Full Dark, No Stars

She was in the smel of departed coffee and pickles. He had either forgotten her dress slacks or meant to come back for them later—perhaps when he picked up the nail-studded scrapwood. She was

fishing them out from under the counter. Beneath them were her shoes and her phone—smashed. Yes, at some point he would be back. Her scrunchie was gone. She remembered (vaguely, the way one

remembers certain things from one’s earliest childhood) some woman asking earlier today where she’d gotten it, and the inexplicable applause when she’d said JCPenney. She thought of the giant

singing “Brown Sugar”—that squal ing monotonous childish voice—and she went away again.

- 10 -

She was walking behind the store in the moonlight. She had a carpet remnant wrapped around her shivering shoulders, but couldn’t remember where she had gotten it. It was filthy but it was warm,

and she pul ed it tighter. It came to her that she was actual y circling the store, and this might be her second, third, or even fourth go-round. It came to her that she was looking for her Expedition, but each time she didn’t find it behind the store, she forgot that she had looked and went around again. She forgot because she had been thumped on the head and raped and choked and was in shock. It came to

her that her brain might be bleeding—how could you know, unless you woke up with the angels and they told you? The afternoon’s light breeze had gotten a little stronger, and the ticking of the tin sign was a little louder. YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU.

“7Up,” she said. Her voice was hoarse but serviceable. “That’s what it is. You like it and it likes you.” She heard herself raising her own voice in song. She had a good singing voice, and being choked had given it a surprisingly pleasant rasp. It was like listening to Bonnie Tyler sing out here in the moonlight. “7Up tastes good… like a cigarette should!” It came to her that that wasn’t right, and even if it was, she should be singing something better than fucked-up advertising jingles while she had that pleasing rasp in her voice; if you were going to be raped and left for dead in a pipe with two rotting

corpses, something good should come out of it.

I’ll sing Bonnie Tyler’s hit record. I’ll sing “It’s a Heartache.” I’m sure I know the words, I’m sure they’re in the junkheap every writer has in the back of her…

But then she went away again.

- 11 -

She was sitting on a rock and crying her eyes out. The filthy carpet-remnant was stil around her shoulders. Her crotch ached and burned. The sour taste in her mouth suggested to her that she had

vomited at some point between walking around the store and sitting on this rock, but she couldn’t remember doing it. What she remembered—

I was raped, I was raped, I was raped!

“You’re not the first and you won’t be the last,” she said, but this tough-love sentiment, coming out as it did in a series of choked sobs, was not very helpful.

He tried to kill me, he almost did kill me!

Yes, yes. And at this moment his failure did not seem like much consolation. She looked to her left and saw the store fifty or sixty yards down the road.

He killed others! They’re in the pipe! Bugs are crawling on them and they don’t care!

“Yes, yes,” she said in her raspy Bonnie Tyler voice, then went away again.

- 12 -

She was walking down the center of Stagg Road and singing “It’s a Heartache” when she heard an approaching motor from behind her. She whirled around, almost fal ing, and saw headlights

brightening the top of a hil she must have just come over. It was him. The giant. He had come back, had investigated the culvert after finding her clothes gone, and seen she was no longer in it. He was looking for her.

Tess bolted down into the ditch, stumbled to one knee, lost hold of her makeshift shawl, got up, and blundered into the bushes. A branch drew blood from her cheek. She heard a woman sobbing with

fear. She dropped down on her hands and knees with her hair hanging in her eyes. The road brightened as the headlights cleared the hil . She saw the dropped piece of carpeting very clearly, and knew

the giant would see it too. He would stop and get out. She would try to run but he would catch her. She would scream, but no one would hear her. In stories like this, they never did. He would kil her, but first he would rape her some more.

The car—it was a car, not a pickup truck—went by without slowing. From inside came the sound of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, turned up loud: “B-B-B-Baby, you just ain’t seen n-n-nuthin yet.” She

watched the tail ights wink out of sight. She felt herself getting ready to go away again and slapped her cheeks with both hands.