Thrust by Tom Piccirilli

leave her alone.   I threw myself down and crawled on the floor." Her voice drifted, depleted, becoming more vacuous.   "God, the look in Stacy's eyes.   She thought I'd gone insane.   He humiliated me in front of my little girl.   Finally he put the bowl out in the yard and poisoned the next door neighbor's chocolate lab.   You could hear it howling in agony for blocks."  
    Chase could see the haunted, guilty expression taking over her eyes and said, "You were terrified and you still made the effort.   You've got nothing to be ashamed about."
    "I should've just picked up a gun and blown him away, but I was afraid.   I was so afraid!   I didn't want to go to jail.   I didn't want to lose Stacy.   And now—"
    She paused and they stayed like that for a while.   Then she slowly, painfully, got to her feet.   He wondered what the ex-wife of a violent man who liked knives looked like beneath her clothes.   He imagined horrible lumps and knobs of scars protruding twisting across her body.  
    "But I'm not smart either, Mr. Chase, and that's why I stayed in the same apartment even after he left.   I felt relief and then got lazy and forgot he was still alive.   Don't make the same mistake.   Never forget about him."
    "I won't," Chase said.   "Thank you for visiting me."  
    "I wanted to do something to help.   You won't ever see me again.   I'm moving somewhere he'll never find me.   He won't look.   He won't care.   He's done all he can do to me.   He took my baby.   He'll let me go, now that he has you."
    Annie Singleton left then, limping away with a heavy air.   As she reached the door someone passed her coming in.  
    They brushed shoulders but didn't look at one another.  
    It was Jez , who met Chase's gaze with a jealous lover's scowl.   It promised joy and professed anguish, and after this he still had prison to look forward to.  
    Turning.
    Turning, staring around, looking at the door to Isaac's room and listening to Shake starting in on the babaganoush , Chase fell back into himself.
    The need to get the hell out of the hospital ripped through him as he rushed through the corridors, barely keeping himself from breaking into a dead run.
    When he hit the street he looked up the block and saw Joe Singleton standing on the corner, dressed in a T-shirt and black leather vest.   He still had a pony tail and had never gone in for any plastic surgery, his face ruined from the accident.   His busted piggy nose flailed across the center of his face.  
    He gave Chase that same nod again and moved away, joining the crowd crossing to the other side of the street.   Chase thought he was coming over but instead Singleton hailed a cab and took off downtown.  

9
     
    C hase walked in the same direction, wondering if Singleton were on his way to Chase's apartment right now to try out his couple of moves with the blade.
    He scanned every store front, alleyway, and face coming at him along the sidewalks.   After five years, Singleton would want to make the game last, have some fun.   Toy with Chase for a while.   It wasn't going to go down quick.  
    Once, he thought he saw Arlo Barrack's reflection in the window of a wicker furniture shop on Ninth Street.   Chase had to focus, had to try to fight the time-sense aphasia.   He could step off a curb and relive six hours of his seventh birthday party in his jumbled mind, seeing the kids and tasting the vanilla frosting of the cake, pissy about a couple of the presents because they weren't what he was hoping for.  
    Hearing his mother with a direct and almost numbing clarity, while she took photos and kept telling him to smile.   Mom moving to him, about to say something else, perhaps give some advice that would bring meaning to his life from that point on.   The flash going off, her lips parting, as she said his name and returned to the world, coming down off the damn curb.
    He struggled to stay in the now.   He'd promised Annie Singleton that he