= 16. =
 As he went, he could hear speaking on the phone. "…He tried to murder me and my sister. This bastard! I let him in out of the rain, and he took out a huge butcher knife. What’s that? Yes, I got his name. It’s Angus Stura Bitters. He is about five eleven, in his early twenties, with short brown hair and brown eyes. He is extremely dangerous. I think he is still in the house, and he is trying to kill me…What’s that? Marsha Starker…"
As she spelled out her name, Martin staggered to the front door. It was like swimming through dark water. He felt pulled in many directions between the influence of the numbing drug and the electrical jolt of the adrenaline.
"You fucking bastard!" she screamed as she craned her neck and poked her head from the kitchen into the living room. She saw him and dropped the receiver.
With a wild animal shriek, she raised the butcher knife and launched herself at him in a tangle of flowery garment.
Martin felt his stamina returning.
As she reached him, he sidestepped her.
She crashed loudly against the front door and fell onto his piled poncho.
Martin ran as best he could toward the glass sliding door overlooking the back of the house. Tearing it open, he staggered out into a wild, sleeting rain.
Lightning flashed.
In the revelations of light, he saw that he was on a small, poured-concrete back porch.
If only he could make it away from here!
He began to run across the wet sand.
His shoes, already wet, became soaked as he stepped into one deep puddle after another.
The cold water seemed to snap him out of his narcotic haze.
He focused on pumping his arms and putting one foot in front of the other as he ran toward the sea.
Thunder slammed and ricocheted around him.
Each time lightning flashed, he could gain some instant flicker of recognition—he was on a beach, looking at a roiling sea with ten foot walls of seething, blasting, exploding foam. Rain flew sideways in the strong, icy wind.
Behind him, he heard a scream as Marsha launched herself after him.
Flying from the porch, screaming and screeching at top volume, she waved the knife in the air and ran after him.
She was faster than he was in his lumbering state.
He ran as best he could.
No time to even glance over his shoulder.
He could hear her breath sawing over his shoulder.
He glimpsed her wide, frantic eyes.
Her pupils were little black dots in the middle of huge white eyeballs.
Her mouth was wide open, with little purple lips stretched to their maximum, revealing a heap of blue tongue and the black around her tonsils as she alternately breathed in and screamed out.
As she ran, she made repeated attempts to slash him with the knife.
Between a combination of his dodging and her incoherent motions, she missed two or three times.
Each of those powerful slashing blows could have severely wounded or killed him.
He cried out in terror as his voice returned.
Finally, he realized he had lost.
He was about to die.
He turned, and staggered backward, looking his killer directly in her animal eyes.
Marsha might as well be airborne, given the fluttering of her soaked gown in the lashing rain.
Lightning flashed, flashed, flashed.
Her facial features had become a grimacing mask from hell.
As he backed away, rapidly losing ground, he fell over backward and landed heavily on his rump. The fall stunned him.
He watched as she came toward him.
But she too stumbled on the buried brick fire pit that had made him fall.
With one last scream, she aimed the knife at his heart.
But she fell, and landed on the knife.
Martin was in the act of pulling himself away, crawling to put distance between himself and her.
A moment later, there was only lightning, and lashing rain, and howling wind.
She lay dead on her back, with the knife sticking from her chest.
Lightning flashed again, just an instant, too brief to make out any facial expression. He only glimpsed a gray death mask staring away into eternity.
Sobbing in spiritual exhaustion, Martin heaved himself to his feet.
He staggered away to find his car.
Behind him, he heard the door of another house crashing open and shut. He heard voices and running feet. He heard a woman screaming, "There is a woman dead on the sand! She’s been stabbed through the heart."
A man yelled, "Honey, get in here quick. I’ll call the cops. There is an insane murderer on the loose out here."
"We’ll be next," the woman wailed. She must have run back to the house, because a door slammed and there was silence.
Martin ran and stumbled around the house, never wanting to set foot inside again.
The car was where he had left it.
He got in and tried the ignition. It labored and labored but would not turn over.
He thought about breaking into the house and calling police.
At that moment, through the waves and sheets of blowing wind and rain, he saw flashing blue and red lights passing on the street above, right by the corner where the car had finally died.
The police were already there.
He jogged up the sidewalk, feeling his strength and presence of mind returning. He would be saved now. The nightmare would be over in a few minutes.
He reached the top of the street, just in time for a speeding patrol car with flashing lights to streak past. He overheard a radio voice saying, "All cars, be on the lookout for a male age twenty-two, with short brown hair, going by the name of Angus Story or Stury Bitters. Just got a report of a stabbing victim dead on the beach. Suspect is armed and highly dangerous…."
Martin thought about turning himself in and ending this. He was the suspect. He was Angus Story Bitters, crazed killer, or however this insane woman in her madness and viciousness had tried to frame him. But he had a right not to be implicated in something that might cost him thirty years to life if it came to a court case and sanity lost. Or the other side had a better lawyer. What if she had a rich family who could hire one of those television lawyers? He was innocent. Let them sort things out. He must get away. He had done nothing wrong. All he wanted to do was reach Chloë. It was all he cared about. And when Martin made up his mind to do something, only hell itself would stop him. He was one of those unstoppable Alienopolis heroes with the fluttering cape. Hadn’t Chloë described him that way? He must escape from this hell and get to LA.
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Thank you for reading the first half (free, what I call the Bookstore Metaphor). If you love it, you can (easily and safely at Amazon) buy the whole e-book for the painless price of a cup of coffee—also known as Read-a-Latte (hours of reading enjoyment; the coffee is gone in minutes, but the book stays with you forever). You can also get those many hours of happy reading from the print edition for the price of a sandwich (no, I don't have a metaphor for that, like a 'sandwich metaphor?'). To help the author, please recommend this book your friends, and also post a favorable (five star!) review at Amazon, Good Reads, and similar online reader resources. Thank you (JTC).
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