Play Darts

"I don't want to hurt you", said the raspy voice at the bottom of the dark stairway. Elaine didn't have to see the person speaking, or guess his intent. Blind since birth she was an expert at voice recognition and she would have recognized this particular voice whether it was whispering or screaming. It was the voice she heard the night her mother was murdered. It was the voice that scarred her mind and haunted her dreams. Ten years had passed since that horrifying night, and detectives had finally developed a suspect. An arrest was imminent, and her ear witness testimony was necessary to prosecute her mother's killer. Arrangements were made for Elaine and her older brother Dawson, to stay in a secluded house until the suspect was in custody.

In spite of many precautions something had gone terribly wrong. The raspy voice had found her, and had come to finish what he had started ten years earlier.

The footsteps of the intruder scraped the bottom stairs. Elaine called out, "Dawson!"

The voice croaked, "Dawson?, Was that the name of the young man I met outside? I don't think he can help you."

Elaine spun around. Using her hands to guide her along the walls of the hallway, she hurried toward her brother's room.

"I guess you don't need much light", said the coarse voice, annoyed at the darkness.

There was no light bulb to illuminate the stairway and no lights turned on in the house. Dawson had playfully chided Elaine to be careful walking around in the dark. They both laughed at the joke, but at this moment the dim light worked to her advantage.

The shuffle of footsteps moved more quickly up the stairs and Elaine knew she had only moments to get to her brother's room. Feeling her way through the bedroom doorway she bumped into the bed and got her bearings. The dresser stood against the back wall, and in the top drawer were Dawson's knives; short, heavy, razor sharp throwing knives with weighted six inch, double sided blades.

The summer she turned ten years old Dawson had shown her how to throw "darts" as he called them.

"A proper flick of the wrist is all you need", he instructed, "Let the knife do the work. Just let it roll off your fingertips and it will throw itself."

Every day that summer she pestered her brother to "play darts", and though she could never beat him, her skills steadily improved. But that was years ago, and she was throwing at a tree, at a measured distance of ten paces. How many paces would she need now? She wasn't sure.

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