Amanda had always loved her nighttime walks with Tory. The golden retriever, who she had owned for a little more than four years by that point, was her best friend and protector in the city, a place she had never felt completely comfortable since moving back in with her parents after college. Yes, she knew that Manhattan was safe, and particularly the block on 95th between her Madison Avenue apartment and the park, but having Tory next to her had always made her feel better, especially in the darker parts of Central Park.
This particular night, Amanda stepped outside her apartment, and greeted Michael, the doorman, with a quick “brrr” and rub of her arms. She’d known Michael Torrano for almost her entire life, ever since her parents had first moved into the building, and by now he was as much family to her as anyone in the city. “The kind of family I only say a handful of words to each day,” Amanda thought to herself. After her parents had passed away, it was Michael’s presence in the building that kept the place feeling like home.
“Have a good one, and keep warm, Miss Cox,” Michael said with a smile, as she turned right off the carpeted walkway and headed towards the park. Tory, who was always reluctant to leave Mike’s side, came along behind her with a quick yank on her leash. “Let’s make this a quick one,” Amanda mumbled in the direction of the dog, her Hunter boots sloshing through the cold, grey slush from the light snow that past weekend. Work had kept her later than usual, and it was already past midnight.
Upon entering the park, Tory made a beeline for her favorite tree: a sycamore that had stood lonely in an open clearing since Amanda had first come there with her parents’ dog, Wiley, decades before. She felt the leash tugging in her hand, Tory straining to get to the base of the tree as soon as she could.
“Ok Tory, just stay close,” Amanda whispered, her teeth chattering in the 34 degree cold. She knew she should have worn more than a thin jacket, but she hadn’t originally thought this was going to be more than a quick jaunt around the block, with all she had on her mind.
She dropped the leash and heard Tory tear across the unlit lawn. “Why hasn’t he called,” Amanda thought to herself, taking a seat on the best lit park bench she could see. It had been two days since she’d told Jim, her boyfriend of four years, that she had made out with a coworker at a holiday party. He had responded without a single word, simply walking out of her apartment and keeping radio silent for over 48 hours.
It was unlike him, if she was being honest with herself, to not take the opportunity of her infidelity to lecture and berate her into giving him something he wanted: more time with his friends, less nagging about chores, sex even. Those things she could live with, since they’d mean he was still interested in her. But this was different. This felt like Jim seizing the moment to get out of the relationship, all over a stupid makeout! She was sure he’d done worse, but she’d been the stupid one and told him the truth.
At that thought, Amanda felt a chill run up her spine. It had been minutes, a lot of them she was sure, since she’d heard Tory panting over by the big tree. She glanced over in her direction, and was relieved to see the pink reflection of her leash glinting by one of the sycamore’s large roots.
“Tory,” she called, “come back to mommy so we can get out of the cold!”
At that moment a brisk wind blew across the field and seemed to fill her coat, practically forcing her to gasp out loud.
“Jesus fuck-” Amanda paused. Was that right? Had she just heard that right? It had sounded almost like a quick dog yelp and….
“Tory! Get over here right now!” She looked at the tree and there was no pink, no reflective glint, and by the time she knew what she was doing she was sprinting across the lawn, her steps kicking up cold mush and drowning out her raspy, labored breathing.
“Tory, please, please be behind that tree,” she said out loud, slowing down slightly as she made her way to the base of the sycamore. She was partially around it when she paused, only slightly, and thought morbidly about the killer likely waiting on the other side. Jim flashed into her mind, and so did Tory, and the funny way that Michael wore his scarf on particularly cold nights, wrapped three or four times around his neck like one of those African tribal women, and she peered around the corner and prayed that the only thing there was Tory.
What she saw nearly made her vomit on the spot. A dark smear ran from the base of the tree to the opposite path and then disappeared behind a park shed. Her hands went immediately to her pockets for her phone, but all they felt was the cold fabric of her jeans and the thigh beneath. “Fuck fuck fuck,” she said desperately to herself. She’d left the phone siting on the park bench, still open to her last pathetic text to Jim from earlier that night: “sex tonite?”
Amanda gauged the distance between the sycamore and the bench she’d been sitting on and took off, retracing her steps through the mud and praying she could get a hold of someone before it was too late for Tory. She closed the distance to the small puddle of light in no time, and was just on the edge of the yellow glow when she was plunged into total darkness – all of the streetlights had gone out – and she was left staring at the glowing screen of her iPhone, which would have been comforting had she not been getting a call from an unknown number.
Her breath caught in her throat as she clumsily thumbed the screen and answered the call, the phone shaking in her fingers and her heart exploding out of her chest.
“H-h-hello?”
“Pretty fucked up to leave your dog for dead, don’t you think?” responded a cold, raspy voice on the other end.
Amanda’s phone dropped to the ground and her vision momentarily blacked out. “This can’t be happening,” she thought to herself.
And then she began to run.
She ran back down the path, stumbling up the steps to the edges of the park and out onto 5th Avenue, where she took a moment to catch her breath. Her dinner splashed at her feet as her gasps for air turned to nausea. Her dog was dead. She was sure of it. Not only was she dead, but some fucked up psycho knew her phone number.
Amanda was thinking about how badly she needed to get home when she glanced down the sidewalk to her left, and saw a man walking towards her with what looked like some kind of musical instrument in his hand. She racked her brain, trying to figure out what it was. Some kind of old harp? Another weird, African string instrument?
In fact, when Amanda really thought about it, it looked a lot like one of the saws that her dad had used at their country house in Connecticut to cut branches off of trees. Right when Amanda realized that the man was, in fact, holding a saw, the streetlight above him flickered to life and illuminated his tan trench coat, which Amanda could now see was covered in bright red smears of blood.
“Ahh – ” she started to scream, turning to her right, but her screams were immediately muffled by a gloved hand pressing over her mouth and nose from behind, covering her with a sticky liquid and shocking her nostrils with the sickly smell of iron. “Tory’s blood,” she thought, biting down on the man’s fingers, hoping for all it was worth that he’d loosen his grip and let her get away.
“Not so fast,” whispered the second man’s voice in her ear, and she felt herself being dragged back into the park, back into the cover of darkness.
Amanda thrashed about with all of her might, but could do nothing to free herself as she was dragged by the head back down towards Tory, who at this point she knew had to be dead. Her eyes darted wildly about, looking for the man with the saw – so long as his partner stayed behind her, out of her eyesight, the first man was much more threatening.
The other man never came. As she was being taken further into the park, the man stumbled against a trashcan, momentarily causing him to loosen his grip and giving Amanda the opportunity to stomp on his foot with her boot and wriggle free. She shoved the man off of her and sprinted faster than she’d ever sprinted away from that spot, making it out of the park and continuing down 95th Street to the doorway of her building.
“MICHAEL! MICHAEL PLEASE HELP ME HELP ME,” she screamed, breaking down into rasping sobs and collapsing to the floor on the inside of the doorway. “TORY’S DEAD!”
“Hey, hey calm down” Michael responded, bending over and clasping her shoulders, “I’m sure Tory’s not dead yet.”
“No, you don’t understand, she was – what do you mean… yet?” she asked, slowly raising her eyes from the floor.
It took a moment for her brain to adjust, but when it did she found herself unable to speak for the second time that night. The arms that were holding her shoulders, and the body behind them, were splattered with blood.
Amanda looked up at Michael and found herself face to face with a madman, mouth spread wide in a violent grin and face covered with blood. She finally found her voice just as a long, thin knife was plunged into her throat, causing her to choke on her screams and spraying Michael with another thin coating of red mist. Her eyes locked with his, pleading for some pity, or at least a quick end to the pain. Her right hand found itself wrapped around the knife handle, fighting the doorman’s fingers for control of the blade, but his grip was too strong and she could feel herself getting weaker.
“I have to stay awake,” Amanda thought to herself, “if only to be with Tory one last time.” She could feel herself losing blood faster than she’d thought possible, the liquid now pooling around her legs in a warm, sticky puddle. She’d been stupid to makeout with that guy, she told herself with pity. Jim would still be with her, and maybe none of this would have happened. “Wait,” she thought, slipping in and out of consciousness, “where is Jim?”
“There!” she tried to shout, her throat gurgling blood as she willed herself to speak. Jim! He had come after all! She saw him, her boyfriend, walk through the doors, bend down next to her, and stroke her hair.
Amanda’s eyes bulged in a desperate attempt to get him to realize the danger they were both in. “Michael – he’s right there!” she screamed, but all that came out was a slow, sad bubbling. She didn’t understand – Jim had known Michael for years at this point, but that didn’t mean he should ignore the blood, and the knife! “If only he’d take me back,” she thought, clasping at his arm, and as she looked down towards the floor she again saw the weirdly familiar, oddly shaped serrated object in his hand.
“No,” she thought, “no no no. What is Jim doing with the saw?” She felt Michael finally pull the knife from her throat, and heard a small belch of blood come out with it.
Jim looked at her with a mixture of disdain and pity, taking the knife from his partner. “You’re pathetic.” Amanda tried to say something, to apologize for what she’d done, to beg for her life, but all she could muster was a whimper as her boyfriend stabbed the knife directly into her chest.
Amanda felt her heart explode, and she was plunged into darkness once and for all.
“You didn’t actually hurt the dog, right?” Michael asked Jim, wiping off his hands on Amanda’s blood-drenched shirt. “I really love that dog.”
“Don’t worry man,” responded Jim, the sounds of sirens closing in on them. “I would never hurt Tory.”