Free Soul Hostage by Jeffrey Littorno

baseball bat to his chest.  As he stepped out from the dark of the doorway into the light, his green eyes darted around quickly like some frightened mouse.         
         “Steve!  Dammit, I’m gonna-” Red never got a chance to finish his thought. 
         Somehow Stoaffer had slipped out of the car and snuck around behind the kid. It seemed impossible for him to have done this in the short time since the door opened, but all of a sudden there he stood.  He did not move for a moment as he looked directly at Joey and me sitting in the still running Chevy.  The old man’s bright blue eyes stabbed right through me.  But the weirdest part of the whole thing was that Stoaffer smiled as he watched Red standing in front of him peering out into the darkness.  In the next instant, he sprang forward and around the kid.
         From where we sat about twenty feet away in the car and in the dark, it was difficult to see exactly what happened. I could tell Stoaffer had something in his hand and was pushing it in and pulling it out of the kid’s face. There was no struggle. Red’s legs just collapsed until the only reason that he was still standing was that Stoaffer was holding onto the thing sticking out his face.
         “Let’s just go,” I said to Joey without really thinking. “We don’t need this crazy fucker. We’ve got a car.  Let’s just go.”
         If Joey heard, he didn’t say anything.  He simply jumped out of the car and trotted over to where Louis stood.  After a moment, I followed him.
         Stoaffer was standing over the body silently watching the last twitches. I saw the thing he had been holding was a screwdriver with a black and yellow handle. The tool was now sticking out of the place where Red’s left eye should have been. There was other damage left by the screwdriver. A hole in his right cheek revealed a few crooked teeth.  Blood soaked the front of his shirt below a hole in the kid’s neck. 
         “Shit, Lou! What’re yuh some kinda ninja?”  Joey exclaimed.
         I could not pull my eyes away from the body.  It was hard to believe so much destruction could be done so quickly and by one old man.
         Stoaffer was quiet for a while as he just stared blankly at the still body. Finally, he cheerfully announced, “Well, we’re not going to get to San Pietro by standing around here!”  He walked over and climbed into the backseat of the Chevy.
         Joey and I stood there staring at the body and then each other.
         “Well, we’re not gonna get to San Pietro by standing around here!”  He grinned at me, and we headed to the car
         The car was quiet as we pulled out on to the empty highway. 
         “That was sure fun,” Joey said finally breaking the silence.  “But I’m still hungry.”
         A roar of laughter came from the backseat.  “Yes, I think I worked up an appetite as well!”
         We found a place about fifteen minutes down the road, a family-style restaurant named Jack O’s. It looked to be one of those places with crayon-colored drawings hanging on the walls, lots of pies, and greasy chicken fried steak.  Normally, I would not even consider stopping at such a restaurant.  But the word normally did not exactly fit the situation.  Since no one knew how far it might be to the next restaurant, we decided to stop.  
         For some reason, I counted the cars, and the huge parking lot had six cars in it.  Nothing says fine dining like a huge parking lot with six cars in it at dinner time.  But like I said before, we chose the place simply because it appeared in front to us.  Location, location, location. 
         On the off chance of someone recognizing the old Chevy, we parked the car on the edge of the lot. As we walked across the quiet but brightly lit parking lot, the three of us tried to improve our appearances a bit by straightening clothes and brushing off some of the