Page 16 of Bump in the Night
“Please,” I say, wiggling in his lap, “that’s notenough.”
Johnchuckles.
“Pumpkin, you think we’re going to claim you here? No. When we claim you, it’s going to be all night long. We’re never letting you go again – and as much as I want everyone to know, we can’t have you walking through here with the stamp ofjust-got-fuckedon yourface.”
I can’t argue. I’m too full of bliss. The guys help me put myselftogether.
Someone knocks on the door again, though it barely registers. Elliot shouts for whoever it is to say the hellaway.
But suddenly, everything shifts and the door busts open. It cracks, and splinters, and bursts, sending shard of wood everywhere. I shield my eyes from the onslaught and feel two sets of strong, big hands – hands that have done crazy things to me – pull me against the back wall of thecloset.
Elliot’s barges chest-first, ferocious, back into the swell of party-goers, rushing them like a linebacker and kicking the door closed behind him. John holds me safe in his arms before the door swings open again, being ripped off its hinges by a pair of mean, big men in hockeymasks.
Hockey masks – like Jason’s. I was sympathetic toward thatmask.
But now, those masks are the things of nightmare – the dark ushers in the theater of doom, and I’m the star. A big guy with a polaroid camera shoves the flash into myface.
“Smile for the camera,Sweetheart.”
The flash of the bulb is quick and brutal to my drowsy eyes, and then my world goesblack.
