A figure that was sitting on his bed and grinning at him like a hyena.
“Remember me?”
Emerson shrank against the headboard, a chill snaking down his spine. “What are you doing here? How did you break into my house?”
“Your security system is easy to fool.” She held up a phone and tapped its screen. A recording of Emerson’s voice played.
“5-9-0-2.”
His home passcode.
Emerson’s heart hammered in his chest, threatening to break free. He’d received a call from the security company a few days earlier, asking to confirm his passcode. That must have been her.
“What do you want?” he bleated.
“You were so sure it was my left leg that you had to amputate, weren’t you? So you cut it off, and only afterward, the x-rays revealed it was my right leg that needed amputating.”
She stood and hitched her dress up to reveal where the prostheses began, in the middle of her thighs.
“And so you ended up cutting both my legs off.” She blinked away tears through knowing eyes. “And somehow, despite all this, you never faced any justice. You claimed it was an honest mistake, and the jury ate it all up. When I know—I know—it was pure, stupid negligence.”
“Wait, no, Cheryl, it was a misunderstanding!”
“So you do remember me.” She nodded, as if this at once explained everything and nothing. “A misunderstanding, you call it? Did you even bother looking at the x-rays? No,” she said, answering the question for him. “You saw a hooker who’d been in a car accident, and you just didn’t give a shit. Well, Dr. Emerson, it’s time you atoned for your sins.”
She reached toward him and he flinched. But her hand did not connect with him. Instead, it fell on a backpack on the pillow next to his. Jesus, she must have laid it there while he slept, inches from his head, and he hadn’t stirred. Did she drug me?
Smiling, she unzipped the pack and withdrew a hacksaw.
The hairs on his neck shot up like porcupine quills and he stumbled off the bed, pulling the covers with him. As he rose to his feet, the room spun around him, confirming his suspicion. She drugged me. That bitch. He shambled toward the door and lost his footing, landing on his knees and falling to the side.
“Oooh. That’s a good position,” she said, standing over him. “Just stay there.”
He turned onto his stomach and crawled as fast as he could toward the door. He had no plan as to what to do or where to go. He only knew he needed to get away from her.
She was in front of him, kneeling, pulling her backpack with her and rummaging through it. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any anesthesia. Best I can do is this.” She held up a tourniquet.
“Crazy bitch.”
She clamped her hands around his wrists and bound them together, disabling him with surprising speed.
“Imagine what losing both legs does for upper body strength,” she said. “But you won’t have to imagine for long.”
“Let me go!”
“Oh look,” she said. “I used the tourniquet to tie your hands. Well, I guess we’ll just have to proceed without it.”
Before he could protest, she drew the hacksaw across his leg. He screamed in pain and terror and found his feet, scurrying up and out the door like a mouse and staggering down the stairs, his pajama pants blooming with a deep red stain where she’d cut him.
“This is pointless, you know,” Cheryl said, following him down the stairs, her breath in his ear.
Somehow, he reached the first floor. He staggered to the kitchen and flung open the drawer where he kept his knives. His fingers closed on the handle of a cleaver.
“Back off!” He wheeled around, swinging wildly.
Cheryl stood a few feet away, unimpressed, hacksaw in hand. “I’m shaking. At this rate, you’re more likely to cut yourself than me.”
Her words ignited hatred in him, for daring to break into his house and threaten bodily harm. Who does this bitch think she is?
He lurched forward with a battle cry, but Cheryl stepped to the side and tripped him. Emerson slammed onto the hardwood floor. A kick to his side sent him rolling on his back. She straddled him, hacksaw raised. Grunting, Emerson swung the cleaver and it sank into her shoulder.
“Ha,” he howled in a voice that sounded nothing like his own. “Die, you bitch.”
Her anguished whine fell on his ears like music. He gripped the cleaver handle and pulled, but the knife remained lodged deep and barely budged.
Emerson saw the hacksaw too late. She brought it down on his extended arm and drew it, slicing through the sleeves of his expensive pajamas into his skin. Blood, his blood, geysered into the air, spraying his shirt and spattering onto the cabinets..
“I told you…to stay…put.”
Emerson heard a mewling sound and realized, though didn’t much care, that it was him, whimpering. He drew his arm back to his chest. The biting pain grounded him, dissipating the fog in his head. He shoved her hard enough to knock her back, then climbed on top of her. Pressing his knees into her abdomen, he used both hands to wrench the cleaver free.
As she gasped for air, she swung the hacksaw. Its blade lashed across his face.
Emerson’s vision filled with red. His left eye and cheek stung with the pinpricks of a thousand needles. His other eye filled with tears. Another wave of terror flooded through when he realized he couldn’t see through the distorted red fog. He had lost sight of his assailant. He swung the cleaver madly, wildly.
Then something struck his head, and the world went dark.
He jolted awake in a room that smelled of antiseptic and detergent.
“Rise and shine, Dr. Emerson,” a nurse greeted him with a smile.
His head felt heavy, and his face was covered in bandages. A monitor beeped next to his bed.
“What…what…?”
“No, don’t try to speak. Get some rest, okay?” She smiled and disappeared through the door.
He sat up, trying to make sense of where he was and why, the images in his mind muddled and confusing. His eyes fell to the blanket that covered him from the waist down. Below his thighs, where his legs were supposed to be, the blanket lay flat.
As the memory reconstructed itself, his mounting horror surged back, crashing into him.
It’s time you atoned for your sins, Dr. Emerson.
He lifted the blanket and screamed.