Chapter 10

Chapter Ten


The bird finally stopped and Martha was surrounded in a black abyss of fake feathers. She tried to move her limbs, but the wings held a tight grasp on her.

"Damn bird!" She let out. Her eye turned upward to the bird's head. "I will kill you for what you did to Richard!" She snarled with an animal glare.

No answer came back to her call.

Martha banged her head on the wing in front of her as she began to cry. "Damn you Richard. Damn you Zachary. Damn you ... Martha." Her tears mixed with her eyeliner and formed black tears that ran her cheeks. She closed her eyes. "After all these years ... I failed you. I am so sorry Richard."

A loud snapping noise sounded from the neck of the large bird. Martha looked up and watched the head of the bird slowly tilt downward. Its heavy metal beek pointed at her as it kept moving closer and closer. Martha's eyes widened and she began to breathe heavily.

The bird's head stopped and suddenly the wings sprung open! Martha tumbled down onto the ground in front of the monster bird. With her face planted on the ground, Martha breathed heavily. The fake corn stalks sat closely around her.

"Now, I bet you a million dollars that I know what you are thinking." Said a joking crude British tone. "You are thinking, what the hell is going on?"

Martha's already worried eyes glared at a pair of black and white sneakers walking toward her face. Her eyes followed the sneakers onto the jeans that once sat on Richard's legs comfortly, now baggy on the thin legs that stood in front of her. Fresh blood stains sat on the knees of the jeans.

Before Martha could study any further, her curly red hair was seized in a bony grasp and she was forced into her feet; groaning and tears rolling down her cheek.

Her eyes narrowed into the black ones of her captor. His bony face covered in blood and a crooked yellow encrusted smile forced into her face.

"Been a long time, cousin." Bugsy said in his cracked voice.

Martha swallowed with panic in her face. She licked her lips. "Busgy ... I ... I know we have a past, but ... You have to ..." Her plea was cut off by a bloody blade held up to her troat.

Bugsy's face twisted with all sorts of emotion, his bottom jaw protruded out and exposed his twisted teeth. "Don't play therapist with me, you witch. You tried to kill me." His voice held a sharp sinister wit as though he were telling a crude joke. "But given your length of I.Q and understanding of what I am, I would have done the same." He smiled with a thought. "Maybe better because I would have actually killed something like me."

He released his grip from Martha's hair and stepped away, dropping the blade in front of Martha's feet.

Bugsy let out an evil chuckle. "To think that you feared I would kill you all these years puts a smile on my face."

Keeping her eyes on the laughing man in front of her, Martha slowly bent down and grabbed the hand of the butcher blade laying at her feet. "This would be a perfect time for you to do so. You can blame the carnival crazies."

Bugsy gave a nod and tapped his right index finger on his V like chin. "I could, but then Dicky boy would never forgive me." He shrugged with a sigh. "But the night is still young and I am what you call an impulsive personality. Which means I don't feel like killing you now, but who knows what I will feel like in minutes from now."

Martha stared at him, pointing the knife at him. "Why do I feel I can't trust you on that?"

Bugsy gave a snicker and forced his shoulders high with a smirk. "You can't trust me on anything I say. Aren't I a little shite?" He lowered his shoulders. "Don't bother asking why I am bothering myself to help you and do not even ask if I know what is going on."

"What should I do then?" Martha asked with a blank expression.

Bugsy turned to strut down the hallway of cornstalk. "Just go with the flow, sexy cousin of mine ... Just go with the flow."