The sky was pink, an effortlessly gorgeous shade of rose. The few clouds were cotton white and full of fluff mixed with careless wisps of condensation. A warm breeze swept over Tessa like a blanket, the warmth clung to her. Her golden hair still shone in the little lingering light left in what was fast becoming twilight and her basket was full. An entire steamy Florida day of picking in the blood orange groves, singing throughout, gathering fruit and saving peels for the next day’s tangy tarts and plump pastries. Her white dress fluttered in another breeze. She was almost out of the grove when a figure stepped out from behind a tree and into her path.
“Hey there Tessa.” She knew the voice before she saw the face. It was Luke. Of course it was, just like him to spoil her fruit. She had never liked him, and she’d told him so, explicitly, but he always persisted. “Thought I might find you out here.”
“Leave me alone Luke I haven’t got the time for you today.” Tessa replied briskly. She tried to leave but when she went to move past him he shoved her back to where she’d been standing. And she stood there, bewildered. Luke said nothing as he plucked a blood orange from a tree. He brought it to his nose and inhaled softly, but deeply; savoring the scent.
He began as he tossed the orange up in the air, catching it and throwing it again with ease and total control. “You know Tessa”
“Luke I’m sorry but I really must be going, if you’d jus-”
“No.” He spat sharply. “I been waitin’ a long, long time for you.” He nearly moaned the second “long”, drawing the bow across his vocal chords with longing and lust and contempt. He peeled the orange. Patiently tearing away the skin and exposing the sweet, succulent, aromatic, bare fruit underneath.
“Luke I-”
“Shhh” he cut her off again. “You’re not going anywhere.”  His gripped tightened so fiercely that his bare fingers dug in to the fruit. “I will have you.” He looked her dead in the eyes and bit savagely into the blood orange. He tore into the fruit with ferocity and the red juice flowed down his lips and chin and fell to the ground like drops of blood. And as his sick smile slithered slowly across his face, Tessa was consumed in his stare, his vast, feral, stalking stare. In his eyes, in his eyes she was lost. His sinister blue eyes as clear as her fate. His eyes were those of her darkest fears, the eyes that lurked in the blackest recesses of her nightmares. In these eyes she spiraled into chaos and endless crushing oblivion. The sky above her had turned to a dark luscious red in the waning light, and the clouds had blackened. And as the bone chilling wind of the night crept up Tessa’s spine, she knew would never pick blood oranges again.