The last time Sandie had seen Tom
"Gordo" Gordon {kidnapper, sexual predator, willing
pawn of a Spectre} he'd been dead.
And he was dead,
too - there had been no question of that. Half of his neck had
been shot away, thanks to a well-aimed bullet. If that hadn't
done it, the ten extra slugs Sandie and her Crucible had put
in him surely had. And then they'd kicked him repeatedly, when
he was finally down, just to make sure the sick, murderering
weasel wasn't getting back up again.
They'd left him there, dead on the
floor of the abandoned factory he'd used as a demented playground.
Chuck had wanted to burn him, or something, "just to be
sure," but Sandie said they should just go on. She didn't
want to waste any time destroying the creature he called "master."
So they left him, there, to rot.
But here he was, again.
He was standing in Sandie's room,
leaning on her dresser like he owned it: one arm on the dresser,
the other resting behind his back, He was wearing the same style
of clothing he'd had on the day they'd killed him, only new.
He had paler skin than she remembered: dry and taut in all the
wrong places.
And he smelled awful, like freshly-turned
earth, or luncheon meat left out too long...
"You were dead..." She
said, taking a step back: "Gone."
"Home again, Home again, Jiggedy-Jig...."
Gordo sang, blinking eyes that were sharp with malice. It was
his voice, alright, and even worse than before.
Sandie might have said something,
then, but she was thinking what his next move might be. Her gun
was in the closet, just past him. Had he seen it? Did he know
where it was...?
He cocked his head to the side, his bones creaking as he did,
and brought her gun out from behind his back. The revolver was
unloaded, the bullets nowhere to be seen.
"Looking for your toys?"
He asked, holding it before his chest with his index finger,
dangling it by the triggerguard.
But Sandie wasn't looking at the
gun. She was looking at his neck, instead - the lower left side,
in particular. It was a mesh of badly-healed scars, all centered
on where the fatal bullet had travelled...
"Oh yeah, I'm back, little girl,"
he hissed, twice as ugly for the sandpaper in his voice: "And
now we're gonna play..."
With that, he tossed the gun aside
and ran right at her, moving faster than anyone should be able
to...
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