You Only Die Twice - By Christopher Smith Page 0,3

than them, muscular. He looked sober, but they looked wasted. Cheryl switched to the next photo and this time they were outside in the parking lot with the man. They were standing beside Patty’s white Jetta, which was next to an illumined streetlamp that cast light down upon them, and Cheryl was smoking. The man was kissing Patty’s neck. His hands gripped her ass. Cheryl looked over at the image of herself and saw that her finger was raised, as if she was wagging it at them, even though she was laughing.

Swipe.

Patty was in the car with him, her hand waving out the open window as she drove away from Cheryl, who was still beneath the streetlamp, holding onto it to steady herself while she looked over her shoulder. For the first time, she was facing the camera. Though her lips were parted, her expression was otherwise blank.

Her heart quickened. She flicked her finger across the screen again and this time, she was unprepared for what she saw. She was lying on the pavement. Blood was spattered like a net across her face. There was a dazed look in her eyes, as if whatever happened to her had just happened. A man’s boot―large, dirty and old to the point that it looked worn out―covered her mouth and mashed her face to one side.

She was too upset to look at the other photos, but she knew she had to, if only to see the story they told and how it might inform how she might get out of this now. She flicked through them. She saw herself in the back of a truck bed, her hands and feet tied behind her with rope, a ball gag strapped around her head and shoved into her mouth, Duct tape over her eyes to seal them shut.

Another photo, this one brightly lit. At this point, he obviously felt safe enough to use the flash. She was in the forest now, flat on her back, the ball gag still in her mouth, but now the tape was off her eyes and with them wide open and exposed, they reflected pure terror.

She went through the rest of the photos and in each one, her face and body seemed to expose more blood and bruises. He was actively beating her when he took the photos. By the last set, she was on her stomach, her head was turned to her right, her eyes were closed, the ball gag was removed from her sagging mouth, and water shined brightly on her face, which was smeared with dirt.

She was unconscious.

But right now, she was alive, perhaps only for a moment, because behind her was movement in the woods.

CHAPTER FIVE

Before she died the first time, some nine years ago when she was a junior at the University of Maine studying English, Cheryl Dunning was another person.

She saw the world through different eyes. She’d had her share of ups and downs like anyone else, but certainly nothing life shattering. Nothing that would make her question the world and redefine who she was, which is what did happen to her.

Until the day her life ended, she was like many of her friends―reasonably happy. And sometimes, when she wrote something she liked, read something she loved or met a boy she thought was cute, she was unreasonably unhappy.

Instead of having one friend, as she now had in Patty, Cheryl had many friends. She was popular. She was considered pretty. Some in the English program admired her writing. They said she had skill and talent. “One day, I can see you writing novels,” a few of her more secure fellow writing students would say. “You’ve got a way with dialogue.” Her writing teachers agreed.

And Cheryl Dunning saw a future for herself.

It was at her friend Diane’s dinner party, which consisted of Domino’s pizza, red wine and beer spread out on a table lit with stubby green candles, that she met Mark Rand.

He seemed nice. He was tall, black hair, blue eyes―her type, right down to the cleft in his chin. He played baseball, which would have turned her off if he didn’t come off so well. Like her, he was a reader. Like her, Fitzgerald was his favorite author. Like her, he thought that Kerouac was full of shit and overrated. They disagreed when it came to “Ulysses,” which he admired but which she thought was over-written tripe, but that he had his own point of view just made him more interesting to her.

Before