Free PillowFace by Kristopher Rufty Page A

small needles from the pack, and fed the string through the tiny hole. After tying it into a knot, he was ready to begin.
    Using his free hand, he pulled up a slab of skin. He pressed the needle’s point to the skin and inserted it.  Surprisingly, it barely hurt.  Felt like nothing more than a briar prick until he tugged it through the other side. By doing that he felt more pain, but still not as much as he should. He assumed numbness was settling in, his body’s natural sedative, and as he continued to sew himself up, the pain became less acute until it wasn’t there at all.

     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    (I)
     
    With her feet propped on the desk, her bare legs exposed, Haley read from a paperback copy of Dean Koontz’s Bad Seed . She’d seen the movie as a kid on TV and remembered loving it.  However, reading the book made her not like the film adaptation as much as she had growing up. The computer system had so much more personality in the book.  She pitied it. The way it wanted to live just so it could hold the woman it loved.  God, she would almost sell her soul to have someone love her half as much as the computer loved the woman in the story.
    She really didn’t mean it. Because of the phone calls at home from whomever that pervert was, she found herself identifying more and more with Susan in the story. Actually, they had an awful lot in common.  Stalkers.  She wanted to laugh, but couldn’t since there was a possibility someone was obsessed with her.  She’d called the cops more than once, but they’d done very little, and basically made it sound as if they wouldn’t do anything unless he physically harmed her.  The best hope for her was to try not to let him frighten her. 
    Yeah right.   
    She’d had guys in her life that had actually claimed to love her, but she’d turned them away. Haley could be quite the heartbreaker, and couldn’t justify why she was such a bitch to the ones that truly seemed to care.  Was she a loner?  Did she enjoy the sadness of solitude?  God, she hoped not.  Yet, she had never been able to come up with a better explanation.  But, no matter how desperate she became, she would never dress the way Carlee had today just to impress a guy.  That had been just way too much.  Luckily, she’d convinced her to go home and change. 
    Haley felt sorry for her.  She’d obviously been planning this, and knowing Carlee, she was probably sick with dread trying to decide what to wear, how she should style her hair, and what to say in hopes John Kilward would swoon over her, beg her to accompany him to dinner or a movie. 
    Poor girl .  Poor, dumb, girl . 
    Someone knocked at her door, blunt and heavy.
    Probably Carlee wanting to make sure I approve her new attire . 
    “Come in,” she said, without taking her eyes away from the book.  She wanted to finish the paragraph she was on before dog-earing the page.
    “Is this how you greet everyone that comes into your office or am I just special?”
    Oh, shit!!!!  Quick to react, Haley slammed the book, cover down, on her desk.  She jerked her feet off the top, swung the chair around, and put her legs underneath.
    “Mr. Jones…?  Wow…hello.” 
    Geoffrey Jones, her boss, was adjusting his suit, as he flung the door closed behind him in one quick swoop.  He’d been tugging at his tie when he’d noticed her velvety legs were angled up on the desk, shoes on the floor, and her bare feet were arched with twinkling toes.  He had seen a lot more of her than she’d ever wanted him to.
    Humiliated, her dusky skin flushed scarlet, liquid fire surged through her. 
    “Come on now, you know better than to call me Mr. Jones.”  He pulled at his tie again.  Then he slid both hands over his thinning hair, weighed down by so much gel it glimmered in the fluorescent light.  His sloping nose sniffed, his head bobbed as if moving to a beat.  His facial structure had always reminded Haley of the rat from Charlotte’s Web. The way