by Jim Bessey

Created on: February 14, 2011

  -A girls' night out goes very wrong

The guy is hilarious, no doubt about it.

Patty is three tables from the front. Tears stream down her face. She snorts out loud and wipes her eyes. Her friend, long-legged Lydia with her highlighted hair, bangs her head on the table wheezing and giggling.

"Oh my God he was funny!" Patty squealed as the show ended. The girls shrugged into winter coats.

"This was great, Lydia. We gotta do it more often."

"You betcher ass, Miss Patty," Lydia replied, with a hug. "Let's go."

From the doors came a whirlwind of frigid air and snowflakes. The girls shuffled from cozy nightclub to snarling snowstorm.

"Holy crap, Patty. When did this start?" Lydia hugged her coat tighter.

In the parking lot, engines revved and wipers thumped. Patty clung to Lydia's elbow as they struggled on three-inch heels. At their cars, Lydia squinted through the storm.

"Wow, we better get home, Patty-girl. You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Patty said. She shivered and swooped the snow off her door. "I hate this stuff, Lyd. But I'll be fine." She smiled bravely. "You be careful, too." It was two miles to Lydia's condo. Patty was looking at closer to ten.

"Call me when you get home," Lydia yelled, as she slammed her door against the wind.

* * *

Two miles away, the man plodded down the shoulder. His thick gray hoodie made him nearly invisible. Tucked in the small of his back, a black and ugly  .38 Short Colt. His pocket bulged with a wad of bills he'd grabbed from Smitty's Liquor a mile away. He'd come in on the bus. Now he just needed to find some wheels.

* * *

The blower fought the frost as Patty followed Lydia across the unplowed lot. She felt a flutter of panic when her Subaru briefly lost its footing.

"Oh man, I hate this crap," she muttered, hands clenched on the wheel. The traffic light swayed in the wind and shimmered green. Lydia swooshed her red Acura to the right. Patty beeped a good-bye as the taillights vanished.

Patty turned left, toward home. On the radio, Sarah MacLachlan's eerie soprano lilted about The Arms of the Angels. Patty shivered as she followed the faint trail of tire tracks.

"I should've called home," Patty thought. Her phone was buried in her purse. She settled into the seat and turned the heat up as the wipers churned fresh flakes. She decided to watch the road and forget the phone. Red lights ahead winked between gusts.

The snow fell faster. Up the road a ways, the man in the gray hoodie trekked on.

* * *

Patty felt her way along. Her speedometer fluttered at 25, but she had little sensation of speed. The flakes rushed at her windshield.

She had turned the radio low. Now the Black Crows played, only slightly louder than the trill of her phone. Patty was torn between letting go to answer, or holding tight.

A gust grabbed her car like a kid shaking a kitten.

"What the hell? You stop that!" she yelled to the wind. Her arms trembled. The phone stopped chirping.

Then the road was gone in a whirlwind.

Patty's Subaru dipped and an ominous thump shook the wheel. Branches scratched her windows. Patty chanted, "Crap, crap, crap."

 The Outback shimmied. "No, no - no you don't!" she insisted.

Something plastic wrenched beneath her. The wheel torqued from her hands. A shudder coursed through the frame, and Patty was tossed at the glass. She bounced off, lunged for the wheel, and screamed. Her little car slewed along the shoulder.

Her Subaru stopped and stalled. The impact snapped Patty's head back and emptied her lungs. She hung against the seatbelt, choking on sobs. The world was silent.

* * *

Thirty feet away, hands snugged in his pockets, the hooded man stopped, too. "Well, well, well," he said to himself with a smile.

Learn more about this author, Jim Bessey.
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