Cold Summer Nights by Sean Thomas Fisher, Esmeralda Morin Read Free Book Online Page B

was standing on a lazy conveyer belt.
    Amy backed into the kitchen wall with a small window. The intruder stopped in the light slicing through the mini blinds. Amy found herself inches from the dark, pupiless eyes watching her every move, seeming to grow more satisfied with every wrinkle cutting through Amy’s face. She turned her head to the side, desperate to put more distance between them. The woman’s face inched closer. Her skin was cracked and streaked with soot. The black dress she wore was frayed and too short. Then she twitched.
    Amy screamed again, knocking the back of her head against the window.
    In an instant, a gray arm thrust out and grabbed Amy around the neck with an icy claw, driving her backwards. Amy heard the glass crack behind her. She gasped for breath as her manicured hands shot to the squishy limb around her throat. Frantically, she wrestled with it, choking and desperate for a gulp of the ripe oxygen resting just outside her cherry lips.
    The woman leaned in and rubbed her scaly cheek against Amy’s. Amy squirmed harder, which only made the need for air that much stronger. The woman pulled back and tilted her to the side, studying Amy with the wonder of a child. Amy gasped and struggled with both hands clawing at the bony fingers around her neck. Her painted toes left the floor. She thrashed wildly, kicking and hitting to no avail. The woman’s colorless lips pulled back into a wide crocodile smile, revealing chipped teeth. Amy’s eyes bulged as bloody veins wormed their way through the whites of her frenzied orbs. Her fingers clawed at the woman’s face, which peeled away like dried clay. The woman’s grin suddenly faded into an angry sneer. Her grip tightened and Amy kicked one last time before going limp as a sleeping cat.
     
    Rusty dashed across his apartment living room, tripped over a basketball and grabbed his cell phone off the ratty couch. The screen indicated unknown was calling but he hit the talk button anyway, thinking it could be a friendly booty-call from Stacey, or maybe even some other girl he wouldn’t be too picky about right now.
    “Hello?” he said, squinting in the silence that followed.
    He checked the screen to see if the call was still connected, and it was.
    "Hello?" he said louder, then taking a swig of Budweiser.
    Still no response. He was just about to hang up when someone started coughing. Or were they choking? He turned to the TV, staring at a Stone Sour video with unfocused eyes. “Who is this?”
    More gagging answered him.
    He considered the possibility it was Dallas or Nick trying to punk him, but didn’t think they could disguise their call as unknown without calling from a pay phone, which neither would be up for at this hour on a Sunday night.
    The wet hacking continued in his ear and then stopped.
    Rusty muted the TV and held his breath, the phone tightly pressed to his ear. His eyes roamed the room without seeing anything. “Hello?” he whispered.
    The silence that awaited him was suddenly broken by more coughing, louder and more rampant.
    Rusty frowned and pulled the phone from his ear. “Okay, good luck with the lung cancer, pops,” he shouted, hanging up and dropping the phone like it was poisonous onto the dark green couch. He stared at it for a moment, waiting for it to ring again. When it didn’t, he tipped the red and white can back and wiped his ear with his shirt sleeve.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
     
     
     
     
    Nick spent Monday and Tuesday letting his thoughts shuffle from work stuff to the nursing home to Amy’s kiss to Summer and the dead remote, finally coming to the conclusion that the remote was defective. Just like his grandma and Amy.
    “Come on!” he yelled at the maroon Ford Taurus in front of him. “Green means go!” He drummed his fingers on the wheel and sighed, somehow managing to resist the urge to honk.
    The Taurus finally woke up and started moving. Nick tried not to tailgate but it was