Intruder

Please note: The following story contains adult elements, and may not be suitable for children.

Mercedes drove a Mercedes; the coincidence tickled her. The new car felt full of possibilities and strength. It was a sleek, small thing with a black exterior and a plush leather interior. Chrome framed it, and flashed in the passing streetlights. She headed down the dark street toward her tall apartment building.
    A new business contract had given her such a hefty bonus that she could no longer resist the call of this wonderful machine. Her old car now forgotten, she relished the coolness of the steering wheel and comfort of the seat. When she reached the underground garage of her building she stepped out, high heels clacking on the asphalt.
    The fast elevator rose as she stood inside, fingering her new keys. Her purse and coat were under one arm. She watched the number on the display climb.
    Exiting the elevator, she walked down the hall and unlocked her apartment. She flicked the lights on and caught her reflection in the mirror as she went past.
    Her long, sleek black hair was in danger of become unruly, but her makeup was perfect. Moving into the bedroom, she undressed, replacing the business skirt and blouse with jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. She wrapped her hair in a ponytail and took a deep, calming breath before going into the kitchen to make dinner.
    She hit the switch for the light and found a man there. He lunged at her, holding one of her knives, and before she reacted his hand was around her throat. She knew him; he was from a few floors under him. One of the hundreds of people living in the high-rise apartment building here in the city. Now he cut off her air and poised the knife over her chest.
    His eyes flared with adrenaline, and his breath came in short, quick blasts. His hand squeezed and Mercedes choked on his strong fingers. Her hands gripped at his wrists, trying to both pry his hand from her throat, and to get the knife away. He started to move.
    He walked – pushing her backwards – into the living room. He pushed her down onto a chair and kept the knife aimed at her.
    Her vision was locked on the knife. It gleamed in the light as it shook in his hand. She tore away her eyes and looked up into his. She knew the look.
    She was about to be raped in her own home.
    Even as the thought came to her, he moved in, pressing the knife against her shirt and gently poking the skin underneath. It was happening too fast. She had to do something.
    She tried to give the words she said the power they held at her job; she tried to give them strength and an air of superiority. But her fear bled into them and soaked them, turning them into a plea.
    "What do you want?" A stupid question; she knew what he wanted. "How did you get in here?"
    "Shut up," he said. His free hand shifted and she thought he was going to hit her. To her brief relief, it only came up and brushed at her eye, removing a tear that had shown up without her knowledge. The motion held softness and tenderness; for a moment Mercedes thought she was safe. She took advantage.
    "Please don't hurt me." She sounded better that time but he didn't respond. The knife didn't move away from her and so she kept still.
    He stood, looking at her. There was no processing, no wondering . . . just observing. He looked at her in a way that felt familiar to her. She realized it was how she had looked at the new car in the garage, like she was a thing to own and use – not a person.
    This fact made her tenser. She was in danger. "Please don't hurt me," she repeated, slowly, giving weight to each word. He still didn't move; in fact she thought the knife's pressure grew.
    "Do you know my name?" He asked her. His thin lips wrinkled and retreated into his mouth. He licked them and she would have shuddered if she'd allowed herself. She didn't know his name; she'd seen him only a few times, always at a distance, walking. She didn't even think that they'd ridden in the elevator together.
    But she knew that if she told him that, the knife would press into her. Or maybe he would scream and slap her. She thought quickly. "I knew once. We met in the elevator one time. I don't . . . I don't remember anymore. I-I'm sorry."
    "Liar," he said, and she cringed. "We were ever in the elevator together. I would have remembered!" He shouted, and Mercedes shut her eyes, feeling the knife on her bosom tremble. "I've seen you thirty-two times, but never in an elevator!" He screamed. "Stand up!" He moved away, giving her just enough room to rise to her feet. She felt dizzy. She looked him over. She was fit; she might be able to beat him in a footrace, but he was taller and broader and undoubtedly stronger than she was, and there was the knife.
    "Now lie down. On you back," he said, and her heart exploded. Trying to take her time, she got down to her knees and then her back. The man bent over her. His face was obscured from the light by long shadows. He reached forward with the knife.
    It's not happening, she thought. Her mind did everything it could to convince her everything was an illusion or a dream. But it was real.
    "If you move, you're dead," he said. "If you scream, you're dead." He hooked the knife under her shirt and started to rip it open all the way down to her waist. The shirt ripped loudly, and then her white stomach was revealed. She was glad that she wore a bra, just to give her more time.
    He lingered on her torso. With his free hand he reached and rubbed her belly; her entire body seized and shivered as he did. He stepped back.
    Mercedes' stomach jumped and her foot launched up between his legs, the heel colliding with the base of his erect penis. It was near enough to his testicles to make him scream and grip his groin and nearly topple over backwards. His grip on the knife loosened and Mercedes sprang to her feet and ran down the hall.
    He was behind her, a few steps away. She was faster and he still hobbled, shouting vile words at her. She slipped into her bedroom and clawed the door shut. He slammed into it. She pressed it shut as he banged against it.
    "You dirty bitch!" He shouted. She heard the point of the knife drive into the door's wood, and then again. "I'll kill you!"
    She couldn't lock the bedroom door; she had to find a way to keep it from opening. She took quick, chopping looks around the bedroom where she had spent her last three years; suddenly it was all alien.
    But there was a table next to her bed. On it her purse and coat lay; she reached and yanked it out from under the items. They clattered to the ground and she wedged the table against the door with all her might. A dresser was behind her and she used it to keep the table from moving. She stepped back. The rapist on the other side slammed his body against the door, but it didn't move. She backed off and caught her breath.
    She dove at her purse to find her phone. It wasn't there. Where had she left it? In the kitchen, placing it on the table just before the man jumped her? It wasn't in her coat either. Was it somewhere on the floor? Had it fallen out of her purse and slipped into the cracks in her car?
    Her car. She caught the glint of the new keys lying on the carpet, and they presented an attractive idea.
    If only she could get past the man outside the door – the one who had just called her a slut and stabbed the door hard enough to splinter the wood – out her door, and either down the stairs or to the elevator, she could undoubtedly beat him to her car. He had been . . . following her or stalking her; he knew how many times he had seen her, for God's sake. But that car was new, he shouldn't know about it. Then she could drive somewhere and call the police.
    The door boomed, and she shivered. Getting past such a big man, now enraged by a below-the-belt strike, would be hard. How could she do it? Her eyes ranged around the room again, trying to find something else. There was nothing outside her window. No fire escape for her – she was too high up. Her only route out of the building was past her attacker. Was her neighbor home? Could she bang on the wall and ask for help?
    Those questions would remain unanswered; at that moment the door was pushed and bent open, revealing the man's red and dripping face. He held the knife in an iron grip, and cupped his balls with his other hand. She'd managed to hurt him badly.
    "You've slept with hundreds of men!" He shouted. "I've seen you take them up here and fuck them, one after the other! But you won't fuck me!"
    "No!" Mercedes shrunk away. She came to realize that her shirt still hung open, revealing her bra and torso. She ripped it off, forcing a strange look to pass over the rapist's face. She then pulled out a sweater and forced it over her head. It was a small change but she felt safer.
    It only made him angrier. He pushed and heaved against the door, trying to push the table and dresser out of the way. It was too heavy for him, but the thin door started to creak, and Mercedes knew it wouldn't last long. The hinge at the top already seemed feeble.
    There was no kind of weapon in her room, nothing she could use to defend herself if he got past the barricade.
    No, wait, of course there was. She went to her purse. Her heart pounded. She'd have to move fast. She stuck her hand into the bag, gripped the small tube, and stuck it into the rapist's face.
    It could have passed as a tube of lipstick; it could have gone unnoticed in a woman's purse, but when she pressed down the button on the can of pepper spray the man noticed.
    The foul liquid assaulted him, and he screamed. He reeled back, dropping the knife and trying to rub the liquid out of his eyes, nose, and mouth. Mercedes, with keys in hand, forced her way past him and ran into the main hallway of the apartment building. She was more than twenty floors over her car, and had no shoes on. Her bare feet slapped on the thin carpet in the hallway.
    Stairs or elevator? Her mind thundered as she ran. Which one?
    She skidded to a stop in front of the elevator and mashed the button to bring the elevator down. The display told her the elevator was on floor ten, and heading in the wrong direction. She heard a slam and a shout and saw the rapist stumble out of her apartment down the hall. Without hesitating she ran at the nearby door to the stairwell and pushed it open. The cold, brittle, bluish light danced off her sleek hair as she started jumping down the first flight of stairs. Her mind was the repetition of a single thing: get away.
    She was two floors down when she heard a door above her crash open, followed by sputtering and coughing and gagging. The sound confused her. She had hit the man dead in the face; there was no way he should have been able to even breathe! He started to climb down the stairs and her mind started screaming run! Run!
    She stumbled down the concrete stairs, panicking. Her feet were pinched and scratched by the metal stair guards but she felt no pain; there was only the desire to get away. She could hear the man thundering after her, cursing loudly. His steps crashed on the stairs and his yells echoed down to her as a waterfall of horrible threats.
    He got closer. She knew if he caught her she would be lucky if all he did was rape her now. Adrenaline surged through her and the flights of stairs began to fly faster.
    She didn't know how far down she was when he reached over the railing of the stairs next to her and caught her sweater in a weak grip. She screamed and tore away from his grasp, catching sight of his face. His eyes were red and his nose dripped. She knew what pepper spray was supposed to do to someone and that wasn't it. He should have been choking, gagging, and crying, unable to see or breathe or move. Instead he'd caught up to her, looking bad, but not bad enough.
    Mercedes tumbled down the rest of the flight and found a door at the bottom. She pulled it open, letting herself into a hallway just like hers, quiet, thinly carpeted, and harrowingly straight. She took off running. She still held the can of pepper spray and her keys. After she'd gone a few steps she heard the rapist break into the hallway, pause, and then start running after her, slinging more words. She thought maybe somebody – anybody, please – would hear something and call the police.
    She still ran, pushed on by fear and knowledge.
    The police would find a bloody body in the middle of a hallway, gruesomely cut open with wild slashes of a knife that would be traced back to her own apartment. Of course the man would be found – his prints were everywhere – but that wouldn't matter. What would matter is the body in the middle of the hallway, a dozen floors under the floor it should have been in. The neighbors, others in the building, would say they heard noises but didn't think anything of it. The family next to hers was out, enjoying a night at the movies; they didn't hear either of them scream.
    Mercedes did not think these things; she only ran. Air burned in her lungs. She found a corner, the hallway turned right, and she went around it, trying not to slow down. She could still hear him behind her. Ahead there was another stairwell. Her body started to falter as she got close; her legs felt weak. As she wrenched the door open a hard hand closed on her wrist. She screamed and used the pepper spray can to bash him on the head. He released her and she ducked into the stairs.
    More stairs down, this time less aided by adrenaline than before. She didn't think about what would happen if it all ran out.
    Above her the door slammed open. "I'm bleeding! I'm bleeding, you slut!" She heard him yell. "I'll kill you!"
    She finally, chest heaving and legs failing, reached the garage level. She opened the door and worked to orient herself with were her car was. She'd parked in a different spot than normal. Her new car made her want more newness. Now she turned to her right and ran up the ramp toward her new black Mercedes. The ground sounded wet. When she got to the end of the row she turned up it, and glanced behind her. She couldn't see him. Had she gotten away?
    She begged a moment for that truth, but was not given it. Her nightmare continued when the rapist stepped out from behind a big van. A cut under his eye dripped blood down his cheek. He still had the knife.
    "You went the wrong way," he said, walking at her. Mercedes backed away, keeping her eyes on him. Her eyes leaked wetness and she held her hands in front of her face. "You park over there." He gestured with the knife in the direction of her normal spot. "Why'd you come this way?"
    She couldn't answer; no words came up. "Tell me!" He roared, bringing the knife to bear on her, as it had at the beginning. In the dreary underground light its menace grew.
    "I-I didn't think. I just ran," she forced out. "I wasn't going for my car."
    "Lying bitch," he said, moving to close the distance. She darted out from under him just as he swung, missing her. She ran up the next lane of parked cars, looking for hers. She saw it on her right, over a concrete barrier that she couldn't climb fast enough. She kept running on wooden legs. Her feet hurt and she wanted to limp but couldn't, not if she wanted to get away. She got to the end of the row and went around the wall to the row that held her car. The man was behind her, still trying to catch up.
    She got close enough and punched the unlock button on her remote; the Mercedes blinked. She heard the rapist exclaim something, but she didn't hear it as she dove between the cars and pulled open her car door. She opened it too fast and it banged the car next to it. She got in and locked the doors just as the man got to her. He pulled on the driver's handle, and when it wouldn't open he yelled and tried to stab the window. The knife's point slipped away, leaving a deep scratch. Next he turned the knife around and punched down at the scratched area with the end of the handle.
    The window smashed, spreading cracks from the impact area. She shoved the key into the starter slot as he brought the knife's handle down again, harder, furious.
    More cracks, bigger, spread through the window as she shifted the car into reverse and backed out of the slot. He tried to stab through the hood of her car; the knife bounced off. She couldn't see out of the driver's window. She twisted the steering wheel and reversed away from him, toward the end of the row.
    She looked behind her and slammed on the brake. A car came around the row and stopped, just behind her.
    Mercedes looked ahead of her and saw the rapist ran toward her window, knife poised to smash through the window with a final blow, leaving her a free target for all his mad hate.
    She shifted, and her bare, bloody foot slammed down on the accelerator. The car jumped forward, and for the moment before being struck and thrown against away from the car, the rapist's face was washed in sudden fear and disbelief.
    Mercedes sat in her Mercedes. The bridge of her nose, having hit the steering wheel, bled. The front of her car was dented in. The can of pepper spray – found to be five years expired – was by her feet. The would-be rapist was on the ground, immobile. The person in the car behind her was knocking on her destroyed window, asking if she was all right.
    The rapist didn't move; he would prove to be dead when the police, called by several people during the furious chase through the building, arrived.
    Mercedes found herself staring at the cracked window. She ran her hand on her side of it and shivered. So close. He had almost gotten in.