![]() She stiffened with terror as he touched her. …” She looked at the body cooling on the floor and began to tremble.ĭoro went to her. I can hardly even stand to go near her sober anymore. “I’ve wanted to hit her though-so many times. You know I wouldn’t dare lie to you.” She stared at Doro for a moment, then shook her head. “You don’t understand what it’s like for me having that kid here.” She was no longer slurring her words, in spite of her tears. “You don’t know,” she said in a low voice. Rina began to cry silently, tears streaming down her face. Mary woke up screaming from a nightmare or something, and he-” It was a guy who brought me home a couple of nights ago. “Why would you beat a three-year-old like that, Rina?” The one he had now was nothing beside it. It had been strong, healthy, in excellent physical condition. On the floor lay the body that Doro had been wearing when he came in. ![]() When Doro finished his kill, Rina’s hand was just touching her lips.ĭoro stood uncomfortably disoriented, mildly sick to his stomach, the hand of his newly acquired body still clutching its bloody knife. ![]() Rina had gasped and begun to raise her hand to her mouth as the man slashed at Doro. Doro consumed him, an easy if not especially satisfying meal. Then, stunned, he gave up his life almost without a struggle. This one saw Doro as only Doro’s victims ever saw him. Not all Doro’s victims gave in so quickly, but this one was half anesthetized with wine. Surprise and anger were the first emotions Doro tasted in the man’s mind. He abandoned his body the instant the knife touched him. It sliced easily through the flesh of his abdomen but he never felt the pain. He broke off abruptly, slashing at Doro as Doro advanced on him. “Now, listen, you-Hold it! I said hold it!” Unlike Rina, he did not slur his words at all when he spoke. Doro saw that he had put his bottle down and taken out a large pocket knife. She stumbled back away from him, silent, abruptly terrified as Doro approached. Rina might have been able to throw him out physically, but she had not. The man was short and slight, not much more than a boy, really. Doro waited in silence until he was sure that Rina was honestly, in fact desperately, trying to get rid of her “guest” but that the man was refusing to budge. There the man and Rina were cursing at each other. He shook his head and sighed, covered the little girl up carefully, and went back out to the living room. He uncovered the child, saw that she was sleeping nude, saw the bruises and welts on her back and legs. The rest of the floor was bare wood-no carpeting.ĭoro took in all this without surprise, without changing his neutral expression. There was a pile of dirty clothes in one corner on the floor. The bedroom contained only a bed and a three-legged chest of drawers. Her nose was running.ĭoro touched her forehead lightly but felt no trace of fever. She was three years old now, small and thin, not especially healthy-looking. Doro turned on a light and looked at her more closely. The child was asleep, her breathing softly even. Doro ignored him and went on to the bedroom, following his tracking sense to Mary, his daughter. There was a man sitting on her couch drinking directly from a bottle of Santa Fe Port. But like all his people, she knew him the instant he spoke. He was wearing a body that she had never seen before. She was half drunk and slurred her words a little as she called after him. When the woman opened the door, he pushed past her into the apartment without speaking. He was not surprised.īy the time he knocked at her door, the main thing he wanted to do was see whether his daughter was all right. And though he had made arrangements with a Forsyth bank for her to receive a liberal monthly allowance, she still needed the men. Sometime during his eighteen-month absence, she had moved from the house he had bought her-an expensive house in a good neighborhood. He saw that most of her time away from home was spent in the local bars. He saw the men come and go from her new, wrong-side-of-the-tracks apartment. Now it was almost too late.ĭoro watched her without letting her know that he was in town. For the sake of the daughter she had borne him, he should have visited her more often. Doro had left her alone for eighteen months. Doro’s widow in the southern California city of Forsyth had become a prostitute.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |