Chapter 28

He carried the alcohol, bandages and a bottle of Ibuprofen to the counter and pushed them all towards the old woman behind the register. Without looking up, she began ringing up the items.

“Did you find everything okay?” She looked up and stared at the badly injured man.

“Oh, my goodness, you need to go to the hospital. What happened to you?”

He gritted his teeth together and pushed out a few words, “Nothing. I’m fine.”

He used his shirt to apply pressure to the deep gouge wounds on his forearm. He was bleeding badly. He knew he needed stitches, but he couldn’t risk going to the emergency room.

“Please hurry,” he begged.

She totaled everything, took his money, and gave him his change. While she bagged everything up for him, she leaned over the counter and saw that he had bled all over the floor.

“Please let me call an ambulance for you. You have lost a lot of blood.”

Without a word he turned and made his way quickly out the door carrying his medical supplies with him. The store clerk picked up the phone and called 9-1-1. The dispatcher on the other end of the line had the clerk look out the front door to see what sort of vehicle the man had left in, but the store clerk didn’t see any vehicle.

“He must have left on foot. There aren’t any cars in the lot.”

When a police cruiser showed up seven minutes later, the clerk was cleaning up the mess. She pointed to the blood on the floor and showed the officer where the man had dripped all over the floor as he had shopped, but the blood trail ended in the alley behind the store.

After leaving the store, the injured man kicked the dirt over the drops of blood in the dirt, then hid behind the building, sitting against the cinderblock wall that surrounded the large metal dumpsters. He opened the bottle of Ibuprofen while cursing the excessive packaging. His bloody fingers tore through the safety seal and pulled the cotton ball out. He could probably use that, he thought. He poured the Ibuprofen in his mouth without counting the pills and leaned his head back against the wall.

Over the next several minutes he poured the alcohol over his wounds, packed as many clean bandages as he could on the large gashes the dog’s teeth had made and cussed his bad luck. He swore that someone would pay for the pain he felt. He knew exactly who it would be, too – Cat. She had been the source of his internal pain for some time. Now she was the source of his external pain as well. He would make her suffer. She would suffer more than he had ever made anyone suffer before.

He was cussing her out loud when he heard the back door of the business open and shut. He quickly and quietly squeezed himself between the wall and the dumpster and silently winced at the pain in his legs where the dog had ripped them to ribbons. He still didn’t know how he had gotten away alive. That dog was every bit of a killer as he was. He lay down as quietly as he could on the cold concrete when he heard the front doors of the dumpster open and heard something being placed inside. Then the metal doors slammed shut. He closed his eyes while he waited for whoever was on the other side of the dumpster to leave. He could smell the burning cigarette and knew whoever was there would be there for awhile. So he relaxed a little, thinking of how close he had been to Cat. He could still smell her on his arms where he had carried her. He sniffed the air as if she were there.

When he woke up several hours later, it was dark. He moved as slowly as possible to avoid tearing open his wounds that appeared to have stopped bleeding. There was just enough light from a light pole in the parking lot for him to see. Once he was out from behind the dumpster, he looked himself over, inspecting his wounds. The bleeding hadn’t stopped; it had just slowed due to the cold. He limped to the corner of the building and looked both directions before he entered the alley. He could make it home from here. He began walking and planning his next move.