Cause to Fear. Blake Pierce

in his youth, there was permanent scarring and discoloring on that side of his face. His mouth always seemed to be frozen in a permanent scowl as well.

      At thirty-nine years of age, he had stopped caring about just how bad it looked. It was the hand he had been dealt. A shitty mother had resulted in a disfigured mess. But that was okay…he was working on fixing it. He looked to the mangled reflection in the mirror and smiled. It could take years to figure it out, but that was okay.

      “Hamsters are only five bucks apiece,” he said to the empty bathroom. “And those pretty college coeds are a dime a dozen.”

      He had done some reading, mainly in the forums of practicing nurses and med students. He figured if the experiment with the hamster was going to work, the heating pads needed to be on it for about forty minutes. It would be a slow thaw, one that would not too badly disrupt or shock the frozen heart.

      He spent that forty minutes watching the news. He caught a few quick blips about Patty Dearborne. He learned that Patty was attending BU with aspirations of becoming a counselor. She’d had a boyfriend and currently had loving parents mourning her. He saw the parents on TV, hugging and crying together while speaking to the media.

      He cut the TV off and walked into the kitchen. The smell of the thawing hamster was starting to fill the room…a smell he had not been expecting. He ran to the little body and threw the heating pads off of it.

      The fur was singed and the previously frozen belly was slightly charred. He swiped the tiny furry body away. When it plopped onto the kitchen floor with little trails of smoke wafting from its hide, he screamed.

      He stormed around the apartment for a while, furious. As was usually the case, his anger and absolute rage were driven by memories of an oven burner…blazing in his memories of childhood with the smell of burned flesh.

      His screams downgraded to pouting and sobbing within five minutes. Then, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he went into the kitchen and picked up the hamster. He tossed it into the garbage as if it were just a piece of trash and washed his hands at the kitchen sink.

      He was humming by the time he was done. When he took his keys from the hook by the door, he habitually ran his free hand along the scarring along the left side of his face. He closed the door, locked up, and went down to the street. There, in the midst of an absolutely beautiful winter morning, he got into his red van and started down the road.

      Almost casually, he glanced at himself in the rearview mirror.

      That permanent scowl was still there, but he did not let that deter him.

      He had work to do.

***

      Sophie Lentz was done with this frat shit. For that matter, she was just about done with this college shit, too.

      Vain or not, she knew how she looked. There were girls who were prettier than her, sure. But she had the Latin thing going for her, the dark eyes and raven black hair. She could also turn the accent on and off when she needed to. She’d been born in America, raised in Arizona, but according to her mother, the Latin had never left her. The Latin had never left her parents, either…not even when they had moved to New York the week after Sophie had been accepted into Emerson.

      It was most apparent in her looks rather than her attitude and personality, though. And man, had that worked for her in Arizona. Honestly, it had worked for her in college, too. But only for her freshman year. She’d experimented then but not as badly as her mother was probably thinking. And apparently, word had gotten out: Sophie Lentz didn’t take much prodding to get into bed and when she did land in your bed, buckle up because she was a firecracker.

      She supposed there were worse reputations to have. But it had blown up in her face tonight. Some guy – she thought his name was Kevin – had started kissing her and she had let him. But when they were alone and he refused to take no for an answer…

      Sophie’s right hand still hurt. There was also still a bit of blood on her knuckle. She wiped it away on her tight jeans, recalling the sound of the asshole’s nose crunching against her fist. She was furious but, deep down, wondered if she sort of deserved it. She did not believe in karma but maybe the part of the vixen she had played last semester was catching up to her. Maybe she was reaping what she had sown.

      She walked down the streets that cut through Emerson College, heading back to her apartment. Her goodie-goodie roommate would no doubt be studying for some test tomorrow, so at least she wouldn’t be alone.

      She was three blocks away from her apartment when she started to feel a strange sort of sensation. She looked behind her, sure that she was being followed, but there was no one. She could see the shapes of people in a little coffee bar a few feet behind her, but that was it. She had a fleeting irritated thought about what kind of morons drank coffee at 11:30 at night before she started on, still fuming over Kevin or whatever the guy’s name had been.

      Up ahead at a stoplight, someone was blaring some terrible hip-hop. The car’s back bumper was rattling and the bass sounded wretched. You’re really being a bitch tonight, aren’t you, slugger? she said to herself.

      She looked to her slightly swollen right hand and grinned. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

      By the time she reached the intersection where the booming car had been, the light had changed and the car raced off. She turned right at the intersection and her apartment building came into view. Again, though, she felt that creeping sensation. She turned to look behind her and again, nothing was there. A bit further down the street a couple was walking hand in hand. There were several cars parked along the street and a single red van driving down toward the stoplight she had just passed.

      Maybe she was just being paranoid because some loser had basically tried to rape her. That plus the adrenaline that was flowing through her was an unhealthy combination. She just needed to get home, wash up, and get to bed. This partying crap had to stop.

      She neared her apartment, really hoping her roommate wasn’t home. She’d be asking tons of questions about why she was home early. She did it because she was nosy and didn’t have a life of her own…not because she actually cared.

      She made her way up the steps to the building. When she opened the door and stepped inside, she looked back down the street, feeling that sensation of being watched once again. The streets were empty, though; the only thing she saw was a couple making out furiously against the side of an apartment building three doors down. She also saw that same red van. It was parked at the stoplight, just sort of idling there. Sophie wondered if there was some horny dude driving it, watching the make-out session against the apartment building.

      With a case of the creeps, Sophie headed inside. The door closed, leaving the night behind her. But that unsettling feeling remained.

***

      She woke up when her roommate left the next morning. The noisy bitch was probably on her way out to get more mangoes or papayas for her pretentious fruit smoothies. Sophie was pretty sure her roommate had no classes this early today. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was 10:30.

      Crap, she thought. She had class in an hour and there was no way she’d make it on time. She had to shower, throw some breakfast together, and then get to campus. She groaned, wondering how she’d let herself become this sort of girl. Was she going to be the tease now? Was she going to let her personal drama get in the way of her education and bettering her life? Was she —

      A knock at the front door broke her out of her internal reflection. She grumbled and slipped out of bed. She was only wearing a pair of panties and a thin cotton T-shirt, but that didn’t matter. This would almost certainly be her roommate. The idiot had probably left her wallet. Or keys. Or something…

      Another knock, soft yet insistent. Yes…it would be her roommate. Only she had that sort of annoying knock.

      “Hold your horses already,” Sophie yelled.

      She reached the door and answered it, unsetting the lock. She found herself looking at a stranger. There was something wrong with his face – that’s the first thing she noticed.

      And the last.

      The stranger stormed into the apartment, closing