Although SOS officially is just a distinctive Morse code sequence that is not an abbreviation for anything, in popular usage we associate it with phrases such as "Save Our Souls".

***

The sky in the west is the shade of blushing peaches, and ashen everywhere else. The castle gives up the heat its stones soaked during the day in a shimmering haze. The leaves don't stir, but the creatures of the night—crickets and bats—are watching from the thickening shadows. They'll eventually blend into one black mass. The way it's going, tonight will be a moonless one.

I should have kept my metallic gown on, for this backdrop is perfect for a gothic horror film. My artistic sense urges me to scream or flung my mouth open in a silent scream. The latter is more prudent, because the very real monsters are after me. Worse than monsters even. Men.

Fighting of shivers, I stuff an energy bar into my mouth and chew. A century (or so) ago, one wise hag at the cemetery--what was her name? Claudia? Clara? Yes, Clara--fed me this same brand of bar and told me that the Tangorello were a bunch of psychopaths. If I wasn't so taken by Scali's glamor, maybe I would have taken the insane psychopath part to heart. Too late for regrets, yet not too late to wake up to the truth. The allure of thrills is completely dead to me now. I've reformed.

I trod on, lagging the suitcase behind me. Its little wheels struggle with grass on the make-shift parking lot. There, the huge black trucks, made bulkier by my damaged vision, dwarf my VW Polo. Is it even a surprise that my enemies are the lonely-guy-driving-an-SUV type?

At a guess, Scali's ride is a black beemer, because if he were a car, that's how he would look. Slick, muscle-bound and... wait a minute! The mafia cars are not as new and shiny as I thought they would be. One has a windshield blasted out, and there are...

Dear God! The cars and SUVs are riddled with bullet holes.

I rub a shiver from my forearms. Steady, steady... There was a flurry of gunshots before the men entered the house. All those bullets fired had to end somewhere, so they ended in the cars. This grassy lawn served as a battlefield. There are probably cartridges all under my feet.

Even my rental Polo has a bullet hole, poor thing. A bullet hole! A real, no-nonsense bullet hole. They ain't as cute as the bullet-holes on the gag stickers you put over your bumper. The one on Polo is an ugly, rough-edged hole. Why are fakes always prettier than the originals?

Okay, I have to focus... Creepy's key set makes a small pickup truck beep. Blue tarp covers the load on the back of it. I peek: extra fuel for the generator in canisters, propane tanks, cans of paint. So, the mafiosi are getting ready to give this cursed piece of real estate a face-lift. Maybe that's why they had ready cash lying around, because, you know, the contractors are the same anywhere you go.

Well, whatever. Creepy's car won't be my get-away vehicle, and I doubt anyone would use it to pursue me. But just in case, I lock it and stuff Creepy's key back into my pocket.

Next, I need to collect the box of files I rescued from Angelo's dungeon. No way, I'm leaving without them. They're proof this nightmarish place exists in addition to the photos I took.

I get into the Polo and gun it across the lawn.

The beams of its headlights crisscross the uneven ground, turning every hollow into a chasm, and every molehill—into Mount Everest. Then the yellow light scatters in the rising mist cloaking the castle. The Polo soldiers on, and, as a reward, I park it at a dangerous angle at the lip of the moat.

"Sorry, my wounded steed. We'll be on tarmac in no time, I promise." I pat the door, then slip-slide the last hundred yards toward the wall. The box of the old files still sits where I left it, thank goodness. I don't need an extra challenge!

With a sigh of relief, I grab the box, and pause, cradling it to my chest. The castle towers above me, dead-silent, ominous.

If Scali lost his one versus three deathmatch...

No gunfire. No anguished cries. No police sirens. Just this cursed silence.

What are you waiting for? Move! my inner drill sergeant yells. So what if you never know if he survived?

Oh, Scali, Scali. Damn him for his stubbornness! And good looks. And other things I loved. Love. But it will pass.

I startle out of my stupor and make the short climb back to the car. Its engine roars pitifully as the Polo crawls onto the lawn.

It's time to step on the gas, but my foot hovers over the breaks, then stomps on it again.

Outside of the headlights, it's now so dark, I'm as blind as the bats cruising around on velvet wings.

However, the blue tarp blazes brighter than an emergency flare in my memory. And what's underneath it blazes in my mind as well. The imaginary light bulb over my head turns into a lighthouse.

Scali, I reason, had promised me to blowtorch this wicked place, but:

1. Scali could be dead by now, and

2. If he isn't dead, if he'd somehow won the fight against his wicked half-brother, it's still not guaranteed he'll torch the place.

As much as I want to deny it, the moment Scali's Tangorello boss—say his dear old Uncle Frankie—tells him to refurbish Angelo's freakish dungeon, he will. He'll fold. I just know it.

Like all men, Scali needs a nudge to do the right thing. Granted, torch the castle, while you're in France is a little more unconventional than honey, could you pick some milk, but on the basic level I'm going to do the same damn thing.

I'll send him a clear message, a reminder of his promise. Only, it wouldn't be a text or—a horror of horrors!—an email.

No, it would be a message he can't ignore.

My tenuous grip on reality weakness.

I have this pseudo extra-corporeal experience, watching myself drive to the mafia's cars, walk to the pickup truck, dig up a boulder, unlock the driver's door, toss the keys on the front seat, push the start button and jam the gas with my rock.

As the truck rolls toward the castle, my soul reunites with my flesh-and-bones. Soul, mind and body scream to get into the Polo moving at maximum speed away from the castle, before the rigged up truck full of flammable materials hits the stone wall of the castle head-on.

The sound of it gaining speed straightens the hair at the base of my neck into spikes, possibly permanently. The second wind pumps through my lungs, cleanses the muscle of all fatigue. The legs propel me while the brain is merely a happy passenger.

I hop inside the Polo and floor it.

The explosion, when the truck hits the wall, nearly lifts me off the seat.

The hand of God, that protects the drunks and the fools, keeps the raining stone chunks from landing on my darting vehicle. My mouth is hanging open in a terrified scream, but I'm deafened by the bang in addition to being half-blind.

Gasoline and propane on that truck made a potent blend. They blast through the wall and set the stone aflame, something I didn't think was possible. In my rearview mirror, through the billowing clouds, the chain reaction increases the gaping void in the wall. The fire devours everything it digs its orange teeth in. The flames leap higher and higher in my rear-view mirror, until there's the second sunset of the day in the sky.

Good grief! I didn't mean to do this. I thought the truck would hit the wall with a bang, maybe catch fire itself, but nothing like this!

My next few minutes unfold like a living reel from an action movie. A battered, hysterical woman escapes the explosion at her heels. I despised scenes like that, because it looked unrealistic as fuck. As a participant, in real life, I hate it even more, for it is a million times more unpleasant. Dread spreads through me like sticky molasses. Deafened, I whimper all the way, hiccup, sniffle my runny nose. Escaping is ugly as fuck.

The fire backlights my Polo when I throw open the gate on the dirt road with numb fingers. I can still see smoke and flame leaping above the treetops as the tires relax on the smooth tarmac after so much rough riding on the gravel.

This pillar of flame would send the emergency vehicles scampering to the site of the blaze. And the first responders are bound to find the corpses in the woods. Gosh, if I didn't set Scali on fire, I'd just handed him over to the authorities along with the dead bodies of his latest victims. It was self-defense and they were all ruthless killers, but Scali is a ruthless killer himself, so they could call it revenge killings. What have I done?

An urge to turn around and save Scali nearly overpowers my common sense. But he could be dead. And if he is not dead, my judgment is so impaired, I don't even know right from wrong any longer. It's best to leave his fate in his own hands, or in the hands of justice, or in the hands of God. I'm simply not fit to do anything but run at the moment.

I shift on my whooped butt, and the pain starts in the skin, seeps all the way into the bones, then shoots for the heart. Every cubic inch of me, every single molecule aches.

Oh, Matteo, Matteo, Matteo... Please, don't be dead. And forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.

But I stay on the highway.