Touch

Thirteenth

Katie eyed the light that bled from underneath the bathroom door.

"Think he's in there?" Lucas asked.

"Don't know where else he could be," Katie uttered.

"You want to go in there? In the bathroom? They'll be a sink." He shuddered.

"There was a sink in the kitchen," she said mechanically. "Nothing attacked us."

"We got lucky!" Lucas exploded, and he no longer cared the hands might hear. He was backing, no, stumbling away. His feverish eyes scanned his surroundings for a door, an exit, an outside. His legs were rubbery, his breaths a pant, his voice thin. "I need to get out of here," he mumbled, over and over, louder and louder. And he meant it.

Katie watched her boyfriend's composure shatter with a terrible, but bridled panic. The sight of the hands had lit a fire inside of her; it had put something out in Lucas.

"Luke—"

Spittle flew from his lips. "I need to get out!"

Lucas's giant, boiling eyes saw the glass screen door, saw the backyard beyond it.

An outside.

His legs were in motion, his ears deaf to Katie's pleas.

She didn't move, watching his awkward, jerkish movements as he struggled to pull the screen door open.

It was sunny outside, she realized dully. The sky was blue with a golden ball hovering through. A hot and lazy May sun.

Saturday.

Was it Saturday?

Lucas trudged into the backyard, kicking the garden hose out of his way. He laughed and cackled and took deep, shaky breaths. "I made it, Katie! I made it!" he shouted.

He was free.

Katie smiled at him. A part of her – a small part – was glad he'd made it out. She couldn't follow him, though. She needed to get her father out.

Then she saw it.

"Lucas, the hose!"

The long, green garden house Tasha used to water her landscaping projects was being strained and stretched from the inside. Katie could see it bulging as something somehow inched its way toward the water spout.

Lucas had noticed as well. He eyed the fence, looking for a grip, a starting point.

"Lucas!" The thing was almost through.

Again, she thought. It's happening again.

And then the thing was through.

Katie hadn't even needed to wonder when she'd seen the bulges. She'd known what was coming.

The hand had too many fingers to count, and a forearm thicker than Lucas's thighs. It moved quickly, too. It gripped Lucas by the neck before Katie even had the gun up.

She stepped closer to the open screen door, doing her best to block out her boyfriend's moans and whimpers and the stinging pain in her bad arm.  Doing her best to concentrate, because she had to shoot and she couldn't miss.

Her hands were shaking. She bit her tongue, then her lip, inhaled, then exhaled. Lucas's eyes were even wider and panic-stricken than before. He noticed her, murmured something she didn't catch.

"No," he said.

Because as the hand cut off all life in him, somewhere under the befuddlement of panic, Lucas was kind of rational. And he saw Katie's uncomfortable stance, the stiff way her fingers rested on the gun, the tears that must have been clouding her vision, the tightness in her good arm, the swab of fabric around her bad one.

If she aimed for the arm and fired, Lucas thought, there were two possible scenarios.

Either she missed.

Either she hit him.

Katie made up her mind when Lucas went limp. She aimed, or thought she aimed. Pulled the trigger with too much force.

Bang!

The silence rang.

For an instant Lucas' face twisted in pain and his eyes narrowed. Then his features fell asleep, blood flowing from the open wound in his chest--liquid copper.

The hand crawled back into the hose.

Katie couldn't breathe.

She had killed him.