Alone

As headlights illuminated the house, a
man could have been seen watching from behind the living room
curtain. Lucy did not notice. She parked on the cracked driveway and
looked at the single story home. Its yellow paint was faded and the
yard was not maintained. She sighed. Once she had accumulated enough
energy and will power, she exited the vehicle with just enough
groceries to supply a woman for a week. The songs of crickets filled
the air of this warm summer night.

The dim entry light seemed bright
compared to the darkness outside, and Lucy was grateful for it. She
put the groceries away and started a pot of water to boil. She
checked the time on her phone. The background was a photo of herself
with a frail boy of nine years old. The picture had been taken just a
few months prior at the hospital. The boy was somewhat pale and his
hair had been lost to chemotherapy. Lucy's cheating ex-husband had
been cropped out of the photo. She sighed again, staring at the boy.

The cat's bowl was empty. Lucy called
him, and the kibbles made a pattering sound against the plastic as
Lucy filled it. Gumbo used to greet her at the door, but he had been
slowing down and growing fat as he aged. Gumbo still hadn't come, so
Lucy went to find him.

She called out to him occasionally as
she searched. First, she checked in all of Gumbo's favorite hiding
places in the living room, but he wasn't there.

She passed by the basement door to get
to her bedroom. Click! The light didn't come on, and it was too dark
too see inside. Lucy creaked open her bedroom door as far as it would
go to let more light in from the living room, but it didn't help much
because of the angle of the hallway. Inside of Lucy's bedroom, there
were several places to check: a walk-in closet, the window sill
behind the curtains, and under the bed.

She would have to get another light
bulb from the basement. Even as an adult, Lucy still had mild fear of
going into basement type places, especially alone. It helped that
nowadays, she was somewhat less fearful, as she didn't think she
would care much if something happened to her anyway.

Lucy reached for the light cord to
illuminate the basement stairs. She felt relieved when it came on, as
she had experienced terrible luck as of late. The basement stairs had
large gaps between them and a space behind them. She used to have
this ridiculous fear that something would grab her feet through them.
Now, she almost hoped something would, just to end her suffering.

Lucy descended without much thought and
grabbed a light bulb for her room as well as an extra one for the
basement. She heard Gumbo's faint cry from behind a box.

“Gumbo? What are you doing down
here?” she said aloud. When she came to him, she found that Gumbo
was injured and shivering in fear. “Oh, Gumbo, what happened??”
Lucy asked, nearly coming to tears as she cuddled him to her chest.

Lucy didn't know of any emergency
veterinarians in the area, so she hoped she could find one. Gumbo
didn't look good. She rushed to bring him upstairs, but once she got
to the bottom of the stairs, Gumbo hissed. With the surprising amount
of energy Gumbo had left, He sheared large gashes into Lucy's arms,
chest, and stomach with all of his claws to get away, springing from
her arms and disappearing among the boxes again. Lucy cried out in
pain and surprise.

A man she did not recognize was
standing at the top of the stairs. He was wearing Lucy's oven mitts.
Between, them, he held her pot of boiling water.

It was in this moment that Lucy
realized how strong her desire to live still was.

“What--” Lucy began, but her
sentence was quickly interrupted when the man threw the boiling water
over her. She writhed in agony as most of her body was scalded, the
steaming water forced against her skin by her tight clothing. The man
was quickly upon her, smashing her head multiple times with the cast
iron pot with his now bare fists. He struck Lucy until she stopped
screaming, and then took his time with her.

Some of the neighbors heard Lucy's
screams and stopped to listen for additional sound, thinking maybe
they ought to call the police. When they heard nothing else, they
went about their business as usual. It was as though they had only
considered calling in order to quell their own discomfort.

After fully enjoying the perverse
feeling of power he had achieved over another human being, the killer
simply cleaned himself up and went home to his family. They would
never have any idea of his crimes, and even if they did, they
wouldn't have believed him capable. They would never know of the
lives stolen from his randomly chosen victims.

Of course, neighbors were shocked and
horrified when they heard about the discovery of Lucy's body a few
days later.

Lucy hadn't shown up for work, so her
boss had requested a welfare check from the local police department.
When officers arrived, they immediately detected the scent of rot and
knew that there was a body inside. The scene they found gave one of
the officers nightmares for a few months. They were never able to
locate the murder weapon.

Gumbo the cat was still alive. He had
recovered a bit, although he still required medical care. He was
adopted out to a nice family. Those who knew thought it best not to
inform them of how Gumbo had greedily feasted on Lucy in the days
after her death.

Eventually, the murderer became a
person of interest in the case, and the officers went to his home
with a few questions. Law enforcement was never able to solve the
case beyond their own suspicions, but they did remember the odd
hospitality of that one man who offered them a home-cooked meal from
a cast iron pot during the course of their investigation.