Roseanne
Four Months Later
"Damn. Am I too late? Did you win?"
Lisa shoots a fleeting glance my way as I approach on the worn path, dust coating my sneakers in a roan-colored film. Her arms are crossed over her chest. There's a flash of trepidation in her eyes, their scrutiny cataloging the details of my face before she turns her attention back across whatever lies beyond the rolling hills of prairie grass.
"Nope. Didn't win."
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to psych myself up."
My head tilts with a question, but Lisa doesn't look at me. I follow her line of sight when I stop at her side.
"Whoa... That's just... Yikes."
I take in the dilapidated two-story Texas farmhouse set beyond the gentle rise of the hills, letting my gaze roam the battered and bleached wood of the siding, the shattered and boarded windows on the second floor. A hole on the right side of the roof gapes at the sky like a screaming maw calling to the thunderstorm that darkens the horizon. There's an assortment of junk on the covered patio-broken chairs and boxes, diesel cans and tools, the items strewn on either side of a clear path leading to the screened front door.
"Well...that's a homey place," I say.
Lisa hums a low and thoughtful note. "If by homey you mean nightmarish, I agree."
"Are you sure he's in there?"
Maniacal laughter and a man's piercing scream precede the growl of a chainsaw that starts up inside the house.
"Pretty sure, yep."
The screams and the unhinged laughter and the roar of the chainsaw crack through the air that suddenly seems too heavy, too hot. My heart rate spikes. Blood hums in my ears, a steady percussion to the symphony of madness.
"We could just go for beers," Lisa says above the chaos emanating from the house. "That's what normal people do, right? Go for beers?"
"Yeah..."
Part of me thinks that's a wise idea, but I can't deny the excitement that floods the chambers of my heart with adrenaline. Harvey Mead is an enormous brute, a beast of a man, and I want to take him down. I want to nail him to the floorboards of his horror house and carve out his eyes, knowing I'm the one who stopped him from ever taking another life. I want him to feel what his victims felt.
I want to make him suffer.
Lisa releases a heavy sigh, glancing down her shoulder at me. "We're not going for beers, are we."
"Sure we are. But after."
Another desperate scream slices through the air, startling a murder of crows and a lone vulture from the thin copse of trees to the left of the path. They don't go far, probably already aware that the sounds in the house signal an upcoming meal.
The pitch of the chainsaw rises and the scream grows weaker. There's a hazy quality to the anguish in it. A hopelessness. This isn't a scream that begs for mercy. This is only pain, little more than a reflex. Humanity eroded, stripped away, reduced to an animal caught in the clutch of distress.
Harvey Mead's maniacal laughter dies. The cries of his victim grow thin until they fade away. The chainsaw continues, its pitch climbing and falling as it works, until finally it ends too, blanketing us in stark silence.
