Free Night Chill by Jeff Gunhus

been powerless to stop him. All the security he spent a lifetime building for his family was laid bare at that moment, and an awful truth was forced on to him, the same truth that haunted him from the day of the car crash in California, the day Melissa Gonzales died on the hood of his car. The unsavory truth that everything he loved could disappear in a heartbeat.
    There were no rules, no fairness, no breaks for good conduct. Life could turn to death in a matter of seconds and you never knew when something could lash out and strike you down. Like the lightning bolt that burned a hole through Albert James’ head. Acts of nature. Freak accidents. Wasn’t that enough to deal with without having to add a deranged psychopath to the list?
    Jack believed that through sheer diligence he could somehow protect his family from the bad things of the world. Deep down he knew it was naïve, but he allowed himself the fantasy. He didn’t know how else to deal with a world where everything could be taken away without warning. But Huckley had pulled the sheet back and exposed the fragility of his fantasy. The encounter kept replaying in his head; each time Huckley became less of a man and more of a monster, unstoppable, uncontrollable. It felt as if his run-in with Huckley had immersed him in cold water, shocking him awake to his own vulnerability. And now, as Jack stood just out of sight from Huckley’s body, the chill of that immersion made his hands tremble.
    Jack detested the way he felt, the weakness, the lack of control. The only way he knew how to deal with a challenge was confrontation. In his mind, Huckley was a pale, ghoulish mask in a thunder storm, a twisted smile, a dark dream more nightmare than real. Jack needed him to be just a man again. Something natural. Something normal. 
    He stepped into the room.
    Relief was his first emotion. Huckley lay prone in the hospital bed, the covers pulled up to his chest. His arms were on top of the blanket and fitted with an IV and sensors. Other wires and tubes ran from Huckley’s disabled body to the monitoring equipment arrayed next to the bed. An oxygen mask and nose tube covered his face and measured out his breathing. Jack wasn’t sure what he expected but the person lying on the bed in front of him was definitely not the monster he had built up in his mind.  Relief at Huckley’s utter plainness soon gave way to confusion. This was the face of a murderer? He looked more like someone’s favorite uncle than a killer. No wonder no one believed him.
    Jack checked the corners of the ceiling to make sure there were no cameras. Seeing none, he stepped further in to the room to get a closer look.
    As he approached the bed, he noticed the bland smell of antiseptic mixed with the vaguely acrid smell of iodine. Jack stood next to the bed and looked down on the man who had terrorized him the night before.
    The pale skin was even paler, but it no longer made him look menacing, just sickly. The man’s features didn’t gel with the sinister image burned in his mind from the night before. An angular bone structure and a rounded chin made Huckley more pleasant looking than handsome. He had pale blonde hair, so pale that his face seemed to lack eyebrows. Jack had been hoping to find some sign of evil, something to point to, for his own piece of mind. A tattooed swastika on his forehead like Manson would have been great. Anything to prove that the night before had not been his imagination and that this man was evil. But there was nothing and that disturbed him. For the first time, Jack wondered if he could have misinterpreted what had happened last night. He leaned against the bed, both of his hands on the blanket even with Huckley’s chest. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head.
    The fingers on Huckley’s right hand begin to twitch.
    Lauren was likely done and looking for him by now. He knew she would be upset if she found out what he’d been up to, especially if she found out that