Annie promised.
She promised herself that it would be the last.
The fire crackled and she jumped at the intrusive sound. The thought of being walked in on still loomed in her mind, though it was quite late in the evening now. If the current squatters of The Purple Cat planned on returning, then it would most likely be tomorrow morning, if at all. Maybe, thought Annie, they were all dead or back home with their significant others. Or maybe they didn’t even exist.
That was a lie. She thought of the warm bricks and she couldn’t buy the lie, no matter how hard she tried.
Tony rolled over, coughing into his forearm. A sheen of sweat still clung to his forehead, reflecting the dull orange flicker of the fire. Annie tensed at the sight of his face, as their noses were now only inches apart. She hated to look at his face. He was the ugliest stud she’d ever seen. Something about him made her quake when he was near, but for the most part, he served to disgust all of her senses simultaneously.
With weakened arms, she shoved him away from her, turning herself towards the roaring fire.
She needed to get dressed again, if only to mask her failure.
The fire wasn’t all that warm, though she wanted to convince herself that it was. The flames were a bastard, convincing her that she would always be safe, but in the end, she knew that to be another lie. All fires died down into only embers, on a long enough time line.
Annie stood up, pulling on her panties and stiffened, icy sweatpants that she had found in the trunk of her car, before it was buried by the snow. Her bra was basically an icicle, causing her nipples to stand at attention as she clipped the frosty clasps behind her. Outside of the thin blanket (some sort of Native American wall art that Christian—no, Tony—had ripped down during their early fugue of—stop stop stop thinking about it!), it was another world altogether. Annie wondered if she would grow accustomed to these temperatures eventually. Anything became bearable once you were fully submerged, or so she had found on many occasions.
“Where are you going?” Tony mumbled, his voice a slushy rasp, just barely audible above the hissing, cracking fire. He had taken down about half the bottle, whereas Annie was flummoxed by only a couple sips of the juniper-laced gag-juice. She was surprised he was even able to formulate words after what he’d consumed. Even more so, she hoped that nobody came back to claim their end-of-time fort of comfort.
“I’m cold,” she said, though she really wanted to say: I’m going far, far away from you, that’s where I’m going. To which he might reply; don’t pretend you didn’t love that romp, sweetness. To which she might reply; I’m a married woman. At which point, he’d laugh at her naivety.
But he didn’t respond to her, slipping into his comfort zone that came so easy in the man-cave that was this folksy, yet greasy, restaurant. Instead, a wheezy, sickly snore filled the grand hall of The Purple Cat. Only a few weeks ago, there would have been cheerful people dining, laughing, and sipping on craft beers. Those faceless patrons were all so happy back then. Now they were huddled together in their respective homes, struggling to stay warm, praying that the government would come save them. One day, these folks were eating sweet potato fries and crunching on garlic bread, enjoying the cozy snuggle that The Purple Cat provided to its diners, and now some of them were most likely deader than disco. If they weren’t dead, then they would be on their way to dying soon enough. Some of them still probably had moldy Purple Cat leftovers in their fridge, as they too molded only a few feet away, frozen to death on their living room sofas.
It all came rushing back.
Paulie.
Paulie might be sitting on the sofa, just like those folks. By himself, if his Daddy had perished. Christian was always a girly man when it came to the cold, so this was the worst-case scenario for her husband—if he was still her husband. There were no papers saying otherwise, but it felt like it was over. Sometimes, reality spoke louder than formalities.
She looked down at Tony, scowling at him.
No. No. It wasn’t over yet. Not by a longshot.
She pulled on her sweater, though it was colder than the air near the fireplace, and then she recovered the second sweater that went on top of that. Annie reached for her wool hat, which had ended up near the easy chair. Pulling it on to her head, she adjusted herself, breathing deeply and watching the flames.
That was when she heard a click sound off, reverberating off the walls and cavernous ceiling of The Purple Cat. The click was familiar. She’d heard it before, mostly in movies.
“Hey there,” a gravelly voice said. It reminded her of that guy Tom Waits, whom Christian affectionately called “The Boozy Cookie Monster.” Several other voices chimed in right after, with tiny splices of laughter and broken snorting. “I don’t care how pretty you are… don’t move a fucking inch or I’ll paint the walls with you.”
Annie’s throat tightened until she was sure she’d pass out. She studied the perimeter of the flickering firelight, looking for the source of that voice. When she found that source, she encountered only rictus grins.
No eyes. No noses. Just contented smiles, teetering on the cusp of rapture.
Chapter Nine
Without warning, the men engaged them with an animalistic lurch that caught them completely off guard. She and Tony didn’t stand a chance, especially with Tony being so physically exhausted from the day’s long haul. If he had any energy left in him at all, it was nothing that would aid them in resisting the shadowy men that slithered around them in the darkness.
Why the hell hadn’t they just stayed in the one place they were certain was safe? Why had Tony been so damned pig-headed about traveling? It was his fault. Everything was his fault.
The one she immediately labelled The Midget Man had her by the wrist, bending Annie’s arm back behind her as he squeezed. The little shit was pinching her elbow enough that it sent a shooting pain through her whole arm, triggering a quiet whimper. He was a good six inches shorter than she was, but his strength dwarfed hers considerably. “Don’t move an inch or you’ll regret it,” said the Midget Man.
Annie cried out in pain, glowering at the other three men in the group. They were on top of Tony right off the bat, he being the biggest threat to their assault. Was this really an assault, or just a terrible prank, pinning him to the floor. One of the gleeful men got to work tying up Tony’s ankles while the other two took turns pounding him on the jaw with their balled up fists. They looked like cavemen learning to fight for the first time. “You shouldn’t have come here,” the Shiny Bald One said, leaning down close to Tony, baring his teeth and growling.
The Shiny Bald One looked like a wolf, with a perpetual deadness in his eyes that spoke of an instinct he could not control. As the wind howled outside, Annie couldn’t help but wonder if The Shiny Bald One would howl in call-and-response.