While She Was Out Read Online Free PDF

the insurance company wouldn’t be happy. The entire side would need a new paint job.
    â€œSort of,” she said.
    â€œAre you hurt?”
    To top it all off, she had felt the slow stickiness between her legs as she’d come up the walk. Terrific. She could hardly wait for the cramps to intensify.
    â€œHurt?” She shook her head. No. “How are the twins?”
    â€œOh, they’re in bed. I checked a half hour ago. They’re asleep.”
    â€œGood.” Della heard sirens in the distance, getting louder, nearing the neighborhood. Probably the police had found her driver’s license in Chuckie’s pocket. She’d forgotten that.
    â€œSo,” said Kenneth. It was obvious to Della that he didn’t know at this point whether to be angry, solicitous or funny. “What’d you bring me from the mall?”
    Della’s right hand was nestled in her jacket pocket. She felt the solid bulk, the cool grip of the pistol.
    Outside, the volume of sirens increased.
    She touched the trigger. She withdrew her hand from the pocket and aimed the pistol at Kenneth. He looked back at her strangely.
    The sirens went past. Through the window, Della caught a glimpse of a speeding ambulance. The sound Dopplered down to a silence as distant as the dream that flashed through her head.
    Della pulled the trigger and the
click
seemed to echo through the entire house.
    Shocked, Kenneth stared at the barrel of the gun, then up at her eyes. It was okay. She’d counted the shots. Just like in the movies.
    â€œI think,” Della said to her husband, “that we need to talk.”

Afterword:
While I Was Out
    Along with such works as
Shark,
I’ll admit that
While She Was Out is
one of my favorites of my own stories. A long time ago (well, nearly fifteen years), Kris Rusch was putting together the very first of the twelve hardbound Pulphouse anthologies and asked me for a contribution. I tend to say
yes
to editors when they do that sort of thing, usually before I ever really consider what I’m getting into. After committing myself to Ms. Rusch, I then let almost all my allowed time go by because of flop sweat. It was panic time. I knew this was going to be a showcase volume; I frankly didn’t know what the heck I could write that would fit in.
    Then came the morning when I tried to park at Cinderella City, a now defunct and razed Denver mall that once was the commercial showcase of the city. The parking lot was packed as I cruised the rows like a shark looking for chum. Then I thought I saw an open space. I swung around the end of a van and stopped—my intended space was actually one of two parking places taken up by a huge and well-dented old sedan. Grumbling—well. to be truthful, cursing in colorful terms—I kept cruising and eventually found a vacant spot about twelve miles out from the mall door. Hey, it was good exercise hoofing my way in. As it happened, I passed the decrepit vehicle that had fooled me. That’s when I thought seriously about leaving a nasty note about learning manners and sticking it under a wiper blade.
    The thing about fantasies is that many of us elaborate on things we’ve never really done in real life. But if we just had the opportunity...and the gumption. And that’s the underpinning of
While She Was Out.
    In her introduction to
While She Was Out
in 1991’s
The Best of Pulphouse,
Kris wrote: “The story is tough, yet sensitive, just like we wanted the magazine to be.” Tough, yet sensitive. Thank you, Ms. Rusch.
    All these years now, I’ve resisted the perverse impulse to put that on my business card.
    Time has demonstrated to me that Della’s story struck a popular chord. Maybe part of it’s because the plot uses a familiar (and fairly paranoid) theme of entrapment and loss of control. Male and female alike, most of us are leery of ending up through terrible mischance in such a situation of jeopardy. But