To kick off the 1983/1984 school year, we were supposed to pray for a mate, but I didn't believe it could be as easy as asking.

It was not the praying that was the problem. Praying was like walking, which I did all the time. I also bent all the time to pick up the add/drop slips that skated away from me across fake marble floors. Other times, I shopped for wristwatches, calendars and fudge in the campus bookstore, because they had fudge at this place as well as watches, and if there was nothing else that was great about this college, that alone was remarkable to me.

But back in the dorm I did not like to make a big show of kneeling with my back to my roommate. 

Because I had to watch her constantly.

Eve Winters was out on the patio, serving drinks, engaging in small talk with her husband's business associates, when she heard the loud sandpaper laughter that pierced her unconscious, let flow the terrifying memories, the horror of that night. Upon hearing it she froze at first, then knew exactly what to do. A shiver ran through her body as she walked slowly through the crowd, not wanting to look distressed, back to the house, where she entered her husband's study and opened the bottom drawer of the desk. She had never touched the gun before, had been afraid to. But she picked it up now and held it by its grip to see how it felt. She found several cartridges lying on the bottom of the drawer and, hands shaking (knowing that her husband never kept the gun loaded), managed to swing open the cylinder, slip in six cartridges, then close it all up again neat, before carefully placing the pistol back in the drawer.

The man is large, but he speaks softly. The dog is wary of a kick, but the smell of bacon fat on the outstretched handkerchief is too tempting, and it has been too long since her last meal. He strokes her and speaks in thick but kindly tones as she gobbles up her meal. Soon the dog is licking his face eagerly. The man has no trouble in persuading her to follow him.