Free 122 Rules by Deek Rhew

far side of the bed, back against the wall. She shut her eyes and willed him to move on down the hall, out of the apartment, returning to whatever rathole he’d crawled from.
    It didn’t work.
    The cheap brass handle rattled then turned. As her door eased open, the quiet screech of unoiled hinges echoed louder than anything she’d ever heard in her life. Amplified a thousand times over by her electrified nerves, the sound screamed through her head, so loud it muffled the rapid beat of her heart.
    She opened her eyes. The large man stood backlit by the bare bulb on the thin, kinked wire. The face, cast in shadows, had no distinguishing features, but she didn’t need to see it to know what it looked like. She’d seen it a thousand times before in the line of empty-eyed men her mother paraded through her life. Each of them bore the same knowing, lecherous grin of a predator making an easy score with the pretty widow.
    The faceless man stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him. The quiet snick of the latch in the jam resonated as ominous and final as the sealing of a sarcophagus. She didn’t know what he wanted, but her mind offered up a half dozen possibilities, not one of them a day at Disneyland.
    Time slowed to a gelatinous pace.
    She looked deep into the gloom, but no matter how hard she peered, the blur refused to focus, as if he were not a man at all, but the idea of a man. As if the artist of this image, unsure of how to accurately reproduce the intricate contours and angles of the human face, instead chose to leave the details vague. The man’s eyes, the mere intentions of orbs, lacked definition, but nevertheless, their cruel intent was implicit as they gazed out of the dusty light, watching her.
    Just as she started to wonder if maybe his perversion stopped at the observation of children as they slumbered, time slipped forward, making up for its previous sluggishness, and he appeared at the edge of her bed. He hadn’t taken a single step, but the ghost now solidified and towered above her.
    It invaded the small circle of light cast by her gooseneck reading lamp, and the man’s features came into focus—long, greasy hair pulled back in a thin pony tail, three days’ of scruff flecked gray on a weathered face. He wore a workingman’s jacket, ironic since he probably hadn’t had a job in years, and a pair of dirty jeans held up with an oversized Texas Rangers belt buckle. The textured gold star glimmered and flashed as it caught the weak light.
    “You need to leave,” Monica said, her voice no more than a whisper.
    “You look just like your mom, only younger and prettier. Not all used up.”
    Even from a distance, she could smell the booze on his breath as he swayed ever so slightly. She tried to yell, but her dry throat refused to function properly. “Mom!” Her voice rasped in a high-pitched wheeze as though she were asthmatic.
    He laughed, low and mucousy, reminding her of the way her grandfather sounded in the weeks before the throat cancer claimed him. “That dried-up cunt can’t hear you. She’s passed out, so you’re going to have to play hostess. I was thinking we could be friends.” Pausing, he pounded his chest with his fist and belched.
    The stench of half-digested gut-rot alcohol hit her full in the face. “Real classy,” Monica said. She dared to make eye contact. “Now, why don’t you get the hell out?”
    “You’re a feisty little bitch. It’s gonna be fun teaching you to respect your elders,” he said, grabbing her blanket.
    Nope, not Disneyland.
    She reached into the narrow gap between her bed and the wall, bringing out a baseball bat with Louisville Slugger written in blue script along its sleek, oak-colored length. She hopped up on her mattress, eye level with the drunk. Cocking the bat over her shoulder, she said, “One last warning, asshole. Time for you to leave.” Icy resilience had replaced the blood flowing in her veins.
    He paused as his