Lori

Back to the wall and eyes fixed on the door, Lori shook an oily strand of hair from her face and ignored her bladder’s scream for relief. With the bathroom at the end of the hall, she had no way out if he came in while she was back there. She sighed, curled a leg to sit on her foot, and grieved the end of the short-lived reprieve the security system had offered.

Now that the court psychologist had passed the good news on to her prosecutor - Joe is a sociopath and nothing will stop a true sociopath - she regretted the grocery and insurance money she had wasted on lock changes and a security system. It wasn’t very comforting to know the legal system couldn’t stop violent men when they labeled them and predicted their next crimes.

It’s hard to pee with a phone in one hand and the butcher knife in the other anyway. Impossible to shower with both hands full. The bladder would have to understand until she found new courage.

Three jobs. Damn him. He had caused her to lose three jobs and now she was too nutzo to concentrate, even if someone would hire her. Mr. Johnson knew how badly she needed the money. He also knew it wasn’t her fault the lunatic kept coming into the store to harass her while she worked. Much as she wanted to resent him for firing her, she couldn’t really blame Mr. Johnson. His customers shouldn’t have to dodge sociopaths when they came in to pay for gas or pick up a bag of chips.

Angela had used absences as a reason to let her go, like she wanted her to come in with black eyes and broken ribs. “It would be different if it wasn’t so soon after the week off with the bleeding ulcer,” Angela had explained. “Or if it hadn’t fallen in the same evaluation period with the dislocated shoulder.” The action was mandatory under company policy, not an option. Angela was sorry and even called a time or two to check on her after she left.

Thomas had flat out given her an ultimatum. Leave Joe or quit. He was tired of the personal phone calls. He wouldn’t listen when Lori explained she had left Joe, but that only caused him to call more often. Even when she refused to accept the calls, Thomas insisted Joe still disrupted the office and it wasn’t fair to the other employees or to the company.

Her parents wouldn’t take her back again, especially without a job. Joe wrecked their house the last time, throwing bricks through the window and driving across the lawn. He scared her younger sister and threatened her parents. Who cold blame them for not wanting a repeat performance?

God, she had to pee so bad it made her head hurt.

He should be off work now. If he stopped at the bar, she would have a one-hour window of freedom. That’s how long it usually took him to either start a fight or become so obnoxious Fred had to call him down and he’d leave the bar, sulking. He used to come home and take it out on her. The restraining order put an end to that, but they told her it was only temporary. Eventually, he’d stop caring about the order and come back anyway, madder than ever. First, he’d cut her face, and then he’d kill her. Can court psychologists really predict such things? She’d be foolish to discount it, crazy as it seemed.

Fifteen minutes, she promised her bladder. In fifteen minutes, she would call the bar and find out if he was there. If so, she’d dash to the bathroom. Later, she would worry about the house payment.

Maybe they were right; she should leave town and start over somewhere else where he couldn’t find her. It just didn’t seem fair that she should have to leave her life behind because he was a sociopath. Shouldn’t he have to leave?