“Eyes on News has Confirmed Forty-two Domestic Assault Complaints at the Hallowed Point Retirement Community”

The news anchor seemed a bit nervous after this announcement. Misha was beside herself. “Jesus, Sam, we got out just in time. Miss, we were there just now. The men are so creepy it’s terrible. No one was angry, just, just—distant.”

The news woman had just shuffled her papers nervously and seemed to stifle a word. She then looked up to the camera, and then startled, looked up to her right. Her male counterpart walked on camera and instead of taking his customary seat, stabbed her in the neck with a fountain pen, stabbed her again and again. The woman was screaming and gurgling and pleading, “Please, please, Bill!” and the entranced looking man kept stabbing her.

And the camera does not stop rolling?

What kind of callous freak is operating that camera?

Uncle Bob always said that the government could look in on us through the TV.

Sam kicked in the flat-screen, turned and snatched the remote from the hysterically sobbing Louise, and let out a most urgent whisper as he squatted down in front of them and grabbed both of their heads in his hands, “Do not leave the house. Use no power, no appliances. Make no noise. Remain away from the windows. I have no idea what is going on. I have to go.”

Misha began to claw at his arm. “No, no! You can’t, Sam! I love you!”

Louise seemed to come out of her hysteria and looked him meaningfully in the eye. “Mrs. Dawson?”

“Yes, Mrs. Dawson. Look, you and Jack have that sword collection in the clubroom downstairs. There is a bar and a bathroom down there. Lock yourselves down there and prepare to defend yourselves. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Misha was crying and hugging his thigh as he stood over them. Louise took her in her arms and hugged her, looking up at Sam with a deep penetrating gaze. “You know, Sam I always thought you were handsome in a dumb-jock kind of way—no offense.”

“None taken, Louise,” he said, with a chuckle.

She continued in a somber, inward-looking way, “As cute as you are with a wife so beautiful I could never feel guilty, and as busy as Jack always was, I never once considered knocking on your door with a lame request for sugar or milk. Why now, having just discovering I am pregnant last night, and fearing for my husband more than I could have ever imagined, and scared to death in my own house, do I want nothing more than you on the floor?”

He shrugged his shoulders in a dumb-jock kind of way and she nodded knowingly. “Because this is all connected, isn’t it Sam?”

His voice sounded hollow and the words seemed to catch like honey in his throat. “That’s the kind of thing Jack might have an opinion on. I can tell you that Mrs. Marsden, a senile retired fortune teller with a John Wayne fetish, called that thing that flew over a couple weeks ago, ‘the devil’s own wing’ and told me to hide Misha here. Louise, that old lady had already killed a man in her bed, and it was the first time in three years that I looked into her eyes and thought I saw a sane mind looking back out at me. I have no idea what is happening. We can only hope it will pass like that fireball in the sky did.”

He bent and kissed them both on the forehead. As he stood back up he felt like a new man, like he had never been tired. All he could think of, as he looked out the bay window at the mailman staggering along with his bloody-ended tree branch, was Mrs. Dawson.

What is her first name?

Does she still live in Box Hill South?

What the hell is the street address you saw on that prescription bottle that fell out of her purse?

That’s right, you promised you’d forget.

Will her yellow Scion be parked in the driveway?

Louise looked up at him while Misha cried in her hands. “Get her, goddamn it! Go get her, Sam!”

He looked into the bloodshot eyes of Jack’s wife and could only nod, as he clenched his jaw and tried not to faint. He walked to the backdoor, opened it, locked it behind him, and was so anxious about getting to Box Hill that he slid into the Porsche from the passenger side, taking a mighty painful poke from the stick in the process.

He looked at his painfully flaring groin, having just taken a shot that brought back old soccer memories.

He eased the car around the house and took her slowly onto the street. The only figure in sight was the mailman, walking down the sidewalk across the street looking longingly at the next house down as he staggered along clutching his bloody tool.