl looked up at the wooden underside, listening to the bezerk screams and stomps of the stranger. Debris shattered on the floor around her as he raged above, boots swinging, fire poker sweeping everything onto the floor. The chairs toppled over, falling atop the shattered remnants of her dining set.

The lunacy came to an abrupt stop and the room was silent again. She breathed, waiting for him to jump down and finisher her of. Waiting for his hands around her throat. The table wobbled then his hand came under with the poker, whipping into the empty space. It took chunks of wood from the table legs, clattering this way and that as she tried to dodge. When it recoiled, the curled spike whipped across her cheek and she felt blood pour down her face. He came at her from the other side, whipping erratically. This time curled spike found her arm. She screamed with agony.

When he pulled it out, blood gushed from the hole and she screamed again.

The strangers arm vanished and the silence resumed.

He was waiting her out, like a Komodo Dragon waiting for the Bison to collapse from it’s injuries.

Darkness stole her mind and her body went limp. She thumped heavily onto the floor, banging her head. Blood poured from her cheeks and the hole in her arm. Her jaw ached, drifting to the side. Her leg was twisted up good, the knee 45 degrees east of where it should be. Her forearm curved like a Banana.

The pain was inconceivable, dragging her into darkness. She clutched at the last bit of consciousness she had left.

Charles swamped her mind and she wondered if he felt pain like this when he died.

Why won’t you do something Pearl? Help me. Please.

Pearl toyed with the idea that her time was up. If her heart didn’t give up—which it showed no signs of doing—this stranger would use the fire poker to pulverise her skull like sheet candy. She imagined he was past his base desires now. This was a fight to the death and he had the upper hand.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die. A lifetime of home movies compressed into 3 seconds of film only you can understand, but all she could think about was Charles dying by the fireplace. His chubby face frightened by the crushing agony in his chest. Whining like a runt, begging for help whilst she stood and watched. A forgotten—no, repressed—excitement came to the fore as she thought about the light dying in her husbands eyes. A moment of sensual clarity followed by action.

Pearl raised the gun to the underside of the table. Time seemed to slow to the speed of one of those action replay golf shots Charles had made her endure time and again. It felt like minutes in a movie and her thrumming heartbeat was the soundtrack. She pulled the trigger and the gun fired its last two rounds, her trigger finger still clicking long after the chamber was emptied.

The stranger glided through the air, hitting the wooden floor in a heap. The crockery rattle under his bulk.

For a moment they both lay there.

He struggled to his feet, grasping at thin air for something told hold on to. He bent forward, clutching his throat with one hand, fire poker in the other, emitted a guttural, choking noise. As he hobbled through the kitchen and into the sitting room she was amazed by the trail of blood splattered behind him. It glinted in the moonlight.

When he reached the sitting room he fell to his knees in slow motion, tilting forwards, then finally falling onto his back, lying in front of the fireplace exactly where Charles had died 15 years earlier.

Pearl pursued him, dragging her mangled leg behind. The empty gun hung casually by her side now in a steady hand. He choked and writhed in the darkness. She fumbled for the switch of the fireplace and with one click, the self lighting fire ignited, casting the room in brilliant fire Amber hues.

The stranger gurgled and wheezed. His deep-set, black eyes bulged from his pale face flickering with a mixture of terror and rage. Blood belched from the bullet sized hole just left his Adam’s apple. It was a serious wound, but not fatal. Prompt medical attention would ensure his survival.

Pearl thought of the night Charles died. Letting the excitement of that memory run free. She remembered how he shrivelled underneath her, begging for help, weak and pathetic. She remembered how much she had enjoyed looking into his eyes as the animating force dwindled from them. How good it felt to take one of the sofa cushions and hold it over his face until his hands twitched and then fell still. How she came when his breath stopped.

She had only that killed once, and the way she saw it (and justified it to herself all these years), it was a mercy killing for them both. Like stamping on a half crushed rodent in the middle of a dusty back road. But it had felt good. The desire rarely reared it’s head, but when it did, she pushed it back into the depths of her subconscious. ‘A once in a life time pleasure’ she had told herself, never letting the urge be anything more than a submerged thought.

She took the fire poker from the stranger’s hand.

Fear dawning on his face, just as it had dawned on Charles’.

She slid the tip of it into the hole in his neck. Fresh blood spurted the shaft of the poker.

‘This is going to hurt’, she said.