Sour Candy Read Free

shriek
and the space was filled with daylight splintered by backlit
figures.
    “ You okay buddy?” someone
asked.
    “ Move back folks, give him
some room,” said another.
    “ I’ve called 911,” said a
third, and indeed Phil thought he could hear sirens in the
distance, though it could just as easily have been the ringing in
his ears. As he allowed his shadowy benefactors to gently extricate
him from the car, the cell rang behind him. Lori, freaking out, he
imagined. He realized he couldn’t leave it too long before he
called to let her know he was okay. Maybe by then he’d know if that
was the truth.
    The good Samaritans helped him across
the street and sat him down on the curb where he regulated his
breathing as much as his injured ribs would allow. Horns honked
around him; people yelled.
    After some indeterminate amount of
time, and with his whole body trembling, he blinked cold sweat from
his eyes and inspected the damage.
    He’d been following a PT Cruiser into
the intersection when another vehicle had slammed into him from
behind, in turn forcing his car into the Cruiser. The PT didn’t
appear to be too damaged. Phil’s Chevy had absorbed the worst of
it. The backend had accordioned inward, his trunk gaping open, one
rear wheel bent inward.
    The offending vehicle, a grey Toyota,
had suffered similar damage to its front end. Through the steam and
smoke from the ruptured engine block, he tried to make out if the
driver had escaped unscathed. He could see that the windshield was
cracked and starred but still in place. If there was anyone still
inside they were invisible to him.
    The sirens were closer now.
    “ Can I get you anything?” a
young woman in athletic gear asked. She was standing over him, her
face writ with concern.
    “ No, thank you, I’m okay.
Just need to stay off my feet for a minute. But thanks. You’re very
kind.”
    “ Anything you need,” she
told him. As he watched her vanish into the crowd he was reminded
of an old Ray Bradbury story he had read once about people who
showed up all-too-quickly at the scene of traffic accidents. In
that story, they’d been a sinister bunch, but he was glad of their
help today.
    The door of the Toyota swung open, and
though Phil could not yet make out the driver, he took it as a good
sign that they were at least uninjured enough to exit the
vehicle.
    Until he saw who it was and his heart
froze in his aching chest.
    “ The fuck…?” he muttered,
his voice a mere croak.
    It was the woman from the store. She
staggered free of the car and the haze of smoke, her lifeless gaze
and the nasty gash running like red lighting from her hairline to
the bridge of her broken nose making her look like something from a
zombie movie. Blood made a scarlet mask of her face. She paused,
her body weaving to and fro, and fell to her knees. Phil thought he
heard one of them crack like kindling.
    “ Oh God,” someone said and
hurried over to attend to the injured woman, but when they reached
her, she had strength enough to shove them aside. It quickly became
apparent as more people tried to help and were rebuffed, that no
matter how severe the woman’s injuries, she was moving with a
singular purpose.
    And that purpose was Phil.
    She rose, her eyes fixed on him, and
resumed walking toward where he sat paralyzed by the surreal aspect
of what he was witnessing. A number of thoughts flickered through
his addled mind, each one more panicked than the last:
    She hit me on
purpose.
    She’s insane.
    She’s going to try to kill
me.
    Yet still he could not move, was
afraid to try. The bones in his chest felt like shards of broken
glass and he feared if he stood, he’d shatter into
pieces.
    “ Jesus, I thought she was
dead,” said an onlooker to his right.
    Still, despite it all, a worse thought
than the potential malevolence of the woman’s intentions occurred
to him, resolving itself from the fog much like the woman
had.
    “ There’s a kid,” he
said.
    The young man who