Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller by David C. Cassidy

distance. Her fear had faded to subdued terror, if there was such a thing.
    “I’ll be around … don’t you doubt it.”
    The mechanic eyed the drifter when he said the last part, held a long, burning glance there … and left.
    ~
    A gnawing quiet lingered after Elvis died. No one wanted to talk, and no one did. The waitress cleaned the mess, the sweeping of glass and the mopping of spilt coffee the only sounds in the place besides a small din behind the swing doors. She hadn’t said a word to Kain after the incident, she had been too upset, and he had returned to his booth. He was gazing out the window as twilight came, thinking about Ray Bishop when she came over.
    “I hope you’re all right.”
    She nodded anxiously. “Thank you. But you shouldn’t—I mean—you didn’t have to do that.”
    “Neither did he.”
    “That’s Ray,” she sighed. “Just a loose cannon sometimes. He … it doesn’t matter.” She seemed more uncomfortable now than when she first walked over. “Um … can I get you anything else? Coffee?”
    “… Just the bill.”
    “Sure … sure thing.” She scribbled on the check, and then, clearly frustrated with her mistake, scratched out the total she had summed. She scribbled again, then tore the slip from the pad and placed it face down on the table. She turned to go, but he stopped her.
    “Hang on … there is one thing.”
    Jesus. What was he thinking? She was on the verge of tears. She didn’t want to talk, she wanted to run in the back and have a good cry. She hadn’t had time to think about what had happened, hadn’t had the chance to ask herself, for the ten-thousandth time, why she had married Ray Bishop in the first place. No, she’d had to clean the mess, the mess that wouldn’t have happened if she’d had a better head on her shoulders, and now she was fearful of coming apart.
    “Never mind … sorry.”
    “It’s okay,” she said. “What is it?”
    “You wouldn’t … you wouldn’t know any places around here for rent, would you? Someone I might call?”
    She considered a moment, and just when it looked like she might falter, she scooped up the bill from the table. She placed it over her pad and scribbled on the back. She handed it to him.
    “Call that number tomorrow.” She started back toward the kitchen, then stopped and turned. She looked stronger suddenly, a little brighter, as if she had discovered some inner strength she never knew she had.
    “After nine,” Lynn Bishop added, and she actually left with a smile.

~ 8
    Unable to find but a park bench to sleep on (Spencer had been one big NO VACANCY sign), he had made do in the cramped confines of the flatbed. At dawn, he bolted awake with a shout, the Earth and the vehicle trembling. He’d been lost in dream, sole witness to a bizarre game of baseball. The stands had been empty save himself, and while there had been no teams, no benches, no wannabe ump, there had been quite a battle raging on the field. It was the classic confrontation: The Kid on the mound, Swagger and Swirl at the plate. How 23 kept drawing hardballs from his glove was just another of dreamland’s sweet mysteries, but the young hurler had just delivered his 3–2 pitch, when Kain’s skull knuckled the solid edge of the half-drawn window.
    Two seconds, he thought, quite annoyed, massaging the tender side of his head. Couldn’t the guy have waited two more seconds before blowing that damn horn?
    It would have been nice to know.
    He could have Turned easily enough, slipped back to the dream, to when the train was just a smoky plume in the distance. Back to where 23 had Big Bad Jones down Oh-and-Two before stabbing three wild pitches into the dirt. And he wanted to. The thing was, that was like skipping ahead and reading the end of a good book, cheating yourself of the Real Deal. Call it cliché, but there was a lot to be said of First Times. How sad it was to just move on without a second thought, after catching your first fish or