No Good Deed

TWELVE

With all the agility that only a ballet-student-turned-martial artist can possess, she ducked. Her would-be attacker's arms hovered above her head and closed hard in mid-air; she could feel the swish of his hands coming together. He tilted to one side, overcorrected, and sailed to the floor in the opposite direction.

A skull-jarring CLUMP sent tremors through the hardwood floor of the hallway; the aftershock reverberated underfoot. Karla watched as a growing puddle of blood seeped from a gash in the young man's buzzed head. He had apparently smacked his temple against a side table, and she imagined he wouldn't be getting up any time soon.

She didn't want to take any chances, though. She turned away from the body at her feet, stomach fluttering, and paused as her eyes locked on Cam. She was propped upright on sheet-rumpled mattress centered against the back way of the grungy bedroom. Her hands were bound at the wrists, and her mouth was gagged with a paisley scarf. Karla rushed to her side. Relief flooded Cam's eyes and her voice came out in a low whimper.

The two girls shared a quick, rib-constricting embrace that ended abruptly as unsteady footsteps echoed from the kitchen. Karla grabbed Cam by a trembling hand, and the two moved for the door.

The body in the hall was no longer alone. Deanna knelt by his side. Her palms were smeared with blood, and jet-black mascara trickled in waterfalls down her cheeks. Cam and Karla exchanged confused glances, hands fused together. Deanna's guard had come crumbling down; all the rage of her earlier tirade had dissipated, revealing a blubbering mother in mourning. Her voice came out in nearly unintelligible sobs.

"You killed my baby. My baby..."

As if reading their bewildered minds, she continued, words tumbling out of her mouth one over the next. "With her gone, I thought it would all be perfect. We'd have our happy ending. Her dad would come home. It would bring him back. He would come back to us if it wasn't for her and her dead mother. You can't compete with a-a ghost. I should've known." Her eyes lost focus; the clarity of her mind faded in and out like a radio on a country road. "Now it's all over. There's no reason to live without my baby..."

Her shoulders slumped, and a series of staccato sobs shook her spine. Her forehead came to rest against her dead son's chest, and Karla took advantage of the distraction to slip down the hall and out the kitchen door. Aside from the physical evidence of their showdown, it was as if they hadn't been there at all. Deanna and her golden son were in their own world.