"Don't do it."
     Jameson stood in front of his captors, his form clearly illuminated by the bright lights of the ‘59 Chrysler Imperial that they had all just drove up in - he in the trunk, the others in the front.  "For the love of God, don't kill me."  He shivered in the fall air.  Several leaves tugged at his shoelaces as the wind blew them past.
     One of the figures who yanked him off the street earlier coughed - a dry rasping wheeze.  A small light flared in Jameson's view as the cougher lit a cigarette.  Jameson watched the match grind into darkness beneath the smoker's heel.
     "What do you want?"  Jameson felt his voice crack from the fear roiling beneath his skin.  "You can have my money!  All of it!  Reaching into his pocket he pulled out his wallet.  "Here!  There's a hundred, twenty, forty, fifty, fifty-six dollars!"  His trembling fingers somehow grasped the bills and held them out in surrender to the men.  Jameson squinted to see if there was any movement to take his offering.
     The four stood there, exhaust billowing around them.
     "Look, my Visa has 3000 dollars on it!  I mean, there's 3 thousand left in my credit limit!"  Jameson began to stammer, like he always did when frightened.  "H-h-here's my American Express, take it!"  His hands were outstretched to the headlights.
     The only response he heard was the muted rumble of the Chrysler's big 400 engine.
     "What do you want?" he cried.  Jameson was near tears, his light shirt soaked in sweat despite the chill of the night.  His glasses slid off the glistening bridge of his nose and fell down onto the dark, leaf-covered ground.
     Jameson fell to his knees, scrabbling to find them.  "I can't see without my glasses!  My glasses!"  His hands and knees chilled at the touch of the cold earth as he reached about, searching for the missing eyepieces.  Dirt clumped under his fingernails as fingers clenched, grabbing at the unseen.  Dust and leaves scattered away until Jameson finally made the discovery, and hastily replaced them on his face.
     When he looked up, he saw that the four men were now standing immediately in front of him.
     Still kneeling, "w-w-what do you want?" he pleaded.  His stuttering grew worse.  His body began to shake in the cold night air, and he noticed for the first time that his breath was visible as he exhaled.  He held up the tangle of money, credit cards, dirt, and leaves again.  He slowly let them fall from his fingers as he finally grasped that the men were not being tempted.  Jameson swallowed.  He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.
     He squirmed under the gaze of his captors, humiliating himself, a dark stain growing in the headlights.  Jameson began to back up slowly, one knee after another, his glance shifting rapidly from one form to another to ensure that they were not closing in on him.
     With his pant legs slid up around his shins, and covered in dirt, his back came up against a barrier.  With an audible gasp of air, Jameson recoiled, his head flying around to see what he had come against.  A glance told him he had backed into a signpost.  He swung his head back around to view his aggressors.  "Uhhh-okay, not money?  What else?  P-p-publicity?  Is that it?  I work in a newspaper- I can get you in!  NO problem!"  Jameson grasped at this faint straw.  "What group do you represent?  I'll make sure you're dealt with good - nothing bad, I promise..."  His voice trailed off in the darkness.
     The men, as ever, remained silent.
     Jameson rose to his feet, sliding his back up against the splitting wood of the old sign.  He ignored the slivers he gained through his thin shirt.  Weakly, his hands reached around to find some source of support.  The old wood gave little.
     "What are you waiting for?" he shouted at them.  "H-h-here I am.  Do whatever it is you're going to do!"
     Still the figures stood unmoved in the headlights.
     Through the haze of fear it occurred to Jameson that the men appeared to be waiting for something to happen.  Something for him to do.  He looked around, trying to see if there was something obvious he had missed.  The glare of the headlights illuminated little but the silhouettes of his captors, himself, the dead leaves and twigs of nearby trees, and the signpost.
     The signpost?
     Where was he, anyway?  It had been a number of hours since he had been grabbed, walking to his car after working late on tomorrow's edition.  Thrown into the back of that old black car, he had been bounced and driven for an eternity before being cast out on the ground here.
     Cautiously he risked a glance up at the top of the sign.  He couldn't quite make it out.  The men still hadn't moved when he turned his head, so he tried another look.
     Narrows 23.  The paint was peeling, and wood cracked with age, but Jameson was sure he read it correctly.
     Narrows?  Home?  Suddenly he knew where he was - close to where he had grown up.  The Bush, as he and his friends used to call it - a big area of skinny, dusty roads and overgrown poplar trees that no one ever came to.  Narrows was his hometown, and The Bush was where he and his friends had partied and...
     He knew why he was here.  The sheer unknown terror that had gripped him for hours began to release.
     "Is that why you're doing this?"  Cockiness started to replace the fear.  "That's it?  UNBELIEVABLE!  You think I'm going to give her an apology?  You boys are screwed up, if you think that, " Jameson waved his arm towards the men.  "I tell you she wanted it."  Jameson put on what could have been perceived as a strut.
     "She told you to take me here and scare me, didn't she?  Well, it almost worked.  But no way.  That night, I could tell.  No girl comes to The Bush without knowing what's going on.  That "I'm not ready' thing was just some hard-to-get put on.  She wanted it!"
     "Do you hear me, you slut?" he shouted.  "You wanted it.  I know you did!  You aren't getting any apology from me."  He addressed the treetops that were marginally darker than the sky they were against.  "I KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED, AND I GAVE IT TO YOU.  A little beer, a little talk - what were you doing at the fire anyways if you weren't looking?"  Jameson addressed his captors, standing before him.  "She was looking.  Dressed in those jeans, tied t-shirt.  She was looking!" he shouted again.  "And you go through this? To make me apologize?  There isn't any apology, forget it."  He crossed his arms in defiance, standing straight against the silent stare of the four men.
     A minute passed by as Jameson watched his watchers.
     Without a word the four men turned and got back into the car.  The green glow of the dash failed to illuminate the faces of any of the men as they turned the long vehicle around.  Twin red taillights, perched high above the trunk on tall wings, grew steadily smaller.
     "Yah!  Might as well go!"  Jameson called after them.  "Leave! Go!  Try and scare me? HAH!    Tell her she was no good!  Tell her she...tell her.. "  He let his sentence hang in the air as relief and exhaustion combined to take his breath away.  He stood, gathering his thoughts in the near-pitch blackness of the night.  The lousy witch - trying after all these years to get back at him.  She had a long memory.
     Jameson began walking down the road towards Narrows.  One foot in front of the other, he felt the chill of the air beginning to seep into his arms and legs.  He rubbed them to get his circulation going again.
     He didn't feel the bullet crash into his skull.

     Jameson opened his eyes almost immediately.  He was sure that he had been shot.  He thought he could still hear the echo.  Jameson reached up, and his forehead felt wet.  Why he wasn't feeling any pain, he wasn't quite sure.  The cold, however, was another story.  A bitter, numbing chill  reached into his body, and licked at his heart.
     He stood up, wrapped his clothes around as best he could, and began walking again towards Narrows.  He took two steps, and fell flat on his face.  His legs felt as though they were tied somehow.  He stood again, and tried moving his body towards Narrows.  Again he fell.  Reaching down, his cold hands searched around his ankles for some sort of restriction.
     Nothing.  Just socks and runners.  He shivered.
     With a growing feeling of dread, he shook his right leg up and down.
     And in the darkness, he heard the clinking of a chain, clanking in rhythm to his moving appendage.   Again Jameson searched his feet for some sort of manacle.  Unsuccessful.
     Standing, and near panic, he stumbled his way back to the signpost, thirty steps.  He kept going, down the other road in the T intersection.  Hoping against hope that something would be different.
     At about thirty steps, he fell against the frozen ground, gravel grinding into his palms.  His ears, unable to ignore the sound, insisted he listen again to the clanking chains.
     He opened his mouth and screamed.

     A lone woman came out of the trees to stand over Jameson's dead body.  A recently fired 30.06 hunting rifle with an oversize nightscope was slung over her shoulder.  She looked down at    Jameson, and the pool of blood that was forming around his head, and she spat.  Wordlessly she turned and began walking down the road.  A long black 1959 Chrysler Imperial rumbled towards her, and when it stopped, she climbed in.