It was going to be the trip of a lifetime. A half-emptied fifth of courage perched on the seat beside him, Kyle bulldozed his way through the pea soup fog and rounded a curve. His headlights shone on a buck with a majestic six-point antler rack, and a doe with her attractive brown coat shrouded by the damp mist. The deer nibbled on clover growing rampant in a pasture ahead of him.

Behind the lea an imperial stand of gnarled oaks stretched skyward. Kyle didn't have time to retrieve his Browning hunting rifle and bag a wall-mounted trophy. The buck would live to see the fiery sunrise blaze the eastern horizon come the crack of dawn, which was a far cry more than Kyle promised himself.

"Damn!" Kyle cursed and punched the steering wheel, "All I'd need is one shot and you'd be in my freezer."

Overhead, a ferocious gully washer appeared. The cloudburst filled the ditches on both sides of the narrow road. The windshield wipers on Kyle's car swooshed back and forth. Often he'd heard these storms referred to as frog stranglers or duck drowners.

Four hundred horses thundered under the car's hood as Kyle danced down Highway 82. The powder blue Corvette zoomed around a series of switchbacks. Soon, Kyle would reach his destination, his muddled mind on the burden at hand.

Anxious, Kyle sang a song to himself, "Someone's out to get me. Where am I gonna hide? It's the beast in the cellar. We'll take it all in stride. And if I can't escape him, I'll commit suicide."

The old house was isolated in the middle of a brushwood thicket at the foot of Wolf Mountain. Like roux over a blue flame, quadruplet Doric pilasters ornamented the oversized piazza of the dreary foursquare. A solitary peak and dual red sides that gabled downward, highlighted its summit.

The Corvette jostled as Kyle travelled the rut-filled dirt path leading away from the highway to the house. He grasped the steering wheel with two white-knuckled hands and fought the suspension's desire to veer off course. Kyle feared a tire would pop, or the frame bend, as he maneuvered the car over the treacherous terrain. By a skinny margin he avoided sideswiping the lone juniper tree that edged the secluded path. When the residence came in view, Kyle dimmed the vehicle's headlights and quelled the car's engine.

"Thank you, Sergeant Anderson, for the stealth tactics you taught me in the Kuwait desert," he said out loud.

The Corvette rested beside a ramshackled barn. As Kyle shimmied through an unlatched window of the basement, he felt like an old Stradivarius soon to be put away, but he'd never be played again.

Kyle sat the gas can he'd retrieved from the trunk of the vehicle on a bedraggled redwood workbench in the far corner of the room. Flaked paint embossed its top, and a couple chunks of wood were missing.

Kyle reminded himself, "Recoup the flask upon completion of your tribulation."

Hushed, he skittered upstairs, safeguarding his footsteps to prevent the ancient flight from groaning. In his hand he held a pearl-handled knife. Kyle fancied the weapon and the ease with which the shank slashed. He halted at the master bedroom door.

Oblivious to Kyle's presence, Susan slumbered in the weathered bed. For a moment, Kyle listened to her soft breathing. He loved her exquisite enchantment. Dignified and self-contained, the cherubic Aphrodite reposed beneath the comforting air of a decorative ceiling fan that cast an ambient light.

"You were always silent as a baby's whisper," he stated.

Like a tiger ambushed its prey, the hunter sprang. A burst of lightning darted through the opened window of the room and a hound wailed in the distance. Spooked awake, Susan recoiled in the bed and shrieked out a blood-curdling yell.

Kyle planted the palm of his hand over her mouth. Susan couldn't breathe. Her baby blues bulged. The stiletto in Kyle's hand gleamed and parted her sheer negligee down the middle. Straddling her, Kyle raped his conquered victim.

"I promised you I'd find you no matter where you tried to hide from me and when I did I'd filet you alive!" he growled.

"Why are you doing this to me?" Susan sniveled.

"Happy birthday, Susan. Too bad you won't celebrate any more, you cheating slut! You're gonna suffer a slow and painful death!"

Panic-stricken, Susan plucked the Tiffany lamp off the nightstand and swung it at Kyle's head. The blow drew blood. In a rage, Kyle batted the lamp aside. As the shade sailed across the room and the base fractured into small pieces, an explosive clap of thunder boomed.

Twenty-seven times, once for each year of her age, Kyle's knife rose and plunged deeper and deeper into Susan's torso. Her violent, harrowed, death screams fell silent on Kyle's ears. The kill completed, Kyle turned the wedding picture of the two of them Susan kept on the nightstand face down.

Susan's dismemberment commenced. Upon completion of the brutal act, Kyle slathered the bloody knife onto the remnants of her nightgown. He resheathed the blade, returned to the basement and recaptured the can of gasoline he'd left on the redwood bench earlier. Kyle unscrewed the black cap off the container. The imprinted word "FLAMMABLE" delighted him. A sinister smile creased his face.

Kyle splashed the liquid contents around the cellar and climbed the staircase. He struck a match and tossed the lit igniter into a puddle of petroleum at the bottom of the stairs. The room engulfed in flames. Kyle removed the wedding ring from his finger and pitched the gold band into the inferno.

Apathetic, Kyle strolled to his Corvette. With a prodigious smirk on his face, he hurried away from the scene. Soon, like his memory of Susan, the fragile tinderbox would be reduced to ashes.

It was going to be the trip of a lifetime.