The Very Thought of Murder

A pale, gentle fog, which rarely steals farther inland than Crenshaw Boulevard, stretched its faint, luminous fingers cautiously beyond its usual boundary, obscuring what little light the moon offered. Shannon turned, shutting the gate behind her with a strange sense of finality. 

The latch clicked.

The end had come.

The divorce was finalized. The bad marriage was over. She breathed a sigh of relief.

From the front gate, Shannon followed the damp bluestone walkway that leads passed the Decker’s house to her own home at the back of the property. Had Shannon lived on Moon Avenue as long as Michael and Susan Decker, she might have questioned the presence of the blue-green Chevy Caprice parked across the street just one house over. As it was, she never noticed it.

Wishing she had left the porchlight on, Shannon swung the screen door open and then paused in front of the main door, fumbling momentarily, still slightly inebriated, attempting to insert her key into the poorly lit doorknob. 

“I probably shouldn’t have been driving,” she thought. 

Something suddenly brushed against her right leg.

"The dog," she thought.

“There you are, Jack,” she started to say when a rank, calloused hand curled itself over her mouth and the choking pressure of a steel-bladed carving knife pressed deep against her throat. Visceral fear immediately seized Shannon’s mind and tore through her tremulous body. The stolid frame of a man pushed against her.

Shannon’s heart began to pound so forcibly that it seemed to have leaped outside of her and was beating against her chest, wanting back in. 

“Don’t scream!” She couldn’t see her assailant, but she felt his warm, fetid breath tainting her tender cheek. A penetrating, suffocating scent of pungent soil from the intruder’s hand assaulted her nose and mouth, a faint copperish smell mingling with the scent of soil.

She felt the throbbing pulse of her heart pound through her arms and into her hands. The key in her trembling fingers rattled at the doorknob. 

"Don't scream," the putrid breath repeated. "Get in the house. NOW!"

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