“Come on, fucker,” she whispered. “Come get me.”
Dani’s tired eyes ached against the early morning light. She closed the blinds and resigned herself to a nap. She didn’t expect to have any visitors since it was the first day of school; the only time that students usually knocked on her door was when an assignment was due. She eased into her couch, flipped off her flats and threw her arm over her eyes to block out the rest of the light. Before she could worry about Matt Vickers or her students or anything else, her breathing slowed, her body relaxed and she allowed herself to slip into darkness.
In her dreams, Dani was eighteen again.
Somewhere in the distance, a dark, gothic heavy metal version of Seals and Crofts’Summer Breezedroned, the singer's voice haunting and sexy all at once. She was seated at the picnic table outside of Pizza My Heart, a slice of veggie laid out in front of her on a paper plate. She glanced up from the grease-stained plate, the savory aroma of fried bread and cheese causing her mouth water. Tommy sat across from her, smiling, his face splattered with blood.
“I miss you,” he said. “Do you miss me?”
Dani tried to nod, but her head and neck wouldn’t cooperate. She tried to speak, but her lips refused to work too.
“I know,” Tommy said, scratching at the oozing wound at his neck. “I don’t look so hot. But you look great. I always liked it when you wore my hoodie.”
Dani gazed at her chest. Her hair tumbled over her shoulder, long again in dark, glossy curls. She was wearing Tommy’shoodie and her favorite Tommy Hilfiger jeans. The hoodie. It was the only thing of his she still had.
“I’m not mad at you,” Tommy said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Dani glanced back up, but Tommy was gone. Kyle had taken his place, and just like Tommy, he too was covered in gore. He picked up a piece of pizza, took a bite, and swallowed. Dani watched as a globule of pizza traveled down his esophagus and fell out of a ragged hole in his neck. He smiled at her with a bloody grin.
“Welcome to Cool Flix.”
Dani placed her palms on the table and tried to shout. She mouthedhelp me,the words nothing more than a silent scream. She glanced around the boardwalk overlooking Santana Beach as a neon pink sun slipped into the horizon. A rollerblader sped by wearing a CK One t-shirt, followed by a pair of giggling teenage girls in tie-dye and daisy print bikinis. The crunchy metal song grew louder in her ears.
She returned her attention to Kyle, but he was gone, and in his place were Dom and Brenda Kincaid. Her bloody mom and dad sat in front of her, silent and motionless with their necks torn open. Ribbons of bloody meat dangled from the fatal wounds. A breeze kicked up from the ocean and brought with it the fetid scent of her decaying parents. Dani tried to shout again, but as it often happens in dreams, no words came out.
Mom!
Dad!
Her parents only stared back at her with sad, forlorn expressions. They were still dressed in blood stained pajamas, their faces blue and flickering as though illuminated by the light of a bedside TV. This was not how she wanted to remember them. She coughed, and her throat constricted. A low whine droned in her ears and pressure weighed on her back as she sensed something coming up from behind. She wanted to look.She wanted to see what was coming. She coughed again and opened her eyes.
Dani sat up straight, clawing at her throat and gasping for air. Her forehead was slick with sweat, and her pulse raced as though she had just run five miles. The rancid scent of decay still clung to the inside of her nostrils as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Dani fished her phone from her pocket to check the time; it was just after noon. She hadn’t overslept.
Disorioriented, Dani rose from the couch on unsteady legs. The lack of sleep and constant tug of anxiety in her chest was getting to be too much. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep up with her plan of waiting for Matt to show his face. As much as she wanted to lure him out of his hiding place, to end his life, she was running out of steam. She ambled over to her desk, pulled up the search engine on her desktop and indulged in an activity that she hadn’t allowed herself to partake in for a long, long time.
Finding mug shots and prisoner records online was a lot easier than it had been in 1998. For a few years in the early 2000s, Dani had formed a little bit of an obsession with looking up her stalker’s wrap sheet on a daily basis. She knew upon reflection that her unhealthy behavior was partly motivated by hatred and partly motivated by a need for understanding. Why her? Why him? She never got those answers, but that didn’t stop her fromresearching every last bit of information she could about the man who ruined her life.
By all means, Matt seemed to have had a decent life before that fateful summer. He had decent parents from a well-to-do family and lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. He was popular and had dozens of friends, and certainly never had a problem finding dates. Even the whispers of how he got too rough with a cheerleader or two didn’t dissuade his potential girlfriends. His secretive violent reputation only made him edgier somehow. Dani couldn’t wrap her mind around why someone like him would go down a dark path. Maybe he had gone through some kind of traumatic event of his own, or maybe, just maybe, some people like him were born evil. Over time, she came to the resolution that she may never know why he chose to obsess over and torment her.
Dani pulled up Matt Vickers’ arrest information as she had done so many times before. Her heart raced as she typed in his name and was none too surprised to see that his records still showed him registered as an inmate in a Northern California maximum security prison. She scrolled through his information and found the first mugshot ever taken of him on the day he got out of the hospital. The bleach in his hair had grown out by then, exposing the dark roots beneath. She flipped through his mugshots taken over the years and watched as he progressively aged from a cocky youth into a hardened, middle-aged man. Even though he was older and deep grooves had been carved into his skin by time, she would know those piercing, dark eyes anywhere.
Her temples squeezed and a fresh headache clouded her thoughts. She needed another break, but was due in class again soon. Dani closed out of the search engine window and checked her work email with disinterest. She already had a few messages from new students asking about the syllabus as well as a fewemails from her colleagues. She struggled to shift her focus back to work and plowed on through emails and her to-do list until it was time to teach her 2 p.m. class.
Lack of sleep and coffee made the world feel hazy, but she needed to stay sharp. She opened her desk drawer and found her trusty bottle of 100mg caffeine pills and downed a handful of them with water. She felt like she was channeling Jessie Spannow inSaved by the Bellevery time she reached for the bottle, which she admittedly abused from time to time over the years. Staying alert at all times was part of her survival, and caffeine was yet another necessary evil.
Dani operated on auto-pilot for the rest of the day as she introduced herself to her new students and went through the motions. She read off her syllabus and recited roll call, instantly forgetting each of her new student’s names as they introduced themselves. Normally, teaching gave her a certain amount of satisfaction and mental stimulation, but even after a double dose of caffeine, she couldn’t concentrate. Her thoughts always trailed back to Matt Vickers and the past. Could he really have made it across the country to get to her? Would he really even want to pick back up where he left off? Why couldn’t he just leave her alone and hide out in a foreign country like a normal convict on the run?
By the end of the day, her energy levels were depleted again. Dani hurriedly locked her office, trying her damnedest to avoid chit chat with her other coworkers and shuffled out to the parking lot just before dusk. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a badass blade of vengeance. Maybe she was just a tired, middle-aged school teacher who couldn’t fight her way out of a Target parking lot, let alone subdue a serial killer. Intrusive thoughts overwhelmed her as she came to the realization that she might be in over her head with this whole revenge plot idea. She couldn’t keep up being a college professor and a round-the-clock undercover assassin. Something would have to give, and it looked like that something was going to be the life that she had built as Danielle Spencer.
Her car was parked in its usual spot in the staff lot adjacent to the old smoking pavilion and a patch of dense, pine scrub forest. She clutched her tote bag bursting with paperwork and her laptop to her side with her keys at hand, scanning the horizon for suspicious characters just like she always did. A gust of hot, late summer breeze blew in from the direction of the wooded lot, bringing with it the scent of baked earth and slash pine, and something else …
Dani stuck her nose in the air as her pulse picked up speed. What was that smell? Was it gasoline? Chlorine? A sweet, noxious mystery chemical tinged the air and caused the tiny hairs on the inside of her nose to curl. Her features scrunched in disgust at the unwelcome aroma. She disarmed the lock on her vehicle, and that’s when she saw it; a familiar-looking object laying on the asphalt just outside her passenger door.
A scrunchie.Herscrunchie.
She dipped down and picked up the fabric hair tie with a shaky hand. It was slightly faded by time, but Dani would know this particular accessory anywhere. She had worn that scrunchie on her wrist every day for years until the elastic was almost worn out. It was the very same one that she lost on the first night that Matt Vickers attacked her. Dani brought the hair tie closer to her face and discovered where the smell was coming from. She gagged and turned toward the woods, searching for whoever had left it there. She held the fabric hair tie high over her head, sucked in a lungful of air, and released decades of pent up anger into the wind.
“SHOW YOURSELF,” she shouted. “I’M NOT AFRAID OF YOU!”
