Looking for Chapter 1? It’s here.
Chapter 2?  Here.
How about Chapter 3?
Can’t forget Chapter 4!
There’s also Chapter 5.
And Chapter 6.

This chapter, like the one before it contains much graphic violence.  As it is, essentially, the climax of the story, it’s safe to say that lives will be changed forever.  Though well-written, it is not a pleasant chapter, although were any of them, really?  Except maybe for Chapters 4 and 5, where the sex occurred.

Focus on the beach.

It was easier now. Carrie felt a sense of peace she’d never felt before as she saw herself lying on a large colorful towel in the sun, wearing sunglasses and her favorite swimsuit. She was slathered in sunblock, a dog-eared paperback book lying within easy reach. She could feel the powdery sand under her arms and legs. There was no mistaking Jake and Libby’s excited voices as they splashed in the surf with Rick.

Jake and Libby. A pang of regret shattered the calm as Carrie realized she wouldn’t get to see them grow into teenagers, and then the adults she raised them to be. She would miss out on everything: Breakfast in bed for Mother’s Day. Scraped knees. Spelling bees. She smiled at the inadvertent rhyme. She’d never see them graduate from high school, or college. And their weddings, if they decided they wanted to get married. She’d miss those as well. Rick would definitely remarry, though. There was no way he could handle life on his own, not with two kids.

Carrie hoped her replacement would be good to him, and to their children. She hoped she would be an atheist, and that she would encourage Jake and Libby to be wonderful free spirits, unburdened by social norms. She hoped she wouldn’t be blonde, though she was well aware of Rick’s fixation on fair-haired women. As she drifted off into the unknown, she supposed that last one didn’t matter as much; she didn’t really care if the woman who would raise her children was blonde. Better she’s blonde and an atheist than a brunette who insists the family attend church regularly. That’s all that mattered. If she could assure herself that her children would avoid the kind of upbringing Carrie had gone through, she could believe everything was going to be okay.

She saw Rick sitting on a beach towel nearby and felt tears welling up in her eyes; she would miss him terribly. She felt stupid over the mistakes they had made in their marriage, though if she had another chance she couldn’t have imagined doing anything differently. She would have met Alan in that alley back in Osan. She would have given Rick the one-time free pass that drove him into the arms of the Singawhore. She thought of the look on Jamie’s face as her eyes slowly closed the night of the ball. Carrie sure showed her, didn’t she? At least Rick wouldn’t be marrying that tawdry homewrecker.

Rick reclined on his elbows and watched the kids playing in the water. Carrie tried to get up from her towel to go join Rick on his, but she couldn’t move. She tried again, but still nothing. That’s when she noticed that Rick was looking over the tops of his sunglasses to make eyes at someone else. A blonde woman in a two-piece bikini walked up, her body wet from the surf. Her left hand held Libby’s, and her right held Jake’s. Carrie gasped. No fucking way. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Anybody but her.

The woman knelt down beside Rick, wrapped the children in towels, and dried them off. Rick put his hand on her shoulder and she looked down at him. The tenderness Carrie could see in her eyes was too much to behold and she choked back a sob. It made Carrie sad to see him this close to another woman. To this woman.

No. It didn’t make her sad. It made her angry. She opened her eyes and saw the very same woman looming over her, her face a gory mask of fury and madness. Spittle and blood dripped from Vicky’s mouth as she continued to choke the younger woman, her wide eyes searing with malice and hate. As Carrie started to struggle against her, Vicky’s thumbs tightened. She was saying something too, but Carrie couldn’t hear a word. She reached out blindly, her hands groping for anything she could use as a weapon. All she could feel was broken glass against her hands, and she knew it was cutting into her skin.

She could barely make her fingers respond to her brain’s commands. If she didn’t find something and manage to grab it soon, it wouldn’t matter. Vicky’s knees weighed heavily on Carrie’s thighs and pinned her to the spot, every word she spoke muffled through clenched teeth. Carrie could feel something wet – Vicky’s blood, most likely – dripping onto her face and she wanted it to stop. She moved her arm desperately along the floor over bristly carpet and terrible, sharp bits of glass until she came upon something different. Her fingers curled around the handle of Vicky’s fallen coffee cup and she swung it as hard as she could.

The impact loosened Vicky’s hands from Carrie’s throat, and Carrie hit her again. And again. And again. It was enough to knock her opponent off of her, at least. As Vicky got to her feet, Carrie rose on shaky legs and mentally willed herself to do anything she had to do to leave this house alive.

She faced her opponent. Vicky’s blonde locks were smeared with blood. She held the side of her head as she tried to scan the ground for a weapon, one eye still fixed on the other woman. Carrie raised the mug to hit her again but noticed all she held was the jagged, broken handle. Carrie threw it at her and had to force herself not to smile when the small fragment hit its mark.

“You’re dead,” Vicky hissed.

“You took the words right out of my mouth.” Carrie bent down to pick up a broken table leg, and hoped that whatever expression she had on her face was enough to convince the other woman to sink to her knees in fear and make whatever came next easier. As she approached her opponent she noticed with some satisfaction that Vicky wasn’t moving, wasn’t trying to run, wasn’t preparing her next attack. “You made me do this.” There was cold determination in her voice as she raised her weapon. This was it. Now or never. She could do what she knew she needed to do and walk out of there, or she could hesitate and give Vicky the chance to kill her.

She swung the table leg. Vicky grabbed her wrist as it came down, then swatted the piece of wood out of Carrie’s hand. As it hit the floor, Vicky charged, but Carrie moved out of the way and sent her fist soaring as she passed. The punch landed hard against the back of Vicky’s neck and the woman screamed in pain, pivoting on her heels to face Carrie once again. Or maybe she didn’t do it on purpose. Maybe it was the force of Carrie’s punch that caused her to turn, but either way, Carrie wasn’t about to take any chances.

She grabbed Vicky by the arm and tried to slam her back down to the ground. Their momentum, however, sent them reeling toward the television. At the last minute, Vicky gave a fevered, awful bellow and pushed her opponent away. Carrie careened into the large, ornate mirror hanging next to the TV, and as her body hit it full speed, the glass gave way. It collapsed into hundreds of shiny, reflective fragments before the entire frame came off of its mounting and followed them to the floor.

Carrie said “Ow” as she picked herself up off of the ground. It was instinctive. Vicky reached down and picked up a particularly nasty-looking shard of mirror. Carrie grabbed a tall brass lamp from its spot on the floor and lifted it like a quarterstaff. It was heavy, but Carrie quickly turned it around, facing her opponent with the large round base. Vicky hadn’t even resumed her fighting stance before Carrie smashed it into her wrist, knocking the glass away. The woman howled in pain, so Carrie did it again. And then one more time. She couldn’t hear any bones breaking, but she hoped they had.

Vicky sank to her knees, her eyes wide. She cradled her shattered hand as tears of agony began to roll down her cheeks. The look on her face was one of incredulity, like someone who’s just realized her best laid plans have been shot to hell. And she screamed! Oh, how she screamed. It would have been music to Carrie’s ears if not for the fact that she was making no sound.

Carrie regarded the heavy lamp, and wondered what to do with it. She considered pushing Vicky to the ground and bringing the base down on her head, as many times as she needed to. If it worked for her hand, it would work for her skull. But that sounded really gross. Carrie didn’t like dissecting frogs back in high school. She doubted she’d like this either. She supposed she could stand behind Vicky and strangle her with the lamp. But that sounded awkward and difficult so she set it back down.

Instead, Carrie put her hands on Vicky’s neck. The woman didn’t react as she closed her fingers around her throat and squeezed. “You’re finished,” she said, her voice a bit shaky. Vicky’s eyes went even wider and her tongue lolled out of the side of her mouth like a thirsty dog. Carrie said it again. Her voice sounded more dominant this time, more in control. She said it again, and by this time she was positively reveling in the control she felt.

Vicky began making hacking sounds from the back of her throat. It was unpleasant to hear, so Carrie said it again, louder this time. And she kept saying it as she focused on the task ahead of her. She didn’t think about how close she’d come to dying. She didn’t think of the obscenity of taking another person’s life, even in self-defense. All she could think was that she’d won. This was as much for Vicky turning Rick against Carrie all those months before as it was for Vicky setting Carrie up to be ambushed by Elisa and Jamie, or for whatever it was that Vicky put in her coffee.

After what seemed like an hour, Carrie realized Vicky wasn’t moving anymore. She’d stopped making that horrible noise, and her eyes had rolled all the way back in their sockets long before. She wasn’t even twitching anymore. So Carrie loosened her grip and the woman slumped to the floor. She lay there for a moment before Carrie realized her chest wasn’t rising at all.

As she gazed down at the motionless form before her, Carrie realized it was time to go. She hoped nobody was outside when she left: A nosy mailman, a neighbor watering his lawn, some stay-at-home soccer mom unloading groceries from her Minivan. It was nearly afternoon on a weekday. Even if someone was there, even if someone noticed her making her escape, she was sure they’d pay no mind. Or she hoped, anyway. Carrie remembered watching a TV show or a movie where two guys killed someone and then they had to hang around in his house all day because they couldn’t chance carrying the body out until after dark. Carrie couldn’t wait that long, of course; Paul would be home from work eventually, and the kids would be home from school. She exhaled with relief as it occurred to her that she didn’t have to remove Vicky’s body. She just had to get her own out of the house, and she had to do it now.

At the front door, Carrie felt for her keys. The wristlet! It wasn’t there. She looked back at the coffee table where she’d set it down – or rather, where the coffee table had once stood. All that remained was the pile of shattered glass and splintered wood that she and Vicky left in their wake. Carrie hurried back into the family room and sifted through the mess, careful not to bloody her hands on the shards of glass. It wasn’t there.

Her heartbeat spiked as panic washed over her. She couldn’t leave without it. Beyond the fact that her car and house keys were clipped to it, her credit cards were inside as well. Some cash, too. And of course, her driver’s license. When the police eventually showed up, that wristlet would be all the evidence they needed that she’d been in the house. She didn’t even want to think about the DNA they might find.

Carrie checked near the piano, and under it. Then she looked by the sliding glass door. There was no sign. Though it was a long shot, she headed over to the dining table and the kitchen. Maybe when Vicky moved to dodge the coffee cup she bumped it off the table and it somehow ended up there? Carrie was running out of ideas. On her way to the kitchen she kicked something, then looked down and there it was. She crouched down and grabbed it, then passed her hand through the strap, not even pausing to catch her breath before she started for the front door once again.

At the same time, Paul pulled his car into the garage. He turned off the engine, shut the garage door and got out. He pulled out the canvas shopping bag from his trunk and set it down on the concrete. First he unfolded the white coverall and put it on over his clothes. He didn’t put on the hood just yet; he hoped he wouldn’t need to. Then he opened up the package of booties – sorry, disposable polypropylene shoe covers – and slipped two over his shoes. He was surprised at how easy it was to buy the stuff. He just walked right into Home Depot and told the guy he needed something to keep sawdust off of his clothes. Cleaning supplies, aisle nineteen.

The one thing that wasn’t so easy to buy, however, was the quicklime. They didn’t have it at Home Depot. They didn’t have it at Lowry’s, or Ace Hardware. The closest thing those stores carried was calcium hydroxide, and a quick Google search informed him that it wasn’t even close to the same thing. He had to get it from a masonry company, and it wasn’t particularly cheap. If they’d planned it out better, they would have ordered it online and had it delivered, because it wasn’t light, either. Paul hoisted the bag out of his trunk and set it down on the floor of the garage with a thud. The guy at the masonry place said he’d need heavy-duty gloves to handle the quicklime; luckily he had a pair to sell him. They were probably way more expensive than the ones at Home Depot. Lesson learned.

Back inside the house, Carrie heard a door open with a soft, quiet click. Paul!  She stopped in her tracks. Her blood went icy-cold. She looked around the room. Nowhere to hide. She couldn’t make it to the door now, not before he came in from the garage and saw what had happened. He’d find her there, standing near his wife’s body, and even if she managed to get the hell out of there, he’d call the police and lead them right to her. He’d testify that she was at the scene. If that happened, she may as well have just left the wristlet there for the police to find.

A familiar voice called out “Vicky?” Carrie turned on her feet and dashed to the back door. She unlocked it, slid it open, and barely managed to pull it shut – fuck locking it! – before running headlong into the backyard. She crossed the patio in three long strides, her feet a blur as she ran over the paving stones to the grass of the backyard. She dashed past the kids’ play structure and the trampoline where Jake and Libby sometimes played with Emily and Kyle. Her only chance was over the back fence.

As she ran across the yard she lost her footing and then, suddenly, she was falling. The ground rushed up at her, and before she knew it she had fallen through it. Carrie hit something hard with her face, then bounced backward and something else smashed against her head. There was dirt on her hands. On her clothes. No blood at least. She looked up and saw blue sky and sunlight. No way! Those fuckers had dug some kind of a trap for her. It wasn’t very deep, but her head felt like it was spinning and she thought she might throw up. Still, she couldn’t slow down now. Carrie lifted herself out of the hole and headed right for the fence.

As she lifted herself up to crest the wooden posts, she took one last look into the house. It was hard to see for the sunlight and the harsh glare, but she thought for an instant that she saw somebody in a Haz-Mat suit or something, crouching down near where she’d left Vicky. The hell? She leapt over the fence and into the next yard. She didn’t stop to look around and see if anyone was present. Didn’t even slow down. Instead she made for their gate, and freedom.

Back inside the house, Paul was in the middle of rescue-breathing, plus regular chest compressions. He hadn’t called 911, which every first aid class or YouTube video tells you is the first thing you do in a situation like this. But he couldn’t very well have the paramedics and the police show up at the house, what with the freshly-dug grave in the backyard. No, he was going to have to do this all by himself. If it wasn’t too late already.

He gave her two more breaths, then began to push down on her chest, desperate to get her heart beating again. He had no idea how long she’d been lying here before he arrived. The only thing Paul knew for sure is that this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He counted the thirtieth compression, then gave her two more breaths. After that, he immediately started compression all over again. After another cycle of this, though, he stopped. It was over.

Paul took a deep breath and stood up. He took off the booties and went into the backyard. He put them into the garbage can, then took off the coverall. He folded it neatly and set it down on a patio chair. There wasn’t much he could do about the hole in the yard; it would take a couple hours to fill it in and he didn’t feel like digging right now. So instead he went back inside and shut the blinds over the sliding glass door, and finally called 911.

“911. What is your emergency?”

Paul took a deep breath and spoke. “I just got home and my wife’s been hurt. She’s not responsive.”

“Are there any visible injuries?”

He looked down at her. “She’s got some cuts and stuff. The house is a mess. I think it was a break-in.” He walked around the house, scanning the debris all over the floor. He hoped there was nothing there that might incriminate him or Vicky.

“Is there an intruder currently in your home, sir?”

“No. I don’t think so.” Paul found the bottle of windshield wiper fluid on the kitchen counter and picked it up. He’d have to get it out of sight before the paramedics arrived.

“Is your wife breathing?”

“No,” Paul said, trying to hide the resignation in his voice. Then he added a quick “I don’t think she is.” Paul knew she was dead. But the dispatcher didn’t have to know he knew it. He set the wiper fluid in the cabinet under the kitchen sink and returned to where Vicky lay.

“Do you know how to perform CPR, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. You need to start performing CPR now. Start with thirty chest compressions.”

Paul didn’t do as he was instructed; instead he sat there for about a minute before speaking into his phone: “Okay, now I do the rescue breathing, right?”

“Tilt her head back and administer two breaths into her airway.” Paul stood over his wife’s body, and two seconds passed before the dispatcher continued: “Give her thirty more compressions, sir.”

He looked down at Vicky’s still form, aware of his own heartbeat pounding in his chest. Before the dispatcher spoke again, the sensation had grown more insistent, the sound lounder, urgent.

“Now administer two more breaths.”

The pounding continued. Paul thought he heard someone shouting somewhere. A neighbor, maybe. He put his hand on his chest, as though that could steady his raging, panicked heart. More shouting. He wanted to open a window and yell for whoever it was to shut up, because his wife was hurt, he was on the phone with 911, and they were stressing him out.

More pounding. His heart hurt. Yelling. Who was yelling? It was coming from the front door. Which swung open as two uniformed police officers kicked their way inside.

One shouted “Police!” as they charged inside. He turned toward them, phone still in hand.

“He’s got a knife!” Paul had barely registered the words when everything went black. He didn’t even hear the gunshots.

To be concluded.