“We’re going to cut that disgusting bitch’s heart out.”
They kept fading in and out of the night. One second they were featureless silhouettes, shadows moving within the darkness, and the next their features were sharp and clear, knives glinting in the moonlight.
“You can’t be here. This isn’t possible!”
Malik groped for his medication, shattering the mirror on the medicine cabinet as he ripped the door open and fumbled inside for the little prescription bottle.
“Are you okay in there?”
“We’re going to kill that bitch. She shouldn’t have touched you. You’ve contaminated her now with your filthy Black African hands. You were probably just a mercy fuck anyway. She just felt sorry for you. You were her good deed for the day. A charity fuck.”
“Ewwww! That’s so nasty! How could she do that with you?”
“She said I was handsome.”
“You’re not handsome!”
“She said you were handsome? Ewwww!”
Malik found the bottle of anti-psychotics and struggled with the child proof cap. He removed the cap just as Kelly stepped forward and slashed his wrist with the knife, fading back into the night after delivering the blow. Malik screamed as Jennifer lashed out and slashed the other wrist.
“We should just kill you. You’re the one always bringing these whores here and forcing them to have sex with you, making them stoop to your level.”
“Malik? Are you okay in there?”
Danika knocked lightly on the bathroom door.
“No, let’s kill her. She makes us look bad. She makes this filthy black nigger think he’s good enough to be with us. He’s so black he sweats oil.”
“Yeah, let’s kill that high yellow bitch!”
Jennifer reached for the doorknob and began to open it. Malik rammed into it slamming it shut and the two girls turned on him and began slashing at him, cutting up his forearms as he struggled to defend himself. He struck at them with his fists, but his arms passed harmlessly through the darkness as the two girls faded in and out of the shadows.
On the other side of the door Danika had heard enough. Something was wrong. Fear gripped her as she heard Malik in the bathroom arguing and fighting with someone who shouldn’t be there, arguing about killing her. Just minutes ago she had been lying in his arms, thinking to herself how easy it would be to fall in love with this man. Now she was afraid that he was some type of psycho.
Danika hit 911 on her cell phone and left the line open as she rushed to gather her clothes. Whatever was going on in the bathroom was growing more and more violent. It sounded as if Malik was in pain. She was just about to run out of the house when something in Malik’s voice made her stop. Maybe someone or something was really in there with him?
“Run, Danika! Get out of here!”
“Filthy black ape, black scab. You shit-colored African jungle bunny!”
Malik was covered in cuts and slashes when he came staggering out of the bathroom carrying a knife in each hand.
Danika watched him slash at the air and then slice his own forehead. Blood rained down his face and dripped from the wounds in his neck, chest and forearms. Danika screamed as she watched Malik’s face twist and contort, morphing between rage and terror as whatever demons he was struggling with made war within him…and he was heading right towards her…swinging the knives.
Danika ran. She didn’t know where she was going. The house was big and she could not find her way to the front door in the dark so she opened the first door she came to and ducked inside. It was the garage.
There were big metal canisters that looked like oil drums scattered here and there inside the garage and Danika tried to tell herself that she had just seen too many horror films when she began to speculate on what might be inside. She felt along the wall for the switch to open the garage door, afraid to turn on the light for fear that Malik might find her again. There was no switch. She’d have to open the door manually.
“That half-white bitch shouldn’t have been slummin’ around with your big gorilla-looking ass. Ya black spook! You so black I can’t see you at night until you smile.”
“He’s so black he could hide in a coal bin.”
The voices coming from the house were sounding less and less like Malik and more and more like someone else. Like children’s voices in stereo. It sounded as if he was possessed. There were more sounds of struggle as glass shattered and something heavy fell over with a thud. She heard Malik scream again and wondered if whatever was inside his head had slashed one of those knives across his throat and ended his suffering. But then she heard the voices again.
“We know that nasty redbone bitch is still here. We’re going to find her. We’ll kill her and then we’ll finish you off, too.”
“Nooooo!”
Malik screamed again and Danika stopped halfway to the garage door when she heard him sob and whimper. He was in pain. Those evil voices were torturing him.
“Leave him alone!” Danika yelled.
The garage door raised and Malik was standing there in the driveway a knife in one hand and the moonlight behind him silhouetting his form.
“I said, leave him alone.”
She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know what she was saying. All she knew was that she had to help. It might be the only way to save her own life as well as Malik’s.
“You filthy slut! You’ll fuck anything if you’ll fuck this filthy black scab.”
“He’s so black that when I close my eyes I can see him better!”
The voices no longer sounded anything like Malik. His lips didn’t even move when they spoke. They were the voices of spiteful children. Conceited little girls who thought it was fun to ridicule anyone that they believed to be less than them.
“You’re wrong. He’s beautiful.”
“He’s a nasty black ape!”
“He’s a beautiful black man. You girls are behind the times. Black is beautiful now. Those light-skinned pretty boys are so eighties. Women want real men these days and the bigger and blacker the better.”
“She’s lying! Nobody wants you. You’re just a big ugly black African!”
Malik was still standing there on the driveway holding the knife. His mouth still did not appear to be moving even as insults poured out of him. There were shadows hovering around him. As Danika looked she thought she could almost make out the silhouettes of two young girls. She even imagined she could see their faces twisted into smirks of superiority.
“They’re wrong. I wouldn’t have come home with you tonight if that was true. I- I thought I was falling in love with you. We might have fallen in love together if these little bitches hadn’t gotten in the way.”
Malik turned and looked right at the two shadows standing by his side. He raised his knife to slash into them when the two police officers tackled him knocking him into the garage right into the barrels. Three of the metal canisters fell over and the lid came off of one of them. Danika screamed as a woman’s torso tumbled out of the barrel followed by her head. The disembodied head spun as it tumbled across the garage floor turning towards her. Even dead, Danika could tell that the woman had been very beautiful, with long curly brown hair, light cappuccino-colored skin and hazel eyes just like her own.
Danika turned to the other barrels and began knocking them over. One after another curly-headed, tan-skinned heads tumbled out onto the garage floor. Danika looked from one face to the next as more police officers crowded into the garage.
“Are you okay, Ma’am? Jesus Christ! Are those real? We need a coroner over here. Somebody call CSU. It’s a fucking bloodbath in here! We’ve got bodies everywhere!”
Danika pried her eyes away from the lifeless faces lying on the garage floor and back up to the garage entrance where the two shadows were still standing there, smirking in superiority, unnoticed by everyone except her and Malik. She looked back down at Malik as what looked like half a dozen cops piled on top of him, twisting his arm behind his back and handcuffing him, their fear making them use more force than necessary as they tried to restrain him. Malik stopped struggling and looked up into her eyes even as her vision slowly faded and everything began to go black.
“Why? How could you do this?”