Prey of Paradise

Striking a match, the brief light illuminated Flynn’s smile before he touched the flame to the blunt end of his cigar. Ahead of him, the glow of his headlights ate away at the darkness, exposing the alien bumps and grooves of the Arizona desert as he drove along at a crawl. It was a nice night, he decided. A little chilly, perhaps, but he was a man, and if a man couldn’t handle a little chill then what kind of man was he?

While he navigated his jeep over the unearthly landscape, Flynn suddenly cut the wheel hard to the left, gunned the engine to bounce over a small outcropping of stones, and then swung the wheel back to the right. Dirt and rocks were kicked unceremoniously beyond the mud flaps that wielded chrome silhouettes of large feral hogs as the mighty tires chewed up the alien terrain.

“Hey, darlin’?” he called out into the darkness. “You want to hurry it up out there?” He pumped the gas twice to rev the powerful engine once more, the mufflers grumbling into the vast nothingness of the desert. He was answered by a sharp, defiant cry. Ahead of him, cutting across the twin high beams, a woman darted to his left. She was dirty, clad only in her bra and panties and wearing the bruises and scrapes of tonight’s activities.

Flynn had enjoyed tracking this one. For six months he had stalked this young woman until he felt it was time to end the hunt and start the chase for the kill. It had been easy enough, and the girl was careless. That was fine with other women, but Flynn really liked her. After all, he had taken half a year out of his life to pursue her. That said something, didn’t it? Real commitment on his part after all. So, one night, while she left the safety of her vehicle, he snuck up behind her in the darkness, silent and precise as a cat after a mouse, and after a solid thud to the back of her head with one large fist, he simply swept her off her feet. He was quick to tie her wrists and ankles in duct tape before tossing her into the back of his jeep, and then away they went for a fourteen hour ride to this cold, vast desert—the place he considered his personal playground.

Why, she had cried, over and over. Why indeed, he had answered back. He didn’t know, and he didn’t really care to be honest. To Flynn it was just a game, something fun to do until the next girl came along, even if he did like her the best out of all of them.

“Taaaaaaaaaaabiiiiiithaaaaaa,” Flynn’s deep voice called out into the darkness. She hadn’t gone far; he was almost certain that he could hear her labored breathing over the blathering of his tail pipes. “I see blood, Tabby-cat, did you cut your foot? Come on out and I’ll get you a band aid.” He laughed, brief and a little unhinged, before Flynn fell completely silent. A flash of memory from a dream that kept plaguing him, fading away as the last tendrils of sleep pulled from his foggy brain. A young woman, exquisite in her beauty. No matter how hard in the dream he tired, he just couldn’t get close to her. Oh, now and again, he would reach out to snatch for her, his fingers brushing along her tanned skin, and then fleet as a doe, she was gone.

The jeep bounced over another outcropping of rock hard enough to jar his teeth together, but he paid it no mind. He was back into his memory. Honey brown eyes, a woman of nature, wild of spirit and nimble as a cat as she eluded him. Weren’t you supposed to be superhuman in your dreams? Flynn grumbled as he parked the now half-smoked cigar back into the corner of his mouth. Tabitha, her screams now hoarse, ran towards the right. She was cute trying to hide from him like that, but he had those big heavy treaded tires on his vehicle that could eat away at steep inclines like a mountain goat.

“What’s your name, darlin’?” he muttered around the slightly soggy butt. The dreams were infrequent, but they were strong. Flynn was the type of person who, upon waking, quickly dismissed the fantasies of his resting mind. Actually, until this recurring dream woman began to taunt him, he really didn’t even remember them. But now, now that he was in the desert, in the west, it was as if she were sending out a beacon. Could she have been someone he had killed long ago, perhaps when he was still a fresh faced boy in his teens? Likely, perhaps, though Flynn felt he would have known her, would have remembered such beauty. Maybe she was young when he killed her and she was now haunting him, taunting him with what she could have been.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he decided as he went deeper into his own mind, relishing one of the dreams that insisted on coming in hard and strong. They were in a heavily tropical place, the exotic flowers nearly as large as her face. That was another thing. He could see her, knew she was gorgeous, but he could never remember her face when he woke. Just another female tease. They all were. They were on a path, and he could still smell the weighty fragrance of those flowers, of her. Grunts and clicks would occasionally sound close by, hogs by the sound of it, perhaps wild ones. Flynn loved wild pigs, so intelligent, so resourceful. So deadly. And there she was, standing on the trail, her long hair braided and lying heavily over one shoulder as she turned to caress one of the large flowers.

And then, there he was. The new man always angered Flynn. Some protector or guardian his sick mind decided to place into the middle of his fun. At first, he wasn’t a part of the scene, but as time went on, he felt that perhaps the one part of his brain that still had any good left in it decided to install the stranger just to teach him a lesson. Or perhaps a subconscious warning. Whatever the case may be, it didn’t matter. Flynn had ceased to listen to that side of himself a long time ago. The man wasn’t as large as he was, but sometimes, you had to watch out for the smaller guys. They could be fast and mean. He boasted several scars on his body from fighting with the little guys. Not so wiry, not scrawny at all, but smaller than Flynn. He frowned around his cigar. “I’ll get you, punk. One night, I’m going to go to sleep, cut your throat out, and get that woman.” The jeep bounced again, jarring Flynn out of his thoughts when the back passenger wheel came crashing down from the side of a large rock.

There was a sick crunching sound. Flynn stopped the vehicle and put it in park before snatching up the spotlight he used for hunting and thumbed on the switch. He stepped out of the jeep carefully and as he began to sweep the light towards the back wheel, a tuft of bloody blonde hair, now matted to what was left of a young girl’s crushed skull, met his gaze and regret flooded him.

“Ah Tabitha…why didn’t you move out of the way? You saw me comin’, darlin’,” Flynn said. All that time wasted, and he had accidently killed her before he was ready to because he was focused on a woman that didn’t exist. He began to weep in bitter disappointment.

I had that dream again. The one where he chases me in the darkness. I can’t see much of his face. I never do. Just a flash of something small, like a glimmer of light reflecting off a gold earring. Or so it appears. And his teeth. They seem so huge, so white. I can’t tell if he’s smiling, or snarling…all I know is that he tries to devour me. I’m afraid that one night, I won’t wake up because I wasn’t fast enough to get away from him.

Piper’s brows furrowed as she slowly closed the old ledger she used as a diary. Shadows flickering on the walls told her it was snowing again. The flakes seemed big as saucers as they danced past the dirty window of the tiny, one-bedroom house she shared with her little sister, Mike. Mike was due to turn eleven that spring. Piper looked at the small clock on the wall and noted that school would be ending in ten minutes. She didn’t like the idea of the young girl walking home in this weather, but Piper’s car was in the shop with a broken oil pan. It was just one more thing that needed to be fixed. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried to save the money from her parents’ life insurance, something always came along to whittle away her savings. The life insurance, which came to a little under forty thousand dollars, was stashed away tight. It was a promise she had made her father in the event that anything bad happened—hold on to it, let it grow, and then go somewhere where she could make a life for herself and her sister. That promise made things hard, but she resisted the temptation to fritter it away on trivial things that would only give them temporary relief.

The Reservation was the only world they knew. Their father, being a fan of the American West, had come from Ireland when he was a young man to see the land that had held his fascination as a child. The first person he met in South Dakota had been their mother, from the Lakota tribe, and the two soon became inseparable. When they were married, he was working in construction, doing odd jobs around the Reservation for trade and by the goodness of his heart to make life a little better for the people he had grown to love. When Piper was two, around the time she came down with a bad case of mumps that took her hearing and damaged her voice, they had opened up a small goods store just inside the city limits. When she turned eleven, Mike came into the world. She was delighted with the tiny baby and showered her with adoration. It didn’t matter that she was a girl; Mike was named for her father’s favorite brother who had died in an accident two months before she was welcomed into the world. She was a happy baby, always ready to gurgle and smile when she was held and bounced on her sister’s knee. When Piper was sixteen, a botched robbery made orphans of the McLeod sisters. If their elderly uncle hadn’t stepped in to take custody of them, they would have known the nightmare of being wards of the state. He was the only family member who had the room to take the girls in, or the time. Everyone else was busy feeding their own immediate families or working hard to make what money they could. Their father’s reputation helped with the stigma of their diluted blood, but time had a way of erasing the past. They loved the Lakota, but Piper sometimes wondered if that love was returned in the same measure.

The wintery walk to the main road in the cold November wind left Piper numb to the core. The fur-lined hood of her parka did as much as it could to keep her face protected from the wind-driven snow. The weather on the Reservation was full of extremes—achingly cold in the winter, and in contrast, brutally hot in the summers, though both girls much preferred the warmer weather. You didn’t lose toes to frostbite in the middle of July, that was for sure. Joints didn’t get stiff and achy the way they did when the cold gripped them with an unforgiving fist.

A flash of bright red from Mike’s coat through the pelting snow signaled that her little sister was approaching, and Piper lifted her arms over her head in a grand wave. Mike lifted a hand in return and broke into a trot. It was muddy along the road; last week the temperatures had risen enough to melt the snow and make a mess. Now, it was starting to freeze tight in pocked grooves that threatened to twist an ankle if a person were to step wrong and lose their balance.

“Cold!” Mike signed as she drew near. Normally, she would have had her gloves on, but her hands had started sweating on the way home, and she couldn’t stand that wet feeling inside the knitted wool. Her backpack slipped, and she gripped the straps and hoisted it back into place. She then took the hand offered to her and held on to Piper as they trudged their way back to their home, heads down to keep the bitter wind from biting their faces. The snow began to coat them in a living blanket, showing them winter was serious this year, even if it did have a hesitant start. It covered them until Mike’s coat was a dull pink.

“Hungry?” Piper whispered. It was as loud as she could speak, but she spoke well. Her mother had seen to her speech herself. Her mother had bent over backwards to make sure that Piper had the best chance at a normal life that she could give. Piper still wasn’t over the loss of her parents. She was close to her father but had always been a momma’s girl. Her brain knew that they were gone, but she refused to let it tell her heart. “I made soup.”

“Sounds good.” Mike signed as they tromped up the steps of the porch, knocking off loose snow so they wouldn’t track it into the house. They defiantly shut the door against the winter chill and hung their coats in their appointed places by the door, and then placed their shoes by the kerosene heater to warm.

“Homework?”

Mike nodded, holding her palms a few inches apart. “Just a little,” she said. Piper smiled and turned to check on the modest stew simmering in the Crock-pot. She had used the last of their potatoes and the leftover venison given to her by a neighbor in return for cleaning their house. Jobs were scarce at the moment, and she took whatever she could to get by, laundry mostly. When the occasion called for it, she would sit Thursday through Saturday morning with an elderly lady, Judy, whose children’s work schedules conflicted and left her alone. Mike came along on those nights. They didn’t have a television in their own home, so she enjoyed watching it while Piper cared for Judy.

“I got an A in reading,” Mike said when Piper turned to face her. “And Miss Jarr said that me and Tina are the only kids in class who are making straight A’s this term.”

Piper clapped in joy as a broad smile crossed her face. She had graduated high school four years ago with honors and was pleased to see that her sister took her education as seriously as she did. She wanted to go to college, but she would have to wait until Mike was a little older. Sometimes the two of them entertained the thought that perhaps they could attend together. Mike teased Piper by insisting that old people could go to college too. Piper had teased her right back, threatening to beat her with a walker if she didn’t knock off the “old” talk.

“I’m proud of you,” Piper said, turning to the cabinets to find two bowls. Mike unzipped her backpack and pulled out her English and science books. When the weather got bad, her teacher was kind about not assigning tons of homework. It was why Miss Jarr was one of the favorites.

“I had that dream again.” Piper said as she ladled the stew into bowls. She made sure Mike had plenty of meat and potatoes in hers. A growing girl needed all the nutrition she could get. “I wrote it down if you want to read it, but I think I’m remembering more.” She turned and carried the bowls to the bar where they ate. The kitchen was too small for a table.

Shortly before their parents died, Piper had been having a recurring nightmare that seemed to crop up in random cycles, and her screams in the night, hoarse as they were, often woke Mike who slept on the opposite side of the room. Sometimes they were so bad that Piper was disoriented for a long time after she had woken up. Sometimes she refused to go back to sleep unless the light was on.

“What more did you remember this time?” Mike asked as she set her books aside and pulled her bowl to her.

“It was...different.” Piper took her seat and lifted her spoon, drawing it slowly through broth while her brows knitted in concentration. “Same thing,” she whispered. “Always the same thing...but new. Something new. Something...good?” She lifted her face to gaze into eyes as honey-brown as her own. “I...if I try too hard it wants to go away...”

Mike nodded. “Then don’t try, just let it come.”

“Everything is darkness. Like a stage before the actors come on,” she rasped softly. “First there was the scary part, and I’m running. Then, I’m waiting and...something.” She lowered her head and gave it a minute shake. The memory wanted to come, but it wanted to come all at once, like a large group of people trying to get through a narrow door at the same time. “Colors. Bright, pretty colors. And this smell...like a man’s cologne. It smelled so good.” She smiled. “Someone else came to my dreams this time, and I think he wanted to help me.”

“Gross.” Mike said around a mouthful of potato. “Men are gross.”

“Men are gross,” Piper agreed. “And don’t talk with your mouth full. But he said something. I heard it...in my dreams. But I can’t remember what he said.”

“Maybe you’ll see him again tonight? Maybe he’ll come through stronger this time?”

“Maybe he’ll kill the bad man haunting me,” Piper whispered, and then began to eat before her food got cold.

*****

Her nightshirt clung to her body from the fine sheen of sweat. Piper sat up slowly, her dazed eyes darting along the dark room, her breath hitched and labored. He almost got her this time. She could feel fingers, strong as steel as they gripped her upper arm. Now awake, she could still feel the sensation of the frenzied grip, and her hand came up on its own, rubbing the spot where he had grabbed her in the dream. She was still shaking, mostly due to fear but also because of the chill her damp body was causing.

He knows where I am now.

She cut off the moan before it could escape as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her sheets and blanket were askew, and she rose and turned on the light. Mike was so used to these episodes now that it didn’t wake her.

He knows where I am now! Her frightened mind keened as the memory of that horrible nightmare clung to it like a gossamer shroud and there it gripped it the way her damp nightshirt had adhered to her shapely form.

Too afraid to go back to sleep, Piper made her bed and turned off the light. As an afterthought, she pulled the spare comforter out of the closet and wrapped it around her shoulders before padding quietly into the living room. She knew without looking what time it would be—just after three in the morning. The dreams were punctual, she would give them that. Goosebumps now puckered along her flesh, and she got the kerosene heater going before heading into the kitchen. Coffee, that was what the good ole doc would order, so she obliged. The smell as it brewed gave her comfort. It made her feel safe, knowing that she was on the other side of the nightmare. Safe for now.

Punctual and repetitive, the nightmares always had the same flash of white teeth, suspended against a black background and frozen in a smile. Or a snarl. A quick wink of light, perhaps the reflection from a gold earring like a miniature flicker of lighting. The sense of danger and the overwhelming urgency to flee. She sometimes felt like a doe trapped in the cross hairs of a hunter’s scope. If only she could see her tormentor’s eyes, maybe that would help to give her the strength to overcome these horrible sleep illusions that kept her awake most nights. She’d never tell Mike just how little sleep she got. She knew her sister would worry, and Mike had enough to worry about as it was. Tonight, however, when those fingers closed around her arm, it wasn’t she who had freed herself. It was someone else in the dream. It was just her luck that his face was kept hidden from her too.

The new man was different. She could feel no malice in him, but rather a strong sense of protection. After all this time, was there finally someone who had come to help her?

Piper pulled herself from her thoughts and gathered her coffee cup from the peg it hung upon next to the window. She poured the coffee, and then doctored it to her liking before she took her seat at the bar. Her journal was within reach, so she pulled it to her, opened it up, and began to write.

He came back tonight...but this time, a good one came too. I wish I could have seen the new man’s face. The new one seems to be strong because tonight, the bad one grabbed my arm and it hurt. I didn’t have the courage to jerk away, I was so afraid, but just as the bad man was closing in, it seemed as if his teeth were all around me, he was suddenly pulled away. My arm, where he grabbed it in the dream, actually hurts. I must have grabbed it myself while I was sleeping. There seemed to be a rush of air as the new man came to protect me. Maybe he was shouting, I don’t know. I...felt him as he came out of nowhere. He felt strong and felt much more real than the shadow man did, if that’s possible, because the shadow man feels pretty real. I wish he were real...

The good one, that is.