Available Darkness Season 1

leaning into the back of her car, gently setting brown bags into an empty back seat. While others in the parking lot had noticed him, the woman had not. He raced up behind her and screamed, “Move!”
    Her head hit the inside roof of the car as she spun around clumsily, her heel slipping forward, stopping short of touching John’s leg. She was young, with long blond hair, full of energy, which he could feel flaring from her every pore. A hunger stirred within him, a mix of lust and a desire to feed. She stared at him, frozen by fear or something else he couldn’t quite place in the narrow sweep of a second.
    The woman’s rear window shattered as another gunshot rang out and she gave release to a piercing shriek, suddenly shaken from her temporary lull. She launched herself backwards in the car, jerked open the passenger side back door, and scrambled out the other side. As she ran for safety, John spun around to see the cop advancing on him, about 30 yards away, aiming the shotgun.
    Out of the corner of his eye, John saw that the woman had dropped her keys on the ground.
    He ducked down, grabbed a handful of silver, opened the front door, and jumped into the driver’s seat.
    “Stop!” the cop screamed, now only a few yards away.
    John keyed the ignition and threw the car in reverse, yanking the wheel hard right. The car stopped just in front of the cop as he leveled the shotgun squarely at John’s head. John shifted into drive and floored the gas, but not before the cop fired, thunder erupting from the shotgun.
    The slug shattered the window and found its mark, slamming into John’s chest — thrusting him back against the seat at the exact moment the car struck the cop and sent his badge scraping across the hood and his body into an angry tumble behind the bumper.
    John gasped for air, barely managing to dip out of the shopping center parking lot and into traffic. Though the pain was intense, his wounded flesh was already starting to stitch itself together as his breath returned.
    “Where are you?” he asked Abigail as he navigated his way through horrified pedestrians and sluggish vehicles.
    There was no answer on the other end.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 12 — Abigail

    Abigail lifted her head and opened her eyelids to a swath of angry shadows cast in a blood-red blur.
    She was sitting upright in a chair, arms fastened behind her, and thick cord chewing at her ankles. Somewhere above her, soft cinnamon lights cast the dark room in a sinister blush. She nearly jumped when she saw the hazy image of someone sitting directly in front of her, also bound.
    She pretended not to notice the other person, while slowly attempting to calculate her surroundings before her captors grew wise to her awareness; a lesson well learned during her time in the monster’s closet. Her new cage was maybe twice the size of her closet, yet it still felt cramped.
    A dull ache shivered through her body as she tried to squirm free of her bindings. They were too tight.
    Only once her mind’s fog started to recede, did she realize the other prisoner was just her own reflection in a large mirror that ran up and down the length of the wall. In the reflection, she saw a concrete wall with another smaller mirrored window and a door with no knob — just a deadbolt.
    Prisoner again.
    The last thing Abigail remembered was the van door sliding open. Immediately before that, the thing she would never forget — the murder of the cop. She remembered looking down and watching in horror as his blood sprayed across her arms and the front of her jacket. The jacket was now missing. She was in the tee shirt and pajama bottoms she’d been wearing, with the stench of sweat and blood coating her like dry mud.
    Abigail struggled again to loosen her binds, but her muscles spasmed in painful protest. She wiggled her toes against a cold floor which had neither tile or carpet, dressed instead in the slightly powdery feel of unfinished concrete. Using her toes, she found just enough leverage to push her chair back a bit. The chair screeched, and she was certain whoever was watching her, probably from the other side of the mirror, had heard the sound.
    She looked directly into the mirror and smiled.
    “Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked in a voice that wore an unwavering veneer of false courage.
    Silence met her facade.
    A sudden fear rippled through her body as Abigail wondered which would be the worse fate, to be left alone in a room to die or held