Meet Tess Lee Fisher, a bitter loser who spends her days overeating in a Los Angeles slum and finds her solace in a fantasy world that eventually turns lethal.

PROLOGUE

Bingo! She'd found her at last. It hadn't been easy but she had stuck with it and persistence had finally paid off. The grossly overweight woman heaved herself up off the chair, which seemed to grow smaller every day, and grinned in satisfaction. Now that f**king bitch who had galled her for so long would get what was coming to her. She reached in her pocket and gently fingered the sharp stiletto. The night sounds of a city going to sleep faded around her. Soon it would be dawn.

CHAPTER ONE

From her window Tess Lee could see the lights of LA glinting like diamond eyes on the dark horizon. The Hollywood Hills crouched in the distance. Saturday night, and the usual steady stream of traffic wound its way past the slummy building in which she lived. They'd be off to do the bars, cinemas and theatres. She sighed and rummaged in the refrigerator for another snack. When was the last time she'd been out anywhere except to the corner grocery store? The noise from the neighbours was deafening. She beat on the ceiling with a broom handle. They beat right back again. She would have to call the manager, who was usually more drunk than sober. On the weekends he was always pissed.

She munched on a celery stick. Her weight had sky-rocketed recently, and she was trying to slow down on the pig-outs on potato chips and pretzels. She'd have to move, of course, it was really the only option. But to where that was the question? Tess Lee shuddered remembering how she'd holed up in an old warehouse before finding this place. Homelessness terrified her. The spectre of ending up a bag lady rose up to haunt her. She envisioned herself pushing an overladen shopping cart through the streets and bedding down in the subway.

Where had time gone? She thumbed through some photo albums. When did her pot smoking hippy days end and this long sojourn of dark nights close in? She compared a snapshot taken of her in Central Park some thirty years ago to a more recent photo. Oh my god! The years, every bitter one of them, had left their own vicious and indelible mark on what had once been a pretty face.

The refrigerator beckoned again. When Tess Lee got depressed like this food helped to drug the pain. This time she reached for the ice cream. Gulping it down in great spoonfuls she forced her scattered thoughts to focus on the one bright spot in her whole miserable existence. It let her be whoever she wanted to be and lash out her frustration and fury on a hostile world she blamed for all her woes. If it weren't for it she would have nothing.

She stuffed a glob of cheese in her mouth and wondered who would be there tonight. Hopefully someone after her own heart, it was more fun that way. She anticipated the thrill of picking out the victim and then ganging up on her for the chase. How many times had she done it? The fact that she'd got away with it thrilled her to the core. She'd have to be careful though. There were a couple of times she'd lost it and thought she'd gone too far. But no, the powers-that-be, the silly dorks, hadn't noticed.

She smirked and poured another glass of wine. She would have to be careful though. If they ever caught on and took action against her, she'd have nowhere to go and nothing to do. What so many of those idiots failed to understand -- they should be forced to walk a mile in my clogs, she decided grimly -- was that it was her whole life. There was nothing else, except the grim walls of this poky apartment which seemed to shake from the infernal din from the neighbours, and the reek of stale fish and cabbage leaching in from the hallway.

About me:

I write dark thrillers with a kinky side. Several of my short stories have been published by leading Mystery magazines. Now I'm pitching my first novel, THE BAG LADY, to publishers.