The headlights of the approaching decrepit red pickup truck beamed in through Amanda's bedroom window. Her eyes snapped open, but she remained perfectly still in bed. Her father, Gant, had said that he was coming back. Now he was here.

If Amanda had been younger than her eighteen years, she would have pulled the bedsheets up over her head. If she had more nerve, she would have run out the back door of the rickety-wooden Baskanville shack that she was forced to call home. But if she wanted to live, she had to follow Gant's instructions to a tee. He had made her memorize those demands the day after her mother's burial. That was eight years ago when Amanda was ten. And they were rules that Amanda had contested only once.

"A...man....da!" Gant shouted in a drunken slur from the front seat of the pickup. Then he belched and took another swig from the bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label Scotch in his hand.

Damn that's good.

A laughed escaped him as he exited the pickup and slammed the driver's door closed.

"'man...da," he called through giddiness, holding it steady as he lumbered his legs forward, moving his booted feet and unsteady six-foot, two-hundred and forty pound frame toward the house.

He was drunk. That was Gant. He always had to be drunk whenever The Incident was about to occur and he was going to take his daughter. And in order for him to cope with his actions in the morning--and every day in between--he had to be drunk. There was just no getting around the bottle for Gant. Not if he wanted to have fun.

Lying in wait for him, Amanda thought about closing her weary, light eyes. She could pretend to be asleep. The windows to her soul had seen so much already today. What other horrors were they going to witness before the night was over?

She finger brushed her long, brown, sweat-soaked hair from her face, and thought about escaping in her mind.

But despite Amanda's wish, she knew that closing her eyes was not acceptable behavior. Her peepers had to be open when Gant entered her room. She might have wanted to lapse into that natural coma called sleep, but she knew that she would pay a price for it if she did.

"I wish I were dead," she whispered weakly and brought her small-boned hands together. Setting the palm of her right hand over the knuckles of her left, she positioned them on the bedsheet at her waistline. Then she closed her eyes and thought more about death.

How long would it take? What would it feel like? Where would my soul go? I'm ready.

Then she sucked in a loud, deep breath of air. Her lungs quickly filled. Then, silence.

Holding still, Amanda allowed her petite body to feel as though it were lying in state. In her mind, she was dead.

But as the seconds ticked by, Amanda's casket pose did not remain. Her body started to quiver, the longer that she denied her lungs air.

Then her eyes snapped open. Her unblemished brow wrinkled. Her pug nose twitched. Her full lips quivered. Her angelic face expressed horror.

Desperately trying not to move, Amanda's face reddened.

Death, please come.

Amanda's body rocked. Then it shook. Then...a thrust of air burst from her mouth, forcing her to sit up in a wild body spasm gasping for oxygen. She was still very much alive.

But for how long?

She had already earlier angered Gant by dropping--and breaking--the last bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label Scotch. All she had to do was to retrieve it from the living-room cabinet and carry it to him in bed. How could she have so completely mishandled the bottle and dropped it? Had her being all thumbs been subconsciously deliberate?...

If Amanda had planned to get through tonight without further abuse, she would have to remain obedient. She would have to continue being the little girl that Gant knew and "loved," since she was a decade old. As long as she allowed him to have his way with her, things would be all right in the morning. As long as she permitted him to satisfy himself by way of her, she would live. That was Gant's unspoken guarantee. So far, he hadn't gone back on his word.

As she lay immobile now, Amanda could hear, through her open window, the sluggish thuds of her father's booted feet. The tall, untamed crabgrass that she never cut on her side of the house, rustled and crunched under the weight of her six-foot, two-hundred-and-forty-pound seeker.

Although consciously unaware of just why she never trimmed the area, subconsciously Amanda knew exactly why she allowed the stalks to flourish and fill with bugs and crawly critters of the night. Escaping her father's attacks, thus far, had been impossible. But the sounds of the grass as the weight of her father's body crunched down on it, provided Amanda with a sense radar. It enabled her to realize just how far or near he was to her bedroom. It made The Incident, for her, that much closer to being over.

Amanda's theory wasn't much, and perhaps her logic was faulty, but it was all that she had. Since the first time Gant had touched her delicate virgin skin, she was never right. What further logic could she be expected to follow?

"A-m-a-n-d-a," Gant called again, his voice scaling higher this time with every letter of her verbalized name.

Her neck whipped right, with her head fixed on her pillow, as her fear-filled eyes stared toward the sound of his voice.

Stumbling back two steps, and now blocking the pale-glowering moon rays from entering Amanda's window, Gant took a breath, then another swig of scotch from the bottle. "I'm home," he teased, swiping his shirt sleeve across his lip, to clear the slobber of liquid around them, as he stepped and tripped forward. "Ready or not," he sang out, as the top half of his body tilted left, then right, his words ceasing as his focus intensified on his measured steps that were advancing his position.

Amanda closed her sullen eyes. If she thought that saying a prayer would help, she would have immediately recited one. But eight years ago, Amanda had lost her desire to pray. If there was a God, she believed, such a Supreme Being would never allow this to happen. What a fool she had been, she thought, to have called on God for assistance when The Incident had first started.

She knew better now.

In her mind, praying was a fruitless endeavor. That's why she had totally thrown God out of her mind. She had no faith or belief in a Supreme Being. The Hail Mary was the last prayer she ever said, and that was over the grave of her mother, the day before The Incident first occurred.

"You get ready now, honey," Gant managed out in a drunken slur, as he got ever so close to the house's front porch door.

It was times like this, when Gant appeared to be more than just drunk that scared Amanda most. She could handle drunk--sloshed was something entirely different. He was mean when he was sloshed, and Amanda could only wonder what he was going to do to her this time.

If only I had some kind of power; some kind of special thought process that would enable me to zap the excitement from his head.

But Amanda didn't have such a power. She didn't even have the mindset to grab hold of something to kill him. Like a hammer from Gant's toolbox, to bash in his sadistic skull. Like the shotgun displayed in the living room case, to blast the evil man's heart out. She was too afraid to do either of those things today, and had good reason to be fearful.

When Amanda had been eleven years old, she had attempted to use a knife on Gant. He had been sloshed that day, too, and very scary.

Still, she'd thought that she had it all perfectly planned. The twelve-inch carving knife had been under the pillow of her bed that day. But when Gant had been inside of her from below, and she had removed her hands from his thick, muscular chest, he had opened his eyes and seen her reaching behind his head.

Having noticed Gant's suspicious face, Amanda needed to divert his attention and had wildly gyrated her hips to manipulate him to ecstacy. Hoping that his ejaculation would momentarily freeze him, and she'd have time enough to retrieve the knife and plunge it into his heart, she'd given it all her grandest effort.

But Amanda's attempt at sexual distraction had failed back then. Gant, wise to her plan, had viciously taken a hold of her wrists that day, and as he eyed her wildly, got off inside of her. When finished, he had tossed her like a rag doll to the floor, retrieved the knife she was going to use on him, and stepped to her naked, shaking body. Amanda had pleaded for him not to hurt her, but Gant had ignored her screams.

He had cut circles around both of her nipples that night, while she cowered in the corner. And as he had admired the blood trickling down his daughter's white, flat chest, he had threatened her with a torturous death, if she ever attempted to kill him again.

The screen door slammed. Amanda's eyes shot open as she snapped her look to her bedroom door. It was closed.

A wary grin of thanks crossed her face through a showing fear.

Another obstacle. Another barrier. Another thing that he'll have to deal with before he reaches me.

Amanda made an effort to swallow, but her mouth was dry. She could feel a cough developing in the depths of her throat, but she dare not cough. Even though the dry tickle scratched to escape, Amanda knew that if it did, there would be a penalty to pay.

Except for sexual moans, sounds such as coughing, sneezing, farting, burping, wheezing, crying, or screaming--when Gant was about to take her--were unacceptable to him. He had told her this, when she had started to cry the first time he had taken her at the age of ten. Verboten noises or sounds, such as those, he had said, would make The Incident more difficult, and had further explained that she was the woman of the house now, and had responsibilities to please her man.

Too confused at ten years old to know what was going on, Amanda had believed Gant's lie. How could she not? At that time, she had still considered him her father and looked up to him. Today she knew better--he was a pure evil bastard! But what could she do about it?

Amanda drowned her budding cough within the constricted muscles of her neck.

There was a brief silence. Then she heard the floorboards in the living room creak. She knew that her father was getting closer.

Gant peered over the living room with his glassy dark eyes. His lids were beginning to close. His face was worn and more red than usual from the scotch he had already consumed. He looked down at the bottle and noticed that it still contained a quarter more liquid. He knew that he would have to consume it--that was his own rule.

What kind of a man would I be, if I couldn't finish it?

But with his mind cluttered by the portion of the devil's drink already in his system, Gant suddenly felt like sleeping. He shuffled one foot outward, but remained stationary.

The couch is here somewhere.

With his right hand, he removed the dirty, grease-riddled, red baseball cap from his head, and scratched his large belly. Wow, he mused silently, internally reminiscing about his appearance. How in shape I used to be, when The Incident with Amanda first began.

He tossed his no-frills, worn cap to his right. He was hoping that it would tell him where the sofa was. When he heard a soft "thump," he suspected the cap fell atop it and he grinned. Then he drank down the last bit of scotch, and dropped the glass container. It hit the wooden floor with a "clunk" that broke the eerie living-room silence.

Amanda jumped. She knew now that her father was finished with the drinking phase of The Incident. She quivered under her sheet. The hollow rolling sound of the glass bottle across the living-room floor chilled her.

Then the bottle stopped its progression with a clang, as its body ran into a far leg of the kitchen table. The sound perked Gant's ears. He felt his over-hanging gut again. He could swear that he forgot something. But what?

He sighed a worn, harsh breath, then began to laugh as he passed his right hand over his beaten face. "I'm sloshed," he said and tried refocusing his look in the direction of the couch. He'd be comfortably resting on it in no time, he hoped.

Then Gant's face displayed an odd demeanor. The nostrils of his bulbous nose began to wiggle, as he sniffed the air around him, and immediately remembered what he had forgotten--Amanda. Her sweet scent had seeped through the space between her door and its jamb. As it pleasantly filled the living room and tapped his nose, Gant picked up her fragrance as efficiently as a hound dog chasing a fugitive. Suddenly, intoxication no longer impaled him, and he wondered if a pursuing search dog ever got as excited about scent retrieval, as he did when it came to Amanda's.

However, if the dog did, Gant figured, the hound's reward could not have been nearly as fulfilling. Amanda was truly one of a kind, and she was all his.

Gant spun away from heading toward the couch, and fell flat on his ass. On the hardwood of the floor, he laughed wildly, but quickly stopped. Amanda, he remembered again. He raised himself wearily and now faced the direction of his daughter's room. Stepping toward the door, he reached for its brass-colored knob. Getting hold of it, he turned it clockwise. A click disengaged the latch. He pushed the door open as it creaked, and stepped over the threshold of the room.

In the darkness of Amanda's room, the night air was thick and hot. Beads of sweat were dripping from her brow, but she did not wipe them clear. She knew that Gant wanted her sweaty.

It wasn't that Gant enjoyed the heat--he hated it. Matter of fact, it was what he disliked most about his job in the summer months. Installing and repairing neighborhood mailboxes, in the small Baskanville town in the winter was all right, but the summer was too damn hot in Baskanville for him.

Gant had gotten heat exhaustion three times last year. That made him curse every day the sun shined on him. His room had air conditioning, but not Amanda's. That was the only way she would sweat profusely, and abundant sweat--when mixed with her natural scent--turned the drunk on even more.