Below is a short story I wrote while taking a Creative Writing class last semester. My teacher called it "a nice little murder story." It's a longish short story at 7,000 words, and so it will be in 4 parts, the conclusion being at midnight. If you have any comments, I strongly encourage you to... uh, comment on them. Yeah. Enjoy! Alex was ditching work and was driving around Brentwood when he came to Grant Street. His grandparents used to live on one of the cross streets, and he followed the road all the way to the end trying to find the house. He went the wrong way, towards what used to be empty fields. Now there was a new subdivision that was only halfway built. Plastic sheets flapped in the cool wind against the bare frames. Maybe they’d finish them this summer.
A colorful sign with old-fashioned lettering pointed him towards a country store and he pulled into the parking lot, gravel crunching under the tires of his Honda. There were two other cars parked there, a Lexus and another Civic. It was older than his, dark blue. A buzzer on the shop door chirped loudly as he stepped inside, grateful for the warmth.
An old man stood behind the counter, plump and white-haired and with a ruddy complexion. He nodded at Alex. “Hullo.”
“Hey,” Alex mumbled. All the things he could’ve done while skipping out on the office and he’d ended up here? He went down the aisle – there was only one, short and squat – looking at the brightly packaged nuts and snacks and soup mixes.
There was another, even smaller room in the back. A sign outside the door said “Clearance” and Alex hesitated before going in. A young woman turned towards him, looking away from a display of gift baskets. Not that young; thirty, maybe, with dark hair and an okay figure beneath her jeans and blouse and heavy black sweater. He automatically smiled and nodded at her. She didn’t smile back but nodded back and then turned away. He was too old for her, he guessed, and married anyway. His shoulders sagged. A few more years and he’d be forty.
The front door buzzed again. Alex looked at some chocolates shaped and decorated like Christmas trees. He wished the owner would put some music on the intercom system. It was so damn quiet in here he could hear himself breathing.
A gunshot cracked the silence and Alex jumped, crashing into the shelves. The woman had done the same on her side of the room, her dark eyes wide and staring at him. Alex craned his neck but couldn’t see what was going on in the front. His stomach rumbled lightly with nervousness. He didn’t want to go out there. He put his finger to his lips and the woman nodded slowly. She was holding her purse tightly to her chest.
Alex tiptoed into the main room. Where the hell was everyone? There was no blood anywhere, but there was a bullet hole in the wall behind the register. He stepped around the counter and was about to go into the Employees Only room behind it when the door opened.
It was a college-age kid with the gun, tall, black hair, his eyes a murky blue-green. He didn’t look surprised to see Alex standing right there. Alex froze as the kid pointed at him with the gun. “Who else is here?” The kid asked.
“No one.” Alex stood up straighter, glad he at least sounded firm and brave. “Where’s the old guy?”
“There are three cars out front. Who does the other one belong to?” His eyes flickered toward the back room and Alex resisted the urge to look over his shoulder, hoping she’d run out when he wasn’t looking. No, the buzzer would have gone off.
“How should I know?”
“Come on.” The kid took one of Alex’s hands in a strangely gentle manner, and then roughly twisted his arm behind his back. The gun was poking him right between his shoulder blades.
“Ugh,” Alex mumbled, plodding along to the back room. He hated the feel of that gun on him. Maybe he could work out a deal with the kid to let the woman go.
*
Valerie had ideas of her own.
She was still standing with her back against the shelves, but now she had a switchblade in her right hand, sharp and ready for action. Just because the gun had gone off when the tall guy was in the room with her didn’t mean he wasn’t in on it. He had practically swaggered into the room, with a wide grin and his chest puffed up. He scared her a little bit, even if he looked a lot like her favorite news anchor on channel four, the cute redhead.
There was a seemingly long silence between the gunshot and the voices from the other room and she cursed herself for not having tried to run out. But she wasn’t a graceful movie heroine; she probably would have slipped and fallen. She didn’t want to do anything that might make her more vulnerable than she already was.
One man had left the room, and two came back in: the tall guy and a younger one, the gunman presumably. He was holding something against the tall guy’s back. His eyes went right to her knife. Great, an observant gunman, she thought. “Put it down on the floor.”
Valerie hesitated. The knife was her only advantage unless she got the unlikely chance to go for the eyes or the balls. It could still be a trick, the two of them, and she couldn’t go hand-to-hand with two guys at once.
The gunman was impatient. He jabbed at the tall guy’s head. “Put the knife down. Kick it into that corner.” He nodded to the other end of the little room. The tall guy said nothing but swallowed audibly.
Valerie let the knife drop the floor and kicked it away. She could feel tears of frustration welling in her eyes, but clenched her fingernails into her palms, determined not to cry.
Satisfied, the gunman motioned for her to follow the two of them into the front of the store. She did, crossing her arms over her chest and trying to look tough. They went into the back room behind the counter and the store owner, manager, whoever he was, was propped up against the wall, his hands bound behind him. He was gagged and his eyes, one of them bruised, bugged out at them.
The gunman nodded to Valerie. “Help him up. We’re going to the parking lot.”
She was supposed to help the big fat man? But she could see his strategy in that. He didn’t want to risk fighting the tall guy. Valerie, the woman, was not considered a threat. That’s what you think, she fumed to herself, struggling to bring the old guy to his feet and almost falling down herself.
Out in the parking lot they went to a dusty, beat-up, black van. The gunman kept his vigil on the tall guy while opening up the back of the van, one door at a time. “Get him in there, lying down.” He was addressing the tall guy, though looking at Valerie. “Try anything and I shoot her.” His gun moved to point at her chest and she took a deep breath, turning her face away from him.
With the old guy safely stowed, the gunman took a pair of handcuffs out of one pocket and held them out to Valerie. “Take these – slowly – and put them on him. Hands behind his back.”
Valerie took the cuffs, her hands shaking. The tall guy stood awkwardly as she cuffed him, his head down, shoulders slumped. His hands were cold but sweaty.
“I won’t have to gag you, will I?” The gunman asked him.
“No.”
“Then get in and lay down.” He looked at Valerie. “Now you.”
She looked into his eyes. Hell, she’d seen his face anyway. “I’m not going to do anything. Don’t cuff me.”
“Listen.” His eyes sparkled. “You’re doing great. Just keep doing what I say and you’ll be fine.”
“I can’t sit back there with them. Let me sit in front with you.”
He smiled coldly. “So you can reach over and grab the wheel?”
“And kill us all? I’m not stupid.” Her face was hot and she could feel the tears in her eyes again. She blinked hard. “I just want this to be over. Just don’t make me… please.”
*
Anthony studied her carefully. Of all the girls to be around while taking down Hensby, he had to get the ballsy type. This one wasn’t scared of him. She was pissed. That was dangerous. Cornered, she might fight. He didn’t want to hurt her. Better to let her bend the rules, just a little bit.
“You can sit in front,” he said, proud of himself for being magnanimous. “But I’ll still have to cuff you.”
“Hands in front of me. Not behind.”
What was this chick, he thought, a professional hostage negotiator? “And let people in other cars see?”
“I’ll put my sweater over the cuffs.”
It sounded like she had thought about this more than he had. “Fine. Sweater off, and hands out. Now.” She flinched at his tone but did it, looking away from him. Anthony kept the gun on her, cuffed one hand at a time, and walked with her to the front of the van, opening the passenger door for her. He reached up to keep her from bumping her head on the van, but she jerked away from his touch. Reaching up with both hands, she pulled her seatbelt down and buckled it, then arranged her sweater on her lap. It looked okay.
He got in and started the van. “Okay back there?” He asked loudly, looking over his shoulders at Hensby and the big guy.
“Yes,” the big guy said, sounding like he was pouting. Anthony shook his head at his stupid luck. One tough girl and one big guy, but at least they weren’t together. He knew he should’ve tried another day, with two extra cars in the parking lot, but instinct and desire had pushed him to go ahead. It was too bad, and too late. He would’ve liked to let the girl go, but there was no way to tell if she’d talk and how much she’d say.
He turned to look at her as he drove the van out onto the street. She was pretty, dark-featured, maybe a little too thin. “What’s your name?” He asked.
Slight hesitation. “Valerie.” She was looking out the window.
“Look at me, Valerie.” She did. “You need to look at me the whole time we’re driving, all right? No mouthing words to other cars.”
Something that was almost a smile flickered across her lips. “I don’t even know what I’d say.”
“Don’t say anything.” Out of the corner of his eyes he saw her turn her head to look in the back of the van.
“Are you really okay, back there?” She sounded truly concerned.
“I’m fine.”
“What’s your name?”
“Alex.”
“Okay. Sir? Sir, are you okay?”
Hensby grunted weakly and Anthony grinned. The old man hadn’t been interested in talking before; now, it was too late.
Valerie turned to him. “I suppose it’s too much to expect that you’d tell me your name.”
“Just say, ‘Hey, you.’” They came to a red light and Valerie started to turn to look at the car on their right. “Don’t do that.” Anthony squeezed her shoulder, hard, and she whipped her head back towards him. He felt bad immediately; her dark eyes were bright with tears. He let go of her, watching the red marks his fingers left on her shoulders fade back to white.
“Sorry.” The light turned green and they were on their way again.
She was good. She didn’t cry, but cleared her throat and waited a few minutes before speaking. “Where are we going?”
“Knightsen.” It wasn’t a bad ride, only fifteen minutes on the back roads. He’d go that way even if he didn’t have three hostages in the car; it was nice and woodsy. He would have loved to have been able to live out there, on the old family farm… He shifted in his seat. Fifteen minutes was longer than it sounded like. “Do you want me to turn on the radio?”
Valerie’s eyes were hard and emotionless. “Why?”
Anthony said nothing and turned back to the road. He knew how it felt to have a gun pointed at you. His college roommate in junior year, Brandon, had been a low-level drug dealer. A week before Thanksgiving, three of Brandon’s associates had burst into their apartment in the middle of the night to retrieve money owed to them. Two of them had ransacked the bedrooms and living room; the other had made Anthony and Brandon kneel on the kitchen floor, hands behind their heads, and waved a shotgun back and forth between their faces.
They found and kept the small stash of money Anthony had been saving up for his mom’s Christmas present, but he’d been angrier at Brandon than he had been at his business partners. They were only collecting what was owed to them, and they hadn’t hurt anyone. With Hensby, Anthony hadn’t been able to do the first, so unfortunately he’d have to do the second.
Labels: blogathon, writing
