Mind Games

The pink and gold of the sky turned to a bruised gray as storm clouds rolled in.

Ray Riggs stepped out of the woods.

He wore his prison blues, and though his face remained thin, it held a doughiness. Deep lines scored the sides of his mouth, fanned out from those pale blue eyes.

Still those eyes smiled, smiled with nothing to do with humor.

“Got yourself some guitar-playing pansy? Waiting for moonlight so he can fuck you? Want your romance before you roll over for him?”

“We have to go inside. Ty, we have to go inside and lock the doors.”

But Ty kept playing his guitar.

“He don’t see me, you stupid bitch. I’m in your head, just like always. Watch this.”

He had a gun in his hand. The gun, the same gun he’d used to murder her parents. She leaped up, screaming even as he fired.

But he didn’t fire at her. The guitar fell as blood bloomed on Ty’s shirt. He looked at her, no warmth left in those green eyes.

“It’s your fault,” he said. “You let him in. This is your fault.”

She dropped to her knees beside him as he died, as his blood ran warm on her hands.

“I’ll find a way.” Riggs cackled out a laugh as he faded back into the trees. “Won’t be long now. I’ll find you, and I’ll find a way.”

Sobbing, shaking, she shot up in bed. Moonlight streamed through the windows as she stared at her hands.

No blood. No blood, but God, she could feel it on her skin, could almost smell it.

Bunk stood with his front paws on her bed, whining.

“A dream, just a dream. It’s okay.” She wrapped her arms around him as much to comfort herself as him.

Because it had felt like more than a dream. And it wasn’t okay.

* * *

Before the moonlight faded into the first pale light of dawn, she’d finished two loads of laundry and scrubbed her kitchen from top to bottom. She needed movement and purpose more than sleep.

A batch of cornbread muffins added a good, homey aroma.

As the light strengthened, she fed her chickens.

“Good morning, ladies.”

They clucked and swarmed around her as much for the attention as the feed to come. She stroked soft brown feathers, calling each by name, then left them pecking at their feed as she hunted up the morning’s supply of eggs in the nesting boxes.

“Good job!”

With five eggs in her basket, she looked up at the sky—a bowl of blue softened by a complement of white clouds.

“Gorgeous morning,” she told her hens. “But I think we’ll have a quick, wicked storm this afternoon. Y’all take shelter now.”

She left the coop, headed back to the house. Bunk stuck close to her side, as if he knew she wasn’t as settled as she wanted to be.

When she reached the back porch, the dream flooded back into her mind. The music, the moonlight, that sense of quiet happiness. Until Riggs walked out of the woods.

Bringing blood and grief.