Thursday, November 3, 2011
Rachel Rath’s flesh knew before her mind did that she was being watched.
Her face flashed hot, and the skin on her back prickled, terror trickling down her spine as if her backbone were being traced with the crooked, grimy finger of a letch, one single vertebrae at a time.
This was not the creepy sensation she and girlfriends endured when ogled by middle-aged but decidedly milquetoast men. This was an instinctive caution the body signaled for its survival.
Be aware.
Beware.
Rachel turned, incrementally, as if in a nightmare, her arm slipping from her boyfriend Felix’s arm as she pivoted.
The sensation of being violated scurried over her skin and sank in her belly, leaving her exposed.
She saw no one, yet she shivered, as attuned to her surroundings as a rabbit hidden in a screen of brush.
She reached to tug Felix’s sleeve as he busied himself with a bag of birdseed for his canaries—and stopped.
Seized with terror.
There.
There he was: the one whose gaze drained her blood.