Melissa carefully maneuvered the Volvo into the busy intersection connecting Broad and Nineteenth streets. She had caught the tail end of rush-hour traffic and cursed silently to herself for allowing her pompous boss to hold her up at work once again. She failed to understand just why the ego-maniac for whom she had worked for four years said nary a word to her all day, but bombarded her with questions, projects, and brainstorms for new programs minutes before her 4 p.m. quitting time. She glanced anxiously at the dashboard clock; its green neon glow flashed 5:50 p.m.

“Shit!” she muttered to herself. “I’m late.”

As if on cue in some ironic romantic comedy, droplets of rain began to pelt the windshield. Sighing, Melissa turned on the wipers, put her hands at the 11 and 1 o’clock positions on the steering wheel, and slightly tightened her grip as the visibility became worse. Finally edging out of the city traffic at Twenty-First Street, she careened southbound on Marlin Drive at a comfortable 45 mph. The twenty-minute drive to her atypical four-room cottage nestled at the end of a typically suburban cul-de-sac took almost half an hour due in part to the weather and in part to that unwritten law that made people who were late for something even later. By the time Melissa finally turned the car into the short gravel drive, the dash clock read 6:19.

“Shit!” she muttered again as she grabbed her purse and briefcase. She swung her legs out of the car, cursed the rain, which had begun to fall harder, and used her briefcase as a shield as she bolted for the porch. She fumbled with her keys and, with a push from her right hip, bumped the front door open into the dark front hall. Her left hand quickly found the switch plate; instantly the overhead light illuminated the area. She shivered at the dampness of the house and raised the thermostat slightly; she made a mental note to turn it down again before she left for the weekend.

She made her way down the short hallway, past the living room, toward the cottage’s single bedroom. She kicked off her shoes and dropped her purse and briefcase onto the room’s only chair.

If I can leave by seven o’clock, then I can make it by nine, nine-fifteen at the latest.

Hurriedly, Melissa peeled off her navy blue suit and pattered barefoot in panties and blouse to the bathroom across the hall. Looking in the mirror, she realized that her mangled blond mane would take up most of the thirty-five minutes before her projected departure time.

The brush was almost through the first tangle when the thump that came from the front hallway made her jump. She froze, and then slowly craned her head out of the open bathroom door toward the front hall.

The hall light near the front door was out.

Melissa slammed the bathroom door with an urgency and force that surprised even her. Click.

She locked the door and backed toward the bathtub. What the fuck was that? A prowler? The house settling? Something fall in the living room? She grasped for an instant explanation for the noise and light being out, but none came. She didn’t move for what seemed an eternity, as she strained to listen for further signs of intrusion. Nothing except the steady pummeling of rain on the cottage roof.

Realizing that she could not stand locked in her three by six bathroom until daylight, Melissa summoned up a meager scrap of courage and slowly unlocked the door. The metallic sound of the lock opening seemed to reverberate through the empty house. Hand on knob, she braced herself with one bare foot against the bottom of the door. She silently derided herself when she realized she was holding the hairbrush poised in midair like a weapon and quietly placing it on the vanity.

Melissa turned the knob and pulled the door firmly, but gently, toward her. She could feel clammy beads of sweat dotting the back of her blouse and armpits. Inch by creaking inch, the door opened, spilling a swath of light into the hallway. She looked diagonally across the hallway at her bedroom still aglow in light, and then down the hall toward the front door still bathed in darkness.

In a decisive flash, Melissa bolted across the hall to her bedroom, slammed the door behind her and locked it. She grabbed the chair, drug it across the room, and propped it firmly under the doorknob. She stood back and listened.

Nothing.

She went immediately to the side of the bed and reached for the telephone. She fought her panic when she realized she had not replaced the cordless phone in its cradle last night. It was on the coffee table in the now-dark living room. Instinctively, Melissa dashed for her purse and cellular phone. She switched the power on and heard only the sound of thick static in her ear. She threw the phone to the floor. Shit!

 Alright. You’re safe for a minute. But you’ve got to get the fuck out of here. The window. You can climb out the window and run to Dick and Trudy Wallace’s. She started toward the window, and then realized she was wearing only panties and a flimsy blouse. If the whole thing turned out to be just a single woman’s over-active imagination on a rainy night, she didn’t want to confound the ridicule by running around the neighborhood in her underwear. Jeans. Jeans and shoes. Then you leave.

As Melissa turned to retrieve the clothing, she froze. Oh, shit. Dread rushed through her veins. The closet... under the bed...what if...?

Melissa was sorry for barricading the bedroom door and certain that checking the closet and under the bed was a mere formality. With a guarded eye on the window, set midway in the wall perpendicular to the slated closet doors, she cautiously extended her hand to the latch that held both doors.

Click.

She popped the latch upward and jumped backward. The doors swung open to reveal the haphazard contents of Melissa’s wardrobe. Her chest sighed in great heaves of transitory relief. Emboldened, she reached into the closet and withdrew one of her ski poles. She walked to the side of her bed and tried to flip the decorative bed skirt away from the floor. If only I could see unde. . .  Her tongue slightly protruded from her mouth in what her friends and family called a gesture of concentration and determination.

Unable to bring up the bed skirt she crouched down and extended the ski pole under the bed. One clean sweep and she would know that no one...

The force with which someone pulled the ski pole threw Melissa off balance and headfirst into the cold metal of the bed’s box spring.

The pain that suddenly shot through Melissa’s head and down the back of her neck was no match for the adrenaline borne of fear that shot through her entire being. She was almost to her feet when someone reached out from under the bed and grabbed wildly for her left ankle. Twisting in a half-stand, half-crouch position, Melissa kicked fiercely at her attacker’s hand with her right leg and foot, unaware of the determined, guttural grunts coming from her own throat.

As she kicked free and struggled to her feet, Melissa stumbled toward the window. She was aware that an immense form was emerging from under the bed behind her and, as she unlatched the window and threw it open, could feel cold brutality emanating from it in strong waves. In one quick and almost poetic movement of absolute grace reserved for an Olympic-bound gymnast, Melissa punched out the screen and hoisted herself up onto the window ledge. Hands planted firmly on the windowsill, she feverishly wiggled her hips forward.

As she struggled to pull herself through the open window, she remembered the Wallace’s and opened her mouth to scream. The realization that no audible sound was coming from her open mouth hit Melissa with the force of a locomotive. Suddenly someone was pulling her violently back inside. In a flash, she realized that the intruder had let go of her hair in favor of a butcher knife and had slashed through her vocal cords with one effortless, fluid slice.

Melissa could feel the pasty warmth of her own blood soak through the sheer fabric of her blouse and trickle down her breasts, stomach, and bare legs as she fell. As she instinctively tried to focus on a comforting object in the room during what she knew were the last remaining moments of her life, Melissa’s view was eclipsed by the looming figure of her attacker. Her fading eyes traveled up the dirty denim jeans, past the blood-soaked flannel shirt, and stopped at the fuzzy face of her slayer.

A mask...? Yes...a horrible, dreadful mask...

And as Melissa struggled for her last breath through the torrents of blood that spurted through the open gash in her neck, a hand lifted the horrifying guise to reveal in an instant of synthesized shock and familiarity a face even more harrowing than the worst nightmares in all of her forty-one years.

As Melissa died in a pool of blood-soaked carpeting in the bedroom of her quaint, atypical cottage on a typical suburban cul-de-sac, her last thoughts were of regret and repentance.

**

He stood over the girl and watched as the last remaining droplets of blood pumped with dwindling force from the opening in her neck. He cocked his head quizzically to one side as he observed her limp body lying in a twisted, lifeless position.

She had been easy. The element of surprise had given him the edge. He wished he had been able to inflict more terror on the girl before he had killed her — he would have liked to have seen her tears and heard her cry out to him to spare her life. But he knew this one had to be quick and quiet. The neighbors would have surely heard the girl’s screams had he tormented her.

She was only the first. Just a practice for the big game to come. The others would suffer horribly. He would make sure of it. And in the moment before each died, he would make certain that he or she saw him, recognized the face of their collective pasts. The girl saw it and remembered just as the life drained from her. Melissa Russo. That had been her name. She was one of the weaker ones. He knew the others may not be as easy, but he was ready.

 He had waited years for tomorrow night, for this reunion of doomed souls. This was to be his night of retribution, his night to exact his revenge for the sins of the past. And, as he bent down toward the dead girl, knife in hand to collect his trophy, he vowed that each one would suffer and die.

On New Year’s Eve.