[Del]'s Diary

ENTRY SIXTY-ONE

In red high-heeled pumps, I am walking through a parking lot with a brown paper bag of groceries in one arm and a chubby baby with a shock of black hair in the other. The parking lot is bright, and the large pastel color cars all gleam with chrome edging in the sun.

A man in a fedora and ill-fitting suit stands, his legs spread apart showdown style, in the middle of the black tarred laneway in front of me. At first the sun blinds me as to who he is, but then I realize: it is Hunter.

For a moment, neither of us move. Then I steal my spine, and attempt to strut past him to avoid any inquisitive stares at our unlikely standoff.

Before I can pass him, Hunter moves forward and holds out his arms. “Let me get that for you,” he says but I hold onto my groceries tighter. “Do not trouble yourself, I can manage,” I say but then am all the more surprised when he reaches and takes the baby instead.

Hunter holds the baby gingerly in his arms and starts walking in the direction I had been walking in but my body suddenly feels like dirty bath water being drained down the tub. I quicken my step to match his long legs, and reach out for the baby. “No, really, it’s quite all right,” but he ignores my assertions.

Hunter stops in front of an aqua-colored car, the same one from the dream of his I had — the one he killed me beside — and nods toward it, “Aren’t you going to open it?”

I don’t know how I manage to get the doors open with such trembling hands. Is today the day I die? What about the baby? I need to warn Sugar.

Hunter gets into the driver’s side with the baby on his lap. I carelessly toss the groceries onto the floor of the passenger side as I get in, my eyes only on the baby, whose pudgy hands pat the driver’s wheel. Hunter starts the car and we drive for a few minutes, the baby on Hunter’s lap happily amused he “steers” the wheel. I soon realize that Hunter is driving towards the town exit — toward the country — and a sharp pain stabs the insides of my lungs.

Finally, he speaks. “Nice set up you’ve got here.”

“I’ll leave with you tonight if you want. But please—”

“Leave? But you just got here! Besides you are exactly where I put you.”

“Where you put me?”

“You just thought you’d live happily-ever-after with the campaign manager of a presidential candidate and think I had nothing to do with it?”

My lungs flare up with frostbite.

Hunter smiles, baring his sharp teeth. “Thought you left me of your own accord, escaped even?” he teases.

“But I, I, I left. I left after I found...”

“Mr. FancyPants drowned in a tub? Do you really think we would kill a senator’s son just because you couldn’t keep your legs together. I hate to say it, sweetheart, but that particular skill was never your forte.”

“You mean...David's alive?”

“Geez, don’t you guys get the papers out here in the sticks?” He pulls out a clipping from his breast pocket and hands it to me. Another society column. From a week ago. A different girl hangs on the arm of the golden boy now.

We are now driving in the country. It will be several minutes before we reach the next house, and then after that, a long stretch. Splinters of ice prick inside my blood veins.

“How can this be?” I ask. Tears brim inside my eyes, but I dare not let them stream.

“This be because I willed it. And whatever I will, you do, whether you realize you are doing it at the time or not.”

It sounds preposterous but I realize it is true. It has always been true. I just never dared believe it.

Hunter continues, “You follow my orders like an obedient dog. If I can command you to meet a person, fall in love, start a family with him, spawn his child, think what else I can get you to do. Maybe, I’ll decide what I want is for you to wake up in the middle of the night, draw the butcher's knife from that middle drawer in your kitchen, creep into the nursery—”

“No! Don’t!” I cry, and suddenly I’ve taken the baby from his grasp and cling onto it on my lap.

Hunter laughs of course. It’s always just a game to him.

He pulls to the side of the road alongside a ditch.

For a moment, neither of us says anything. Then he drawls, “Keep playing house and hope that call never comes."

And then he is out of the car, over the ditch, and into the woods. Away from us.

[Deleted]