yelp of pain and the woman abrupt slapped the man. He let go and then
slapped her back, viciously, and Luther saw a patch of blood emerge at
the corner of her mouth and spill onto the thick, lipstick-coated lips.
@@ “You fucking bastard.” She rolled off the bed and sat on@ the floor
rubbing her mouth, tasting her blood, her drunken@ brain momentarily
lucid. The first words Luther had clearly: heard spoken the entire night
hit his brain like a sledgehammer. He stood up, inched toward the glass.
The man grinned ‘ Luther froze when he saw it. It was more like the
snarl of a wild animal close to a kill than a human being.
“Fucking bastard,” she said again, a little more quietly , the; words
slurred. As she stood up he grabbed her arm, twisted it, and she fell
hard to the floor. The man sat on the bed and looked down triumphantly.
His breathing accelerating, Luther stood before the glass, his hands
clenching and unclenching as he continued to watch and hoped that the
other people would come back. He eyed the remote on the chair and then
his eyes shot back to the bedroom.
The woman had raised herself half off the floor, the wind slowly coming
back to her. The romantic feelings she had been experiencing had
vanished. Luther could see that in her, body movements, wary and
deliberate. Her companion al), parently failed to notice the change in
her movements and the flash of anger in the blue eyes, or else he would
not have stood up and put out a hand for her to take, which she did.
The man’s smile abruptly vanished as her knee caught him squarely
between the legs, doubling him over and ending any arousal he had been
experiencing. As he crumpled to the floor, no sound came from his lips,
except for his labored breathing while she grabbed her panties and
started to put them on.
He caught her ankle, threw her to the floor, her underwear halfway up
her legs.
“You little cunt.” The words came out in short gasps as he tried to get
his breath back, all the time holding on to that ankle, drawing her
closer to him.
She kicked at him, again and again. Her feet thudded against his rib
cage, but still he hung on. “You fucking little whore,” he said.
At the menace he heard in those words, Luther stepped toward the glass,
one of his hands flying to its smooth surface as if to reach through it,
to grab the man, make him let go.
The man painfully dragged himself up and his look made Luther’s flesh
turn cold.
The man’s hands gripped the woman’s throat.
Her brain, clouded by the alcohol, snapped back to high gear. Her eyes,
now completely filled with fear, darted to the left and right as the
pressure on her neck increased and her breath started to weaken. Her
fingers clawed at his arms, scratching deeply.
Luther saw the blood rise to the man’s skin where she attacked him but
his grip did not loosen.
She kicked and jerked her body, but he was almost twice her weight; her
attacker didn’t budge.
Luther again looked at the remote. He could open the door. He could stop
this. But his legs would not move. He stared helplessly through the
glass, sweat poured from his forehead, every pore in his body seemed to
be erupting; his breath came in short bursts as his chest heaved. He
placed both hands against the glass.
Luther’s breath stopped as the woman fixed on the night-‘ stand for an
instant. Then, with a frantic motion, she grabbed the letter opener, and
with one blinding stroke she slashed’ the man’s arm.
He grunted in pain, let go and grabbed his bloody arm. For one terrible
instant he looked down at his wound, almost in, disbelief that he had
been damaged like that. Pierced by this; woman.
When the man looked back up, Luther could almost feel the murderous
snarl before it escaped from the man’s lips.
And then the man hit her, harder than Luther had seen any man hit a