Free The Killing Kind by Bryan Smith Page B

He slammed the door shut and dragged her screaming into the living room.
    He snarled at her. “Shut up, bitch!”
    He backhanded her and she went stumbling backward. Her feet got tangled and she fell. The glass top of a coffee table shattered beneath her as she landed on it. Shards of glass cut her and drew blood. She screamed as her assailant seized her slender throat with one strong hand and lifted her up again. She felt his penis leap against her and tried to scream again, but the hand clamped to her throat limited her to a barely audible gurgle. The man laughed and licked her face with a tongue that felt dry as sandpaper. The feel of it on her flesh made her insides curdle.
    He sucked on her lower lip and breathed into her mouth. His stink made her eyes water. Bile rose into her throat and she wondered if she would choke on it—the man’s iron grip allowed only a very thin air passage. He pressed himself against her and said, “Gonna fuck ya now, sweet thing.”
    The tip of his engorged penis poked through a rip in her torn halter. The feel of it sliding over her flesh repulsed her. But even through her terror, Julie saw how she might have a slim shot at extracting herself from this nightmare. He was so intent on sampling various parts of her anatomy—his free hand ripping the halter to pieces to paw at her breasts—that he had neglected to fully restrain her. Or maybe it wasn’t neglect. Maybe he didn’t consider her a threat. Or thought she’d be too terrified to fight back.
    Think again, you freak.
    Her right hand came up and long fingernails jabbed into an eyeball. He howled in agony and let go of her. Julie staggered backward and struggled to catch her breath as she watched the man flail about with a hand pressed over the wounded orb. Blood streamed between his fingers. He stopped thrashing long enough to look at her with his one good eye and screamed at her, “you’re gonna die for that, bitch!”
    He started to come at her again, but screeched as a piece of broken glass pierced the bottom of his foot. Julie took a quick look around while the crazy man hopped about and mewled like a baby. The living room was outfitted in the standard way. Large entertainment center. A long sofa and a couple of recliners. And a large liquor cabinet with an impressive array of bartending tools arranged in a rack above it.
    Yes!
    Julie grabbed a corkscrew, flexed the handles to extend the screw to its full length, and charged her attacker. The man was sitting on the edge of a recliner as he worked to pull glass shards from his bleeding foot. He looked up and saw her coming, but not in time to retreat or ward off the attack. The fear evident in his remaining eye as it widened was gratifying. The corkscrew slammed into his temple and his body began to convulse. Julie yanked the screw out and plunged it into his other eye. Now the eyes sort of matched again—pierced and bleeding. The thought made her giggle inappropriately even as a new wave of sickness rose up inside her. She pulled the corkscrew out of his eye. She stared at his throat, watched the slowing pulse ticking beneath the flesh.
    There, she thought. That’s where the carotid is.
    The corkscrew slammed into the man’s throat and there was another leap of blood. Julie was covered in it now. Her own and that of the man who’d tried to rape her. She giggled again. We’re all the same on the inside.
    Julie stabbed him with the corkscrew several more times. She kept doing it even after she knew he was dead. There was a strange sort of fascination to watching the instrument puncture flesh. It was sort of the way she felt when pulling the petals off a flower, ruining it a little bit at a time. And the really weird thing was how little any of this bothered her now that he was no longer a threat. It was actually sort offun, the way she’d always imagined it might be. But she did finally tire of stabbing the corpse and climbed off it.
    She stood panting in the center of