Excerpt:

Long jagged slices of purple illuminated the sky for miles all around. The sound of the rolling thunder fading with every passing echo, and then restored by a new flash of brilliant crooked light. The tendrils of light appearing in every direction began to harold the approach of a storm. The sweet smell of fresh air had a subtle change that was noticed only by the most sensitive of noses and sent animals to cower in the corner, tail between their legs. If one were to step outside, one would feel the electric charge in the air. The wind blew in a south eastern direction, causing the most delicate of rustles in the leaves of the surrounding trees. A train whistled, breaking the solitude of the storm, but other than that all was still. This was the calm before the storm.
The time was fourteen minutes until the hour of eleven at night and seventeen year old Chris Slate was just sliding between the sheets of hiss small, but comfortable bed in his Alaskan style house. This house was located in the tiny cow town of Kuna, just shy of the capital city of the great state of Idaho. As a particularly loud clap of thunder rolled across the serene landscape, his eyes darted to the open window where he was watching the storm. His short black hair was still wet as he laid his head on his pillow. Closing his icy blue eyes, he relaxed his slender muscles as he drifted to a restless state of sleep. Not two blocks away Alison Hallsted woke with a start as a crash echoed across the sky. She had been roused from a dream that seemed so real. She had dreamt that she was running from a killer, though she made no ground while the killer caught up quickly. The sweat on her brow was cold and her heart beat fast in her chest. Slowly, she realized that she was safe in her bed. Once she caught her breath, she decided to get up for a glass of water to calm her verves. As she rolled out of bed another flash of lightning tore through the fabric of the world for a fraction of a second before it was repaired. As she walked to the kitchen she had the strangest feeling that she was being watched. Not quite being able to place the feeling she just brushed it off as paranoia from the dream that she could no longer remember. With a thunderous crash from the storm beginning to rage outside, the lights flickered and went out. The glass slipped out of Alison's hand and she felt water douse her feet and ankles as the glass shattered on the hardwood floor. Between flashes of light she was able to see bits and pieces of the house. As her eyes traveled past the sliding glass window she saw a figure. He was standing there, a ski mask obscuring his face with a long knife held in his right hand. Alison screamed and by the next flash of lightning there was nobody there. Several possibilities ran through her head as the shock gradually wore off, was this just a stupid high school prank thought up by one of her friends, or was there a killer that had been scared off by the scream? It had to just be a prank. She lived in Kuna, nothing bad ever happened in Kuna. The lights flickered back into life. When she was little she would run to her parent's bed in a fright. Oh, what she would give for that luxury now. Her parents were in Tokyo on business and wouldn't be home for another month. Now she had only her friends to rely on for comfort and support. Deciding that he would not mind being woken up at a quarter after eleven, she reached for the phone to call Chris. She caught herself shaking as she dialed and forced herself to stop. Finally she finished entering in the number and held the phone to her ear. The phone rang once, twice, three times, and just as she was about to abandon hope of Chris answering his voice was suddenly in her ear.
"Hello," Chris moaned, clearly still half in the land of dreams.
"Chris, it is Allison," she noticed the terror in her voice and tried to stay composed. "I need you, there was a man with a knife, and I don't know what he wants, and he was here, and I am so scared." She managed to blurt in a barley coherent slur before the composure broke. She sobbed into the phone; the tears making her crystal blue eyes glitter in the dim light of the kitchen.
"What do you mean, a man with a knife?" He asked, suddenly awake.
He was there," she stammered, sweat matting her long blonde hair to her face.
"Do you want me to cove over there?" Chris asked.
"Yes," she managed to choke out, "just don't hang up."
"Okay, I will be there in a minute." And in two minutes he was pulling up to her house, still talking on the phone with her. As he stepped out of the nineteen eighty-eight Buick Century, he felt the same strange sensation of someone watching him that Alison had described. He reached into his pocket and gripped the handle of one of his throwing knives. He walked up to the door and knocked.
She answered at once, a look of sheer terror on her face. Just the thought of what she had seen had her freaked out. Ushering him in, she hurriedly closed the door and locked it. Reaching over to Allison, Chris pulled her into a tight hug, "It will be alright," he whispered into her ear.
"What about your parents," she questioned as they walked to the kitchen. "Won't they be angry that you came over here so late?"
"They are out of town too. Vacation in Hawaii for their anniversary. They flew out this morning and won't be back for another two weeks." Neither said anything for a long while as they picked up broken shards of glass off of the floor. They just listened to the storm raging outside. The sound of the thunder clapping with each bolt of lightning. And the sound of the rain as it poured down over the world.
As the night slowly faded into the wee hours of the morning, both fell asleep on the living room floor, sharing one thick blanket to shield from the bitter cold that had descended. Neither slept well that night. When the morning finally came they were able to relax, for the stress of the killer faded with the darkness into nothing but a distant memory.
"Would you like some coffee," Allison yawned as she picked her slender self up off the hard floor? "We can make some breakfast too. How do you like your eggs?"
"Sunny side up," he replied. “Would you like some help?" Cooking was one of the many hobbies of his. He could out cook his mother any day of the week, and that was saying something.
"Sure, you can get the coffee brewing, while I start the eggs. I like mine strong. None of that weak stuff. If you are going to drink coffee, you might as well do it right." She laughed. "Coffee is in the cabinet above the stove."
As he reached for the can of black powder, he asked a question that changed the mood in that small kitchen from jovial to serious. "Are you feeling better?"
"Yes. I just hope that he doesn't come back. Since your parents are out of town, do you mind if I stay at your house for a while? I don't want to be here alone." She said, the expression on her face changing to genuine fear and concern. There was no denying the fact that she was scared to death.
"You are welcome as long as you want. Would I ever say no to the one and only person who has been my best friend since sixth grade?"
"Can you believe that it has been six years since the day we met? I remember it so well. You sat next to me the first day of band in the trombone section." She said, her thoughts straying to the happy days of their earlier youth.
"I had a huge crush on you back then." Chris said turning a little red in the face.
"I never would have guessed it by the way you asked me to six dances that year." She stated the sarcasm obvious in her velvety voice. "To tell you the truth, I was crushing on you to, I was just too shy to say yes when you asked me to the dances. I didn't know if you were serious." Now both of their minds had traveled to those wonderful days. They longed for the stress of high school to end, but dreaded the impending stress of college just around the corner. Middle school had been wonderful, little stress and little thought of what horrors the future might bring. The rain still poured down as Allison reached to turn on the television. What they saw pulled their thoughts back to the present and made their blood run cold.
The screen showed a body bag being rolled into an ambulance to be taken to the morgue. The news reporter then stepped into the picture as she said, "The body was discovered this morning at six. Identity has not yet been released. It is believed that the cause of death was stabbing. No more information has been released. Tune in to channel seven for more coverage as the case continues to unfold. Back to you."
Tears welled in Allison's eyes, "What if whoever killed that person was the same man who I saw last night. What if the only thing that kept me from being the one in the body bag was the fact that I had screamed when I saw him?" Suddenly the world of Kuna Idaho had been turned upside down. "Do you suppose they will catch him before he strikes again?"
"I don't know," Chris replied. "I just don't know."
The satisfaction welled inside of Albert as he thought of what he had done. He had gotten her. The world was better without people like that. Beautiful young women were good for nothing anyway. All they did was seduce and break men’s hearts. If he hadn't killed her she would have made some poor man miserable.
He smiled to himself as he prepared the gift that he was making for the police. The clue that he had so carefully made sure would never lead them to him. Beautiful red blood oozed from the heart as he placed in on top of the foam packaging in the box.
Women always tore the hearts from the chest of men, now it was his turn. This was his revenge for all the women whom had done that to him and countless other men around the world. He was going to send this, gift, to the police. It would drive them mad. Grendel had told him so. They would never be able to find him, and fear would descend over the world.
As for the women, who needs them? Grendel had helped him to see that too. The only thing they were good for was heartache. “The girl that you first tried to kill, you should get her.” Grendel hissed in his ear. “Then she will never have the chance to hurt you the way Trish did.” He placed extra emphasis on her name. Just the thought of that name sent Albert into a fury. The name always pissed him off. Nobody had the right to treat him the way that she did. To just say that she loved him when all she was going to do was leave him two years later.
But that was all in the past. She would never be able to hurt anybody that way ever again. “Why her? She screamed. She knows that there is somebody out there. She knows that WE are out there.” Albert asked Grendel.
“She is gorgeous,” Grendel said, sarcasm oozing from his every syllable as if it was obvious that that alone condemned her to death. Of course they always targeted the pretty ones, they were the ones that always danced all over men. They shouldn’t even be allowed to live. How many times had men been ‘in love’ only to have their dreams crushed and their hearts broken by the evil siren?
“What if she goes to the police?” Albert asked the one and only person who ever had been a true friend to him.
“Let her go to the police. All she can tell them is that there was a dark figure outside of her house. They can’t prove anything,” Grendel sneered. “We were careful.”