Devil's Oven by Laura Benedict Read Free Book Online

pressed herself against a window to peek through the narrow gap between the curtain panels. She could see outlines of furniture—a broad, high table in front of a couch; a bookcase; a chair. She relaxed, allowing what little she could see to make an impression on her mind. The light was faint and the shapes diffuse, but everything shared the same flat, dull quality. When she had lived here, she had tried to make it a bright, happy place, with covered pillows and houseplants in the windows. That was all gone.
    The wind picked up, spreading gooseflesh over her exposed arms. A few feet away, the storm door squeaked open a few inches, then banged shut. Unafraid, Jolene moved away from the window and put her hand on the door’s tarnished handle.
    She went inside.
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    Squatting behind the Dumpster of the Git ’n’ Go, he scratched the tender skin surrounding the stitches at his left wrist. He was careful not to worry the fragile bits of thread, somehow understanding that he might damage them.
    He could make out each distinct odor coming from the Dumpster—rotting lettuce and sausage, crusted nacho cheese, soiled diapers and tissues, soggy cardboard, stale beer, and sweet pop of some kind. But none was the scent he had been wanting, waiting for, the scent he had been searching for since leaving the trailer, keeping to the edge of the woods and shadowed walls and fences, until finally picking it up near the Git ’n’ Go. At first he had been drawn to the blue car parked behind the store, but no one was inside so he followed the scent right up to the store’s back door.
    He rolled back on his bare heels, hardly feeling the bits of gravel and glass beneath them. Once his senses had been in almost perfect balance, dulled very occasionally by fine whiskey and, even less frequently, a particular blend of soil-brown hashish, but now they were warped or heightened or shrunken, depending. He didn’t know the difference anymore.
    He closed his eyes and time passed. He breathed in, breathed out.
    The back door scraped open.
    “Ain’t my fault if she chooses to be late. I’m fine with the overtime.”
    He caught the woman’s scent as she passed between the Dumpster and the door. She wasn’t the one, but she carried the scent of the one he was waiting for. She flung something heavy into the Dumpster and went back inside.
    He closed his eyes again, remembering a woman’s fingers on his skin. He remembered the close smell of the room where he first opened his eyes. He remembered hungry and, for a fleeting moment, thought about food.
    The second time the door opened, he covered his ears with his hands to protect them from the hideous grating sound it made against the pavement. He didn’t need to hear the woman’s voice to know she was there and that she wasn’t alone.
    “Slide that stack of pallets this way, Claude,” she said. “Those morons don’t know the difference between the left and right sides of the stupid door.”
    “So what does all this labor get me, is what I want to know.”
    He breathed in, opened his eyes. He moved.
    “ Somebody has to take care—Sweet Jesus!”
    The woman stared up at him. She was short but a yard wide, wearing a black-and-white-splotched tunic. She spread her arms, palms away from him, as though she was shielding Claude, who stood slack-jawed behind her.
    His eyes fixed on Claude, and he smiled. He swept the woman out of his way, not for a second feeling the bulk of her. When she hit the security door of the Git ’n’ Go, her shoulder cracked.
    •  •  •
      Claude didn’t even see what happened to her, didn’t hear her low-pitched oooomph of pain. He could only stare at the thing in front of him, the smiling, shirtless hulk of a man. The man’s torso and arms were covered with curling black hairs, and the memory of a swimming instructor he had when he was seven flashed into Claude’s mind. Then the man’s hand was on his neck and his back was against the