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the old man’s naked belly.
    Me reckon dat witch gonna kill dat girl , the old man on the floor hissed to himself as the pitter-patter of the mouse jerked his head away from the light of the window. Frightened, the furry creature stopped in the middle of the floor and dropped its breadcrumb to the ground. The mouse stared directly into Cyrus’s withered, blood-stained face.
    â€œWee one,” the white-haired man whispered. “Bring you over here now.” He sang the words softly as the mouse raised itself on its brown haunches. “Me ain’t gonna be hurtin you,” he promised, smiling at the tiny creature.
    The mouse scooted toward the man’s face and sniffed the foul breath floating from his mouth. Its nose sniffed closer at the acrid smell of blood and rotting flesh, too close then to turn and escape. The old man’s dry, thin lips parted and wrapped around the furry, brown body as his sharp teeth sank into the mouse’s warm skin. With a swallow, the vermin passed the man’s gullet. Smiling to himself, Cyrus felt a tingle in his broken bones and battered flesh as the spark of fresh meat and blood soothed his beaten body.
    Me reckon me might gonna kill dat girl yet.
    He closed his eyes and fell fast asleep, the thought of escape lingering at the edges of his evil mind.

5

Nice Day for a Swim
    A glance in the bathroom mirror froze Krystal Woodward from moving forward in her pink, fuzzy house slippers. She had noticed that a single, deep age line ran across her forehead.
    As she rubbed and smudged at the chasm with her fingertips, a frenzied state of panic welled in her chest. Within seconds of spotting the unwelcome intruder upon her fresh, twenty-eightish face, she dove headfirst into the cabinet under the sink to retrieve every bottle of disgustingly expensive face cream she possessed. Cajoling the wrinkle into retreat with layers of antioxidant-enhanced, age-defying spackle, she wrapped her mid-thigh-length bathrobe around her whittled, spray-tanned waist and scampered down the stairs of her Buckhead McMansion to the glittering steel and granite kitchen.
    Shoving her head into the French-door refrigerator, she scanned the shelves for breakfast. Slipping an orange juice carton from behind a bowl of brown bananas, Krystal got an idea.
    She read the time on the digital oven clock: 11 a.m. Having nothing to do that day, she shrugged her slender shoulders as she opened the freezer door.
    â€œPremium Russian,” she read the words off a half-empty vodka bottle as she turned toward a cabinet above the dishwasher.
    Filling a clear-crystal glass with her favorite beverage, she reached for the orange juice carton and turned it upside down, shaking out the last few drops into the vodka. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the cool granite counter and gulped.
    She sighed and gripped the edge of the counter. For a passing moment, she floated up from the hard ceramic tile, toward the ceiling. Higher and higher she climbed, until a smack against her head forced her eyes open.
    She lay still on the tile, her glass shattered around her face. She said simply, “That is good stuff.”
    Krystal picked herself up from the floor and walked to her husband’s library.
    The room smelled like cigars and Polo cologne. She needed to do some research, but he had taken his laptop with him on a business trip to Miami.
    She stumbled to the staircase, intending to use her stepdaughter’s laptop. At the top of the steps, she slammed, shoulder first, into Taylor’s bedroom door. Krystal tried to remember, through her vodka haze, the last time she had even seen her husband’s daughter.
    â€œWhatever!” she shrugged and slipped into the molded, white-plastic chair in front of the laptop, which was perched on top of Taylor’s glass desk.
    A silver picture frame rested next to the computer. Her husband smiled back at her, his arm stretched around a beaming, six-year-old Taylor, who