Die a Little Longer

For a full minute the maniac stared at Maida with devouring fury. Then his face disappeared and a thick right arm slid through the hole, groping for the wedged shelf. His fingers grasped it and jerked upward so that it gave a quarter inch.

Maida threw herself at the board, slammed it back in place and tried to claw the groping arm away from it. But the moment she touched the arm, his hand flashed from its grip on the shelf to clamp around her wrist.

Sinking to her knees, Maida screamed. The sound cascaded from the walls, echoed and re-echoed around her as she poured out her terror in scream after scream.

She felt herself jerked to her feet, and her screams faded to animal-like whimpers as the madman’s arm slowly withdrew from the hole, drawing hers steadily toward it. She saw he intended to pull her arm through to his own side, and in desperation she grasped his forearm with her other hand and sank her teeth into the wrist.

He let go so suddenly she stumbled backward and sprawled full-length upon the floor. Half-stunned by the fall and nauseated by the taste of blood on her lips, she simply lay there listening to the strangled hiss of his breathing.

Then the axe smashed against the door, smashed again and again until the panel shattered in a dozen places and finally fell apart, leaving a jagged opening two-feet square. Maida managed to get to her feet, and she cowered toward the window as his head and shoulders thrust through the opening and he began to pull himself into the room.

Without conscious thought she flung one leg over the window sill, felt the burglar’s walk beneath her foot and swung the other leg through. As the maniac’s hands touched the floor and his feet wriggled through the hole, Maida moved precariously along the slanting roof edge toward her bedroom window. Halfway she glanced at the ground twenty feet below, then stopped with her body pressed against the outer wall as dizziness flowed over her. She thought she was going to fall, but was shocked from the notion by the sudden appearance of the lunatic’s head from the bathroom window.

With a burst of speed she edged away from him until her hand touched the sill outside her bedroom. His head disappeared.

Quickly she moved back along the burglar’s walk toward the bathroom. His head and shoulders appeared around the corner of the window she had just left, one arm moved in a long arc and the axe spun past her so closely the handle grazed her back.

Almost as a continuation of the axe-throwing motion, he swung himself outside and side-stepped toward her rapidly. She barely had time to fall head-first into the bathroom when his hand was reaching for the sill.

With the unthinking instinct of a cornered animal she knew she could never escape through flight. The same primitive instinct made her swivel without rising from her knees, grasp the inner window’s lower edge and slam it upon his hand.

The madman shrieked in enraged pain, but held his one-handed grip. As the fingers of his free hand curled beneath the window and forced it up again, Maida lifted the heavy shelf from the floor and swung it over her head like an unwieldy club. Now both his hands grasped the window sill preparatory to his vault into the room.

Maida slammed the shelf down across his knuckles.

His hands jerked back and he stood erect on the burglar’s walk, his arms gyroscoping to maintain balance. Slower and slower they circled as he recovered, stopped his teetering and again leaned inward toward the window.

Maida smashed the linen closet shelf through the glass of both panes squarely into his face. As he tumbled backward, his feet flew up over his head in a sickening half somersault, and he disappeared head down.

When she could bring herself to peer over the edge of the window, he lay on the ground with his head impossibly bent under his arm, like a sleeping bird.

Slowly Maida straightened herself. She pushed her hands downward along her thighs, smoothing her house dress. Poisedly she descended the stairs, politely edging past the policeman with drawn gun and open mouth whom she met halfway down.

At the bottom of the stairs stood Tom, his mouth as open as the policeman’s. Maida held out one hand to her husband as though offering it to be kissed.

“He only wanted a drink of water,” she said in a high voice.

She began to laugh hysterically.