Page 33 of Velvet and Valor
Axel deflates, and sighs.
“Yeah, I’m done. It feels weird to have someone worried about me, I guess.”
Axel pulls the car to a halt near a flood control trench which snakes through my neighborhood. Now I understand his plan. He’s going to use the trench to get to my yard.
“Axel,” I say as he opens the door, “There’s a ten-foot privacy fence.”
“Only ten feet? I’ll be up and over in about five seconds,” Axel says with a wink.
“No, I mean, there’s a gate and I can tell you the code—” and he’s off, rushing toward the guardrail protecting the trench. “Don’t forget the drive is in the bottom right drawer!”
I close the doors and lock the car, crossing my arms over my chest and sighing. I’m prepared to be patient.
To a point.
I wait a full ten minutes before I allow myself to worry. Another fifteen before I start to consider going after him.
I force myself to do some mindless scrolling instead of going after Axel, but the words blur together, and I can’t read the page. Besides, there’s a bunch of stuff in my feed about the big car chase on the freeway. It’s like I can’t get away from my problems no matter what I do.
When Axel’s been gone for a solid twenty-five minutes, I can’t take it anymore. I try his trick of using the concrete-lined flood sluice.
Axel made climbing over the guardrail and dropping down to the trench below look easy. I grunt with exertion scissoring my legs over the guardrail, and then it looks a lot further down than I thought it would. I awkwardly inch my way along until I can climb down the side of the trench instead of jumping.
When I get down into the sluice, it doesn’t look all that high after all, but it’s too late to worry about it now. I pad as quietly as I can toward my house, which isn’t all that quiet. The concrete walls seem to magnify and echo the slightest sound.
Not to mention the fact I’m not used to seeing my neighborhood from this angle. Even when I use my back gate, which is rare, it’s not like I go down in the flood trench.
But I do recognize my house, mostly due to the obnoxiously huge gazebo my neighbor has in her backyard. I come up to the fence and scowl at the muddy footprint adhered to the side. He just couldn’t wait, could he?
I input the code and get through the back gate. My grass glistens in the starlight, damp from the recent sprinkler cycle. With some corner of my mind not scared out of its wits, I notice that my rose bush is looking ragged.
The sliding glass door leading from the patio into my kitchen is partly open. I guess he came in this way. I make my way inside, afraid to switch on the lights.
“Axel?” I call out softly. No response, but I think I hear footsteps down the hall. I follow the sound and step around the corner of my bedroom.
Axel kneels on the floor in front of my dresser, desperately fumbling with my translucent, silicone ‘sleeping aid’ in a vain attempt to turn off its vigorous vibration. That idiot. I told him which drawer to open!
Axel looks up at me, his face a mask of terror.
“I…I…”
“Axel! What the hell!”
I grab the nearest weapon at hand, which turns out to be the bougie cushion on my vanity chair. The little tassels hanging off the corner make for a great handle as I whip the mass into his skull.
I want to point out that the cushion is quite old, and I’ve compressed it with my tush for years. The impact turns his head halfway around, and he drops the vibrator onto the floor, where it rolls and bounces about with a horrific rattling noise.
“I got my left and my right confused,” Axel sputters, holding his jaw.
I lower my makeshift weapon and frown.
“Sorry I hit you,” I say, forcing myself to be calm. “I sent you up here, after all?—”
The urgent smash of broken glass from down the hall stops me dead in my tracks.
“That was the living room,” Axel says, drawing his gun. All silliness is gone in a heartbeat and he’s transformed into the Terminator. “Stay low, stay quiet, and let me handle this.”
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