The Darkness Felt Like Chains

Brian Doyle, the man who the circuit courts named as the person who beat women to death, was tried twice. Despite a witnesses's testimony and other corroborating evidence, the first jury was hung, the second found Doyle innocent. Tried by his peers and that old reasonable doubt sent him on his way.

A 23 year old woman was beaten to death at Wentfield Park over by the railroad tracks, and Detective Laura Kimber found Doyle at the murder scene, licking his chops. She immediately called for back up and began chasing Doyle into a condemned building on Wordin Avenue. Kimber had reached the front door and entered without back up and her pistol drawn. There was silence. Kimber drew a deep breath and held it. She heard, in front of her, a floor creak, she stopped. Listened hard, trying to calibrate the distance and direction of Brian Doyle. The silence was loud, but only in Kimber's head as she paced slowly forward. She didn't know what to expect, and she knew she should have waited for back up.

Detective Laura Kimber heard the pop of automatic weapon fire, muffled by its passage through sheet-rock. Before she could generate another thought, there was a great concussive bang, and a terrible shriek that ended in a second bang, which was so much louder than the first. Bringing with it the movement of the floor like an earthquake, and the room she was standing in plunged into darkness. Kimber froze, the blackness was total, it was such an overwhelming absence of light. With her eyes opened or closed, it didn't matter. It was simply pitched black.

Kimber had this blind urge to run, seek light, and to just get the hell out of there, but she couldn't. The darkness felt like chains and it bounded her in place. The room around her seem to expand and close in on her all at the same time. That's when she first realized she was hit two times in the chest.

In her space in the dark she just stayed on the floor looking up at an odd light seeping through. That odd light was Brian Doyle who had put his gun away and removed a pair of brass knuckles out of his coat pocket. He slipped them on and smiled at the detective. He had missing front teeth and cracked yellow teeth that was barely holding on to the gums. Perhaps the bone loss came from beatings and not a severe case of gingivitis.

"Bullet proof vest stopped the bullets,"he smirked. "But I bet you that these brass knuckles could shatter every bone in your face. Perhaps cave in your skull too. I think I'm going to enjoy finding that out."

A voice in Kimber's head wanted the detective to scream. Let the anger fill her lungs before the beating started. The voice wanted her to fear no man, and to take the beating like a hero.

She slowly whispered, a hero to who?

She was a police detective, but that wouldn't stop Brian Doyle from carrying out his threats. He would crush her skull in. He would do it.

"When!" she screamed. The minutes passed, Kimber shifted restlessly on the floor.

Doyle allowed the fear of death to crawl inside the detective. He wanted her to anticipate death. He wanted her to see it coming before he delivers the first blow.

They were in a condemned building that has just crumbled around them. He knew they were going to be alone for a while because of the dead woman at the park. They were sealed in together like being trapped in her tomb. Doyle stood over Kimber like a solitary figure, and death draped in shadows behind him. He was the last man Kimber was going to see. Doyle was bald on top. but had long wild hair on the sides. unkempt and soiled with sweat. He had a coarse beard riddled with gray and carried upward toward his cheeks. It was the last image that burned in Laura Kimber's mind. It was an image she didn't want, she didn't need.

Then it came to her, something just came to her and it felt disloyal. However, it was a disloyalty to death, who waited patiently for her. Doyle grabbed a fist full of her hair and twisted it before the first blow. His teeth was so bad they wiggled in his mouth when he growled. He eyed her up and down, but didn't initiate impact. There was a bang, but it wasn't her skull crushed. There was blood, but it wasn't oozing out of her face. Death wasn't going to be disappointed, because someone died, but it was not her. Doyle looked at Kimber's right hand, as the gun she was holding still had smoke coming from the barrel.

"Good ole back up pistol," she whispered as he crashed to the floor. "Die you bitch."

She moved herself forward and kicked Doyle in the face knocking out the rest of his teeth, and that's when she heard a muffled sound coming in through the shattered sheet-rock. The door popped opened behind her and a man stood in her field of vision. Back-up, too late, but it was there offering no comfort.

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