Call Me Ginger

Really.

The hammering on my thick wooden front door didn’t seem real, not at all. When I’d taken my revenge on Frank, I’d thought I was finished with him. It just wasn’t so.

Frank had the strength of at least two ordinary men, but he lacked the restraint of even one. He stood all of six-foot-six and would have tipped the scales at about two-eighty, while I have to stretch to make five feet at a hundred pounds. And okay, I’m female. Wasn’t that what this was all about?

But to get to my front door at midnight, Frank had destroyed a hospital bed, killed one police officer and had maimed another. I suppose I should have felt some guilt, after all, I might have just turned him in. He wouldn't have been cuffed to a hospital bed, he’d have been in a cell. But Frank was a killer and he’d nearly killed me. I needed to leave him with something to remember. So I did.

After all that had happened to me in that place, I had decided to move. That was what I was doing, packing my little Subaru with as much of what I owned as it would hold. Frank might have caught me outside beneath a streetlight, but the cops had called and warned me, he had escaped and he “might” be headed my way. Ha. The only place he might have gone was after me. Killing me was the only thing that mattered to him now, his single aim, his only objective.

So I blinked each time that huge body slammed against my door. It really didn’t, it didn't seem real. Frank had come to murder me, in the most horrible way he could imagine.

It was a truly heavy door, with a latch and a double deadbolt on one side and four steel hinges on the other. I imagined the doorframe would give way on one side or the other, or that he would get smart and come through the window. But neither happened and at last the door split, right down the middle. Maybe two more hits and he’d be through it. Suddenly it seemed very real, and I backed into the darkened hallway. Why I didn't try to escape, I wasn’t sure.

One more crushing thud, and I could see Frank’s shoulder. He straightened up and peered through the breach, saw me and raised an arm, pointing at me with three fingers.

“I told you what I was gonna do! And now, I’m gonna do it!”

Well, no he wasn’t. Of course he didn’t know that, and it wasn’t physically possible anyway. I know what I’m saying. I’d rather not share.

My back touched the wall at the end of the short hallway, as through the fractured door he came, a freight train of muscle and bone, mad as a Spanish bull. In a single fluid motion I popped a snap, drew my Beretta and fired. The first two stopped his heart and a third made a .38 caliber hole just above the bridge of his nose, just as I’d been coached.

The weight of his body hitting the floor shook the floor lamp in the next room. Satisfying.

Funny thing about movies, when people die they generally stop moving. Frank took a minute. When the carcass was still, I knew why I hadn’t tried to escape.

I hadn’t told the police what I’d done to Frank, although I’m sure he did. They only had his say-so. The anonymous caller who tipped the cops to Frank’s location was male, which I most certainly am not. As he killed one of their own, I don't think they were much interested in what I did, anyway.

Some say that rape is forever. I can’t agree.

You just have to even things up a bit.