Pieces of Hate Read Online Free PDF

as she drove through the parking lot toward the exit.
    That was when it hit her. It was more of a seizure than a memory because it was so physical, so consuming, as if she were being violently shaken by some monstrous hand.
    Her foot stomped on the brake pedal and the car jerked to a halt in the parking lot as she clutched the wheel with both pale-knuckled hands and stared wide-eyed out the windshield . . .
    She was surrounded by a green light, sickening green, a green that seemed to soak into her skin and gather in her stomach, nauseating her. Lying on her back, she stared upward through the green haze to a curved metal ceiling. Then the faces appeared above her, all at once. They leaned forward and looked down at her with their huge heads and huge eyes and no mouths. And then, one of them touched her . . .
    It stopped, leaving Margaret as she had been, gripping the wheel and staring straight ahead, her foot pressing on the brake, the engine running, the radio playing a song by Harry Nilsson.
    A car behind her honked and she flinched, looked in the rearview mirror, and pulled her Lexus out of the way. The man driving the car behind her flipped her off as he passed, but Margaret didn’t notice. She was still wide-eyed and slack-jawed, stunned by the runaway train that had just roared through her mind.
    It was a fragment of memory, a piece of what had happened to her last night.
    “It was real,” she whispered to herself. “Real!”
    Still shaky, Margaret left the parking lot and drove to her hotel . . .
     
    It happened again as she was on her way to bed.
    She’d cleaned up, brushed her hair, her teeth, and was walking toward the bed when she was, once again, engulfed by a memory so vivid that she could feel it . . .
    The creatures lean forward until their faces are only inches from her body, from her face. She tries to scream but has no voice at all, and hardly any breath. The oversized hands touch her lightly, everywhere; the long, thin fingers crawl over her body like the legs of tarantulas, exploring, touching, examining. All the while, she is surrounded by a thick, unsettling silence. She watches as the creatures exchange glances and nod occasionally, as if they are speaking to one another. Then, very slowly, all those heads turn toward her and look directly into her eyes . .  
    When it was gone — No, Margaret, thought, it’s not gone, not gone at all, it just stopped for now! — she was curled up on the pillows, her back pressed hard against the headboard of the bed, both hands clamped over her mouth. Her eyes were gaping and darting in all directions, searching the room to make sure she was alone.
    She relaxed very slowly, a bit at a time, until she was lying on the bed, taking deep breaths.
    “It was . . . real,” she whispered to herself, her eyes still wide. “Real. I didn’t dream it. It . . . really . . . happened.”
    Margaret stared up at the ceiling, suddenly exhausted, drained, but unable to close her eyes. Eventually, with the lights still on, she began to doze . . .
     
    7
     
    Margaret slept late, mostly because she’d slept very little the night before. After untangling herself from the bedclothes, she cleaned up and dressed quickly, and it wasn’t until she put on her makeup that she noticed something different about herself.
    She couldn’t put her finger on it at first, and simply stared at her reflection in the mirror, frowning. Then she leaned forward, moved her face close to the glass and touched a fingertip to the skin just beneath one eye. Had that puffy little moon-shaped patch of flesh gotten a little smaller . . . maybe even a little less puffy?
    Finally, Margaret smiled, laughed quietly at herself, stood up straight again and continued putting on her makeup.
    “What’re you gonna do, complain?” she muttered to herself. “You get two hours of sleep and still look good, what’s to complain about? Hell, they weren’t even two consecutive hours.”
    She went to the