The wind in her hair felt good. The jeep handled easily. And it had a really nice sound system, she thought as she turned the volume full up. Some hard rock song was blasting about “wild and free”, and it suited her mood.
Lolly dared a coy smile as she passed an old blue car full of teenagers on the empty highway, cheering and hooting at her.
Men were an odd thing, she thought to herself.
And her mind returned to more sombre, dark paths.
The guard, Brent, and how easily she had persuaded him to get naked. She had to do that, to escape. And was it her fault he worked for as cruel an employer as Ramnes, who would suffer no mistake, no carelessness?
But the guy in the quarry…
Did she have to do that?
Didn’t leaving him to die make her just as bad Ramnes and all his little ‘army of darkness’? She frowned, chewing on her bottom lip. Tasting the stranger’s blood there still, Lolly frowned more.
It was too much. This sudden freedom, this sudden lack of care she could have.
There were no guards to watch over her, now. There was no Ramnes to chastise her with his every look and action.
She was just a girl, free and alone.
Alone, Lollyena thought. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? She had been alone so much, all her life alone in that huge castle of a mansion.
She brushed a piece of hair from her eyes, then reached over the dash to grab a pair of black sunglasses, putting them on.
She grinned.
Not bad, she thought, looking in the rear view mirror.
Between her and the now-distant blue car raced a police cruiser. Red lights flashing.
She turned down the cd player in the jeep, and heard the blaring siren call of the police car in pursuit.
Lollyena felt her heartbeat quicken and panic set in.
But soon, it was replaced with her new sense of steadfast calm and cool. She steered the jeep to the soft side of the road and turned the engine off.
The cruiser pulled over behind her, and the officer in the driver’s seat turned off the sirens, but kept the flashing lights on. Lolly waited in her seat, quietly.
On t.v., in situations like this, she would be asked for her driver’s license and registration, and maybe insurance papers, too. She chewed her lip. She obviously had none of those. Keeping an eye on the mirror, and watching as the officer took his time gathering up his note pad and ticket book, Lolly unclasped the glove compartment and searched with one hand for anything that looked official. Condoms still in their wrappers fell to the floor, along with some change, and a black book of phone numbers and addresses.
She found no papers.
Damn, she thought, putting a hand to her forehead.
Calm, Lollyena, calm. Just breathe your way through this.
There would be no need to hurt anyone, she tried to console herself. She was a young woman, and independent and confident. And she could get herself out of this.
When the officer came up next to her, she turned her face to him and smiled brightly.
“Hello there, ma’am. Do you have any idea what speed you were just going?”
The officer wasn’t even looking at her, just flipping through his pad.
Lolly waited.
Finally, hearing no response, he looked up and into her smiling face.
She pulled her sunglasses off, slowly, and dropped them to the seat beside her.
The officer seemed to chuckle, then dropped his eyes back to his pad, where he was writing something down.
“I’ll need to see your license, registration and any identification you have, please, ma’am.”
He stood back a bit, and took a look at the side of the jeep, then walked around to the front. He was writing down the license plate number. Lolly watched, gulping, as he held down the button on the side of the mouthpiece clipped to his collar. He was calling this in to the station.
Slowly, he walked back to her side of the car.
“This is Jim Anderson’s vehicle, ma’am. Can I ask how you came to be driving it, please?”
This was not good. No, this was not good at all.
“Ma’am? Could you step out of the vehicle please? Slowly. And put your hands on the side of the car, please.”
He closed the pad up and moved his hand subtly to his pistol holder, unclasping the cover.
Lolly watched him watching her watch his movements. Carefully, she stepped out of the jeep and closed the door, and turned around to lean against it.
She almost hoped her loose clothing and exposed skin would get some kind of reaction out of him. That his hands would suddenly grab her hips and grind her into his groin.
She could deal with that, she could work with that.
But instead, he felt along her sides, up and down, then over her behind, patting her down for concealed weapons.
She chewed her lip more, piercing it with a small fang. She was on the verge of panic again, and her teeth were showing her body’s excitement. She looked at the car.
The second officer, that she hadn’t noticed before, was sliding out of his seat and walking around the front of the car. The small grin he flashed her showed her that if he had been out here and alone, and had busted her for this ticket, things would not be turning out like they were.
Lollyena stared through him, thinking. Her guilt over the stranger named Jim Anderson, the owner of this white Jeep Wrangler without the top, swam up before her, making her dizzy. She didn’ t want to do wrong, and be just like Ramnes and the rest of her ‘people’.
The arresting officer took one of her hands and put it behind her back, talking to her in a monotone voice as he ‘read’ her her rights. She let him take her other hand as well, and shivered at the sharp click of the lock on the handcuffs as they closed around both her wrists.
Suddenly, the radios of both officers came to life. The dispatcher was responding to the information the first patrolman had sent in. Lolly felt a chill drip like poison down her spine.
“Black hair, styled geometrically….approximately 18-20 years of age….Caucasian….100lbs….wanted on possible charges of petty theft, and theft under $5000….reported by one….”
Lollyena didn’t have to hear the name to know.
Ramnes. This was his doing. He was embroiled in all forms of authority in this state, and now he had reported her description to the police. And they would bring her in, and he would come down to identify her. And he would have her, once again.
She couldn’t let that happen.
“Ma’am, it seems we are going to be taking you down to the station, likely to be printed and identified. Could you come with me, please?”
The patrolman had his hand on her arm, and was turning her towards the cruiser. The second officer smiled at her, a cocky smile. His arms were folded arrogantly across his chest.
“Maybe, if you are a lucky lil lady, that guy will forgive you…if you apologize real nice-like.”
He clucked his tongue at her and winked.
Lollyena turned her face to look at him directly.
And the change came over her, as quickly as a shadow cast when a light came on in a dark room.
Lunging, she plunged her mouth full of sharpened teeth into the officer’s face, tearing at his cheek and jaw. Before he could scream, she had busted free of the cuffs. Her claw came out, slicing sideways through the first officer’s neck. She memorized the look on his face as he dropped to the pavement, clutching his splurting skin where she had cut his jugular and veins.
Lolly reached down and slammed a closed fist into his chest, bruising his heart and stopping it completely.
The second officer had stumbled back against the hood of the police cruiser, trying to hold his broken jaw bone up to his face. She swatted the bone out of his hand and reached down. Cupping his groin in her hand, she gave a twist, and purred uncharacteristically as his pubic bone snapped. He fell to the sandy shoulder of the highway, unconscious.
But still alive, she snarled. She lifted a foot and stomped on his neck, crushing the back of his spine through his throat. And he stopped breathing.
One less thing to worry about.
Lollyena turned blazing yellow eyes to the sky. It was going to be dark in a few hours.
Covered with blood, she dragged the two patrolmen into their car, sitting them in their seats. Passersby would not think anything was up unless they stopped right at the car and looked around. And who would do that to a police cruiser on a deserted highway? People would just think they were doing a radar check or something.
Pieces of flesh and bone were all over her face. Without so much as a shudder, she cleaned herself off with the white shirt she had put on in the quarry, and tossed it in the back of the jeep.
She had no shirt to wear now. Frowning, letting her body calm down, she searched the police cruiser and came out with an official Arizona State Trooper bomber jacket. Lolly slipped it on over her naked chest and climbed into the jeep again.
There was no blood on the Wrangler. No more blood on her.
She peered at herself in the jeep’s rearview mirror, and dabbed delicately at a piece of red caught in the corner of her mouth. She completely ignored the silhouetted forms of the dead officers behind her in the cruiser.
Lolly looked over her shoulder. No traffic of course, but driving skills were an ingrained habit. She steered the jeep out onto the highway and turned the cd player back on.
“It’s my life….it’s now or never…I ain’t gonna live forever! I just wanna live while I’m alive!”
She bobbed her head to the tune, then, on an impulse, she reached into the back of the jeep behind her seat and pulled out Jim Anderson’s cowboy hat. She forced it down onto her head, and smiled at her reflection. Stepping on the gas, Lollyena drove farther and farther away from Phoenix, and away from Ramnes and the mansion.
“It’s my life…My heart is like an open highway…Like Tommy says, “I did it my way!” I ain’t gonna live my life a lie!
“It’s…my…life!”

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K.Skellington.
Copyright © 2001 [BloodWine Productions]. All rights reserved.
Revised: June 01, 2001 .