She slipped her feet out of her shoes on the welcome mat in front of her door and had just turned her key and grabbed the handle when the man appeared out of nowhere.

It all happened so fast.

Before Heloise had a chance to look back, he pounced on her from behind. He swung his right arm around her neck and held it in a deadlock with his left while he pushed her forcibly into her front hall. She dropped her purse and instinctively started hitting and clawing at his arm with both hands, but her blows bounced off him.

The man leaned back and picked her up so that she was dangling in the air for a moment. A searing pain pierced her neck as adrenaline surged through her body. It was as if time froze, as if she were hanging in the air with her legs wriggling in slow motion while all sound around her evaporated.

The man lowered her so that her feet touched the floor and loosened his hold a little—just enough that she was able to draw a gasping mouthful of air down into her lungs.

Then he tightened his hold again.

“Heloise,” he said, smelling the back of her head. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, but you wouldn’t listen.”

Her whole body was screaming; her skin, her blood, her muscles were shrieking in pain and desperation.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

The man pushed her further into the apartment.

She fell over the threshold on the way into the living room, and her legs dragged limply along behind her as he pulled her to the sofa and lay her on her stomach on the light-gray cotton-covered cushions without releasing his hold on her neck.

He put a knee on her back, and a piercing pain cut through her whole body. She tried to kick, to twist free of him, but with each move she made, he gained a harder, tighter hold.

“You should have minded your own business, Heloise.”

“Stop!” she managed to stammer. Her voice sounded like she was talking from inside a vacuum-sealed plastic bag.

The man didn’t stop.

Instead he put a hand on the back of her head and pushed her facedown, hard, into the sofa cushion as he brought his entire body weight down on her. Her lungs burned, and it felt like her head was coming loose from her body. As if it weren’t attached to her spine anymore.

Then she heard a sound, a weird sound that at first she couldn’t interpret. It sounded like a sea gull crying in the distance, a burbling cackle, and she realized it was laughter. The man was laughing. He kept pushing her facedown into the sofa and tightened his hold around her neck, and he laughed.

She knew right then that her life was over.