Sebastian Corbascio

Sarah Luger

a novel excerpt
 

Out, out, brief candle!

                               ~Macbeth 5.5

 

Ka-slap Ka-slap Ka-slap Ka-slap Ka-slap Ka-slap Ka-
          Her mary janes slapping the pavement. Blood pounding in her temples. Not even close to tired. She could run many many more miles if she had to.
          She could slow down now.
          Her suit bag and her duffel swung with each step. She pulled the strap on the duffle so it would be flush to her body. Sweat poured.
          The blue Honda turned the corner behind her. The girl drove with unsure jabs at the accelerator. Her shifting ate gear teeth. Sarah looked over her shoulder. Blinded by high beams.
          The Honda pulled up beside her. The horn bleated. Sarah ignored it.

          Some kind of pleading coming from the girl. Sarah heard her name and "...talk." The rest she couldn't make out over the protesting engine; she had it in the wrong gear for driving at walking speed.
          Houses houses houses
          She picked the one halfway up the block with drapes oranging the front room light.

          She broke into a sprint. The Honda lurched into gear and followed.

          Sarah took a hard right onto the shale stone path and ran up to the porch. The Honda overshot by half a block. The brakes squealed.

          On the porch, Sarah pulled out her compact and looked at her nose in the mirror. It was reddish, but not turning blue. She pressed the lit amber doorbell button. Two tone tubular bells. She affixed both sets of toes on an invisible line, and took a deep breath.
          The Honda engine purr-rattled in the background. Sarah heard chairs being pushed out from inside the house, then the clop clop clop of what must have been a larger man approaching the door. He didn't ask who it was, there was no peephole, he just opened up.  
          A large man, crossbeam shoulders, red hair, red beard, gut, startling blue eyes. He recognized her. She was sweating. He smelled trouble.
          "Hi," he said.
          "Hi." She smiled.
          "Can I help you?"
          "Yeah, hi, how are you doing?"
          "Fine. What's up?"
          She took a deep breath, smiled, then: "You're gonna have a hard time believing this, but…"
          She chuckled.
          "Um, we, this girl and me, we were supposed to go to a party-"
          "Uh-huh."
          "And we waited in a parking lot for it to be the right time to go, because we were kind of early-" she swallowed. "-except she started acting all weird on me, so I got scared, and then I left and, I dunno, I-"
          The Honda revved halfway down the street. Her head whiplashed towards the noise, then came back to the man. He didn't notice.
          “Um...”
          She smiled at him sheepishly.
          “You need to use the phone?”
          “Yes, so I can call my parents?”
          He looked at her for a long time. He stepped out one step over the threshold and scanned the area. He stepped back in.

          They came inside and he bolted the door. Sweat dripped into her eyes. She wiped her forehead with her sleeve, then wiped her nose. A television spewed a jaunty, happy tune. She sensed that he was ready to kick the living shit out of her if he had to.
          "Are you OK?" he asked pointing at her nose. She felt it. It was tender to the touch.
          "Did she hit you?"
          Sarah went over to the mirror hanging next to the door. She had a goose egg on her forehead and her nose was a red, close to purple.
          "You want me to call the police?"
          "No, no, it's OK."
          He looked at her face closely.
          "I actually hit my head getting out of the car."
          He knew that that was probably a lie.
          "Did she hit you in the nose?"
          "She might have."
          "So you were in a fight?"
          "Not really."
          "You hit each other."
          "Not really hitting, more like shoving and stuff."
          She gasped.
          A boy, about eleven, was sitting at the heavy dining room table, homework spread out in front of him, staring at them with vacant eyes.

          The former football player was leaning up against the kitchen counter, arms folded. There was a small blue vase of wilting yellow flowers on the breakfast table. Whatever other family the man had were out for the evening.
          Answering machine.
          "Dammit," she said, pulling the receiver from her ear. "I guess they're not home yet."
          She hung up the phone and took a deep breath.

          "Need a ride?"

         

          The car stereo purred. Intermittent tree canopies formed tunnels over the two lane highway.
          "The Saints are really good this year, I don't think DeLaur has a chance against us," she said.
          "You know Jeff Milliman?"
          "Yeah, plays defense, right?"
          "Jeff's my son."
          "Oh, really? Oh, he's good, real good, real solid."
          "Now I'm remembering, I've seen you at the games a lot."
          She shrugged.
          "Yeah, I go. I'm a Saint, too. I mean, technically."
          "Oh, yeah?"
          "Volleyball."
          "Oh, great."
          "It's OK," she said. "We could win a few more games."
          Milliman smiled.
          "Hey, what about that girl who is going to, what is it? Boston University?"
          "Millicent. Millicent Friedman."
          Howard snapped his fingers.
          "Yeah, she's great,” Sarah said. “Her dig is amazing."
          "Now, remind me, what's a dig? I'm a footballer, so…"
          "Dig is a defense. Preventing the ball from touching the court. You dive for the ball, and you hit it over the net, hopefully."
          "I've always wondered what they call that."
          "Her dig got her a full scholarship."
          Howard whistled and shook his head.
          The DJ cooed about something. Sarah couldn't hear this car's wheels on the road like she could the Honda's.
          "So you want to tell me what happened back there with that girl?"
          "Not really- if that's OK. I mean, it wasn't anything illegal, it was just stupid."

          She rested her head on the head rest, and watched the outside pass by their window. Tall cartoonish shadow play on passing bushes. Her eyelids grew heavy. Her cheek found her shoulder.

 

          A car over revved and approached from behind; headlights flooded the inside of the Volvo. Milliman averted his eyes from the rear-view mirror. The Honda tailgated, the driver punched the horn. Sarah snapped awake.

          The Honda's front bumper was inches away from the Volvo's. The Honda swerved. Milliman could see the some of the Honda's driver's features in it's faint green dashboard light. Miliman sped up. The Honda sped up. Milliman sped up again. He looked for a turn he could take. None.

          The Honda downshifted and backed into the darkness, like an eel backslithering into an underwater cave.
          He looked over to Sarah. She was looking over her shoulder, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.
          "You OK?"
          Sarah didn't answer.
          "Hey!"
          Sarah sucked in a startled breath, and looked at him. He was blurry to her.
          "Are you OK?"
          "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine."
          "I am going to call the police when I get home."
          A straightaway opened up. Milliman sped up. He looked into the rearview. No cars, just a red rim from the Volvo's tail lights and behind it, only blackness.  

 

          133 Ortega: Sarah's home was a two-story Tudor. The windows were dark, the porch light was off. The nearby creek trickled, the frogs in the creek sang a full-throated song to the moon.

          Milliman's headlights passed over the back of the Honda. It was parked under the shadow of an oak tree about twenty yards from Sarah's home, it's engine and lights off. Milliman didn't register it.

           The Volvo pulled up in front of the house.

          "Is anyone home right now?"
          Sarah shook her head.
          "I'll call the Sheriff when I get home."
          "OK."
          "They'll probably call you."
          She nodded. She bit her lower lip.
          "You weren't supposed to be out, were you?"
          She shook her head. He let out a deep breath.
          "Go on," he said.
          She gathered her suit bag and duffle, and got out of the car. She walked in front of the headlights, momentarily looking like a gaslight player. He pulled away, and tapped the horn. He looked into the rearview, and saw Sarah take the first step onto her porch.

 

          She couldn't find her keys. She dug into her purse's side pocket, and pushed aside her collection of receipts (diet Coke; sugarless gum; mascara and an eraser; many other items), didn't find them, and dug back into the purse's main compartment. She shoved the crap to one side. Fingers feeling grooved metal. She pulled out the key ring. The keychain, a small Eiffel Tower her father had gotten for her on a business trip to France.
          She chose the front door key from the key ring. Her hands shook. She aimed for the bolt. The key tip missed by two or three inches. She backed up and tried a second time. Her forearm and hand did a jerky dance, and the key tip hit the metal of the bolt, but did not find the keyhole. She dropped the keys. She picked it up, and switched hands, and this time the key found the bolt and she turned. She heard running footsteps come up the stone path and felt a tickle on the back of neck that felt something like a kiss. The girl sank the knife to the hilt into Sarah's lower back.
          Sarah expelled the air out of her lungs. Sarah swung around. The knife slid out.

          Sarah saw the girl looking down at the knife as if it had suddenly sprouted out of her hand. She plunged the knife into Sarah's solar plexus. The girl gripped the knife with both hands and lifted Sarah five inches off the ground. Sarah's arms flailed. She dropped her. Sarah landed on her feet, and fell forward onto the other girl. The girl shoved Sarah backwards. She hit the front door and bounced back onto the blade. The girl pulled the knife out. Sarah closed her hand around the blade and held it, growling, oh no you don't. The girl yanked the knife out of Sarah's hand, slicing her palm open. She grabbed her bleeding hand by the wrist and looked at it, and fell onto the front door, and still on her feet. The girl raised the knife overhand. Sarah held up her hands. No…no…  She shook her head violently. No…no…
          The knife came down again, puncturing Sarah's left breast, came up, then down again, skidded off the right breast, and punctured the inside of her bicep.
          The girl stepped back and bore witness. The sound of her lungs working like bellows traveled upward and back downwards by the curved wooden porch overhang. Her breathing singing its own chorus.
          The girl looked down at her clothes. A few splatters on her. More on her hands. A lot on the ground.
          She backed off the porch, down the path, turned right onto the sidewalk, and disappeared.
          Sarah screamed. She screamed at the top of her lungs. The frogs in the creek stopped. No lights came on. The moon hung in the sky. The neighborhood responded like a dead thing.
          Sarah collapsed into a sit. Her legs splayed out in two absurd diagonals. She felt her blood, warm as fresh piss, soak through her underwear and pool under her.
          She looked up. The house key was in the lock, the tiny Eiffel Tower dangled. She reached up and turned it. She heard the bolt recede. She pressed the worn brass door handle tab. It clicked and she pushed the door open with her weight.  The door swung open violently. The handle slammed into the inside wall, notching the plaster. She fell onto her back over the threshold. The closest phone was the wall mount in the fucking kitchen, through the dining room, which was down the hall and to the left.  
          Laying on her back, she got some traction on the floor with her hard rubber soles, and pushed. She could move one and a half, two feet or so per push. Pain became relative.

          It was dark in the kitchen. The yellow phone was mounted on the kitchen's center support beam, out of Sarah's sight line, about fifteen feet away from the kitchen threshold. Mother Fucker.

          Why am I still alive? Because I am going to get to that phone, that's why.
          She pushed. She dared not look behind her. She knew she was leaving a trail of blood; she knew that if she breathed harder or faster, or panicked, she would die.
          She got under the phone. She reached up and yanked the cord outward in a whipping motion. Once. Twice. The third time, the receiver unhooked from the cradle, and fell next to her.  
          She pushed herself to sitting upright. She reached upwards. The dial was about eighteen inches away from her hand. She pushed herself up with both hands and both feet. Her organs shifted. She bellowed. Her right index finger reached the zero on the dial. She pushed upward, she dialed, she screamed, she fell back down.  She picked up the receiver and put it to her ear. A ring on the other side. A song from a distant planet.
          "Operator," it said. "Operator, hello?"
          "Ambulance," Sarah said. She sounded like one of the frogs outside.
          "Hello?"
          "Ambulance, I need an ambulance."
          "Did you say you need an ambulance? I'll connect you.”
          She swallowed. She could feel nothing below her waist. It was cold all of a sudden.
          “911, what is your emergency?”
          “I need an ambulance, I need a doctor.”
          “An ambulance? What happened?”
          "I live at 133 Ortega street," she said.
          "Was that One Three Three Ortega spelled o-r-t-e-g-a?"
          "Yeah," she said. Her teeth were chattering.
          "Which city?"
          "What?"

          "Which city?"
          "Fidelis."

          "Fidelis?"

          "Yeah."

 

 

Sebastian Corbascio is a Los Angeles based writer/director whose previous credits include award-winning screenplays Sarah Luger and The Sicilian Clans. His novelization of Sarah Luger has garnered rave reviews. Mr. Corbascio was born and raised in Oakland, CA, to European parents, both accomplished visual artists. Mr. Corbascio took a bachelors' degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University (the first such program in the U.S.) and from there pursued filmmaking. He has published numerous non-fiction articles on film making in national trade publications. He has authored several screenplays, including The Worm, Tarantella, Let's Get Lost! and many others. His novel Sarah Luger has been called "…a worthy addition to the crime fiction genre." You can find it up the Amazon here. 

 

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