Georgia Lee Parmenter lay on her bed in her locked bedroom and prayed to God Almighty that her mother would stop screaming. Georgia Lee pressed her pillow against her head to block the horrible sounds. Her hands shook as she gripped the fluffy folds of eiderdown against the sides of her skull for dear life, trying not to scream herself.

She couldn't gather the nerve to go out there and confront the Bastard. If she had a gun, or even a knife bigger than her tiny pocket jackknife, then maybe she would have the guts to face him. But she knew damn well she didn't stand a chance in hell against him with only her bare hands.

God knows she hated the Bastard enough to kill him. Georgia Lee had seen her mother falling headlong into his trap, but there had been nothing she could do about it. And now this. Things had turned out worse than she had ever imagined in her gloomiest moments. So much worse.

If only the terrible screaming would stop.

It had begun as embarrassing sexual noise. Georgie Lee didn't know why her mother ever let the Bastard touch her. He was such a pig. Regardless, her mother let him do whatever he wanted. They had done it in the house before when Georgia Lee had been home, but never so loudly, never so brutally, as today.

And then the screams had gradually increased in volume and in pitch until they became a piercing alarm that raised goosebumps of shock and humiliation on Georgia Lee's arms. She winced and pressed the pillow against her ears as the screams became absolutely terrifying.

She didn't know if she could stand it anymore.

As Georgia Lee thought these things, abruptly her prayer was answered. She slowly pushed the pillow to the headboard and raised her head, stunned by the sudden silence. She licked her lips; they were so damn dry. She drew a long slow breath, wondering why the remote isolated farmhouse had so quickly become as quiet as a tomb.

She brushed curly blonde hair from the side of her face with the slender fingers of one hand. She felt hotter than the sunny August afternoon demanded; her entire body was covered with an uncomfortably cold perspiration that was nothing like the honest sweat of hard work or exercise---it was unmistakable: this was the sour sweat of fear.

Hammering heartbeats measured the stillness, until Georgia Lee Parmenter raised her red-rimmed eyes again and prayed---to the same God as before---for the exact opposite of what had been so important to her just a moment ago. She silently prayed to hear just one sound that would prove to her that her mother was all right.

A sob escaped Georgia Lee's lips. She immediately cursed herself for that soft sound. She was terrified for more than her mother's life. Georgia Lee had seen the way the Bastard sometimes looked at her when he was here, sitting across from her at the dinner table, thinking she was too involved with her plate to notice him. And she knew what that look meant; she wasn't stupid, especially not when it came to men. Yet, how smart could she be, to have allowed this day to come?

Georgia Lee tried to believe that if she didn't move, didn't make a sound, the Bastard would forget she was here. But that belief withered and died quickly; she was lying to herself. And this was no time for games.

She whispered, "Please God, let her be okay. Please."

Georgia Lee wondered if God would listen to her. Or maybe He was more concerned with why He hadn't seen her in church for so many years. Or why she let Burt Collins do those deliciously sinful things to her last weekend---and the Saturday night before that. Or why, especially, she hated so many people when God wanted her only to love them.

She couldn't apologize to God for any of it; she didn't know how. She knew only how to stick to her guns no matter what, or people would bulldoze her into any damn thing---the same way the Bastard had bulldozed her mother into his episode of horror and fear.

She turned her head and looked at herself in her vanity mirror. Her face was tight with fear. She couldn't remember ever seeing herself looking so scared. Her over-large baby blue eyes were wild with fear. Her router-cut Cupid's bow lips were tight with fear. Her thin blonde brows were lowered, creased into a sharp V above her short narrow nose, and her arching, angular, chisel-boned cheeks were pale white with fear.

God, she was a mess.

The house was so quiet now. As quiet as death. Georgia Lee sniffed, an unconscious act, and the sound startled her. She looked behind her to the door. What was going on out there? Was her mother unconscious? Worse? No. God had decided to answer her prayer for silence. That's all. They were finished now. That's all. Smoking cigarettes and watching TV, content and happy. Yeah. That's all. It was over now. Her mom was all right now.

Georgia Lee held to that hope.

A half dozen heartbeats later, that flimsy hope smashed as easily as did the lock to her bedroom door. The loud crash as the door swung open and smashed into her vanity table forced a sharp throat-burning scream from her lungs. Perfume bottles and her jewelry box fell to the floor and shattered, causing a clatter of sounds.

Georgia Lee gathered the nerve to look at him.

She always thought that growing up the way she did, with four older brothers to make her tough, that she could face anything without fear or shame. But one look at the Bastard's eyes told her that she wasn't tough enough for this.

He was naked, which was certainly bad enough, but Georgia Lee immediately knew it was even worse than that. She didn't look down, yet she couldn't help seeing that he was up hard, ready for real trouble. But what made her stomach churn was that his bare body was splashed with a horrendous amount of blood. Georgia Lee tried not to think about where all that blood had come from.

The Bastard had killed her mother.

And now he was going to kill her.

Georgia Lee was off the bed and backing away from him before she realized she had moved.

"No," she said in a quavering voice. "Stay back."

"It's time," the Bastard said, grinning an evil grin. His lip was split on one side, and his left cheek was swollen. So, Mom had put up a fight. Good.

Georgia Lee glanced around for a weapon of any kind. Her fists clenched at her sides. She steeled herself the way she used to do when her brothers were tormenting her, but she knew that none of her experiences, however strong they had made her, could help her to deal with what was going to happen to her at the hands of this man.

"It's been a long time coming for you and me," he said in a tone so sickly sweet that it made Georgia Lee's skin crawl. "I seen the way you like to hang around, leaning close for this, bending over for that. I know what you want."

"Stay back!"

He laughed.

Georgia Lee had been laughed at before. By her brothers. By the kids at school. But never before had any laughter made her feel this angry. This time the laughter made her so angry that the sudden wave of feeling forced her to move---not away, but toward him.

He took a step closer. She swung a fast right hook that connected with his jaw with enough force to hurt her hand. But he didn't go down. He didn't even stagger. He barely turned his head to accommodate the blow. Yet she let her fist fly again, hitting his grinning face with all of her strength.

He didn't seem to care. Maybe it was all the drugs. She knew that was one of the ways he had tied her mother so tightly to him. It was just another reason to hate him. After all the twelve step tortures her mother had gone through after Dad's death, Mom had fallen right back into her old ways---with plenty of help from the Bastard.

Whether he was on drugs now or not, she couldn't hurt him. He reached up with amazing strength and speed, grabbed her wrists, and held them at shoulder level in front of him, grinning into her face.

"Settle down, girl. Don't make this hard on yourself."

Georgia Lee actually saw red. She knew she should be paralyzed with fear, but a sudden wave of anger rose up and washed that fear away.

She relaxed in his grip; her body lost all muscular tension.

The Bastard's grin widened. His eyes shined with a kind of crazed power she had never seen in them before.

She met that triumphant hungry stare with a beaten glance.

"That's better."

The grips on her arms began to relax.

Georgia Lee looked into his eyes, then lowered her gaze again.

"You like to look, don't you? You want it, don't you?"

Georgia Lee's knee came up. Fast enough to surprise him. Hard enough to hurt him.

He screamed. He let go of her wrists and dropped to one knee, grabbing his crotch with both hands, bending over farther and farther as his scream became a long moan of shock and pain. Georgia Lee saw her chance and took it. She imagined a soccer ball sitting on his shoulders---the kind of a ball she could kick all the way downfield against a strong wind.

She wound up good and kicked it.

The Bastard made a short sharp sound and fell over. His head cracked into the corner of her dresser on his way down and when he hit the floor he didn't move.

Georgia Lee stood staring, breathing hard. She wondered if she had killed him, but then a whistling breath escaped him and he started peeing on her rug. Bad dog. She smiled a sneering smile. A voice inside her told her to finish the job, but her stomach rolled at the thought of committing murder.

She had to get out of here. Find her mother and escape. They could go to Aunt Abby's house---they could go anywhere---but they had to go now.

Georgia Lee grabbed the money off the top of her dresser. That would have to be enough. She didn't have time to pack a bag. She didn't even have time to change her clothes. Her frayed blue jean cut-offs and her lavender IN YOUR DREAMS t-shirt would have to do.

She made a face as she stepped over the Bastard's body on her way to the door. She thought of all the cable movies she had seen in which the killer appeared to be dead and then jumped up to attack the girl who thought she was safe. But the Bastard didn't jump up like Jason Voorheiss. He just lay there, seeming to beg her to end his miserable perverted life once and for all, as she stepped slowly past him.

The urge to crush his skull with something big and heavy possessed her like an invading ghost. She stopped, turned, and looked down at him. Could she do it? One of the big sins? Uh-uh. There was no way.

She made it to the door, took one look over her shoulder to reassure herself that he was still down, and then made her way past the splintered door frame and into the hallway.

A sickening smell pervaded the place: blood and something else she couldn't identify. Georgia Lee's throat constricted with the beginnings of a sob, but she held the tears back.

She passed her mother's bedroom. Her steps slowed. She scraped the bottom of her soul for the courage to look inside. Georgia Lee had almost passed the open doorway when she forced herself to look in there.

Her mother's right wrist, wrapped by a leather strap to the arm of her wooden-framed, upholstered desk chair, was all Georgia Lee was capable of seeing without moving farther backward, and right now that seemed a tremendous blessing.

Georgia Lee wept. She studied the limp hand---the hand that once held her and fed her, the hand that slapped her when she was lippy and comforted her when she was sad, for nineteen difficult years. That hand was pale now, and slightly clawed at the ends of the fingers, as if she had endured much pain before she died.

But what if she were still alive?

Georgia Lee's heart jammed up into her throat. She had to find out if there was a chance for her mother's life. Georgia Lee held her breath, took a half-step backward to peek, and then choked on what she saw.

The McDonald's Value Meal she had eaten in Louisville earlier that day came roiling up from her stomach like lava from a volcano. She held onto the wall to keep from falling to the puke-stained carpet at her feet.

There was no doubt any longer that her mother was dead. The hard reality of the moment made her feel like a marshmallow, all soft and gooey inside. It was hard to think, harder to move, impossible to feel anything but the squishy marshmallow feelings that beckoned her to pass out and escape this horror.

Georgia Lee thought about calling the police. Then she remembered what a powerful man the Bastard was. He wasn't afraid of the police. For all the evidence against him, he knew he would never be charged, let alone convicted, of anything. And she knew it, too. He would walk away from this hideous crime without a hitch. Scott free. It was guaranteed.

And then he would come after her.

Who would protect her? Her brothers had all left town the year Dad was put in the ground. Burt Collins was only a boy; though his was brave, and though he cared for her, he was no match for someone like the Bastard.

She had to get out. Now. She didn't know how long it would be before the Bastard woke up. She had to be far away by that time or she was as good as dead.

Again, Georgia Lee imagined herself standing over his naked bloody body, aiming a fireplace poker at his skull, slamming it down onto him, again and again. She shook her head. She couldn't even dream of murdering him, no matter how much he deserved it.

Her mother was definitely gone. Georgia Lee could see enough of one bloody shoulder to see that it was not moving at all, not even with the slightest breath.

Georgia Lee wiped her mouth with one wrist, took a last look at her mother's dead hand, and then turned away and left the house, sobbing for her mother's brutal death and for the uncertainty of her own future.

The pickup was parked where it was always parked. She made her way through the chickens, past the water pump and the satellite dish tower, to the dusty white Toyota flatbed.

The keys were always in it. She grabbed them and twisted them, and the engine started. Georgia Lee glanced to the front door of the house to be sure the Bastard wasn't coming out of it, like Micheal Meyers in one of those Halloween movies, refusing his own death to continue advancing the plot. But the doorway remained empty.

Georgia Lee held a tight rein on her sobbing well enough to keep her eyes focused on the driveway ahead. She jammed the accelerator to the floorboard, remembering the satisfying feel of her knee in the Bastard's balls. The Toyota's tires spun, throwing gravel and dirt behind her in dense dry clouds as she sped away from her home.