I’m tossed down on the ground with a thud. I wait. It seems all I’ve been doing is waiting my whole life. Waiting for Michael to kill me, waiting for someone to rescue me, waiting to feel normal, waiting to feel alive, and waiting to die. That has been my life. Here in this moment I’ve come full circle. Only, this time I know that I can’t wait anymore. I can’t. I can’t wait for someone else to give me, my death. I can’t wait for a rescue. It ends here.
I hear talking off to my right. I can’t make out the words over the drumming pain. It doesn’t matter anyway. My hand pushes under my jacket to the inside pocket. It takes time, I don’t know how long exactly, but enough time to get my fingers and hand to cooperate and find the handle. My hands are covered in blood and the handle keeps slipping out of my grasp. Finally, I get it positioned just right and pull it out of the pocket and lay it under my breast. I do my best to work and try and get my thumb to hit the release button for the blade. I can’t find it, and I can’t see. I have no strength, so I have no idea if I will even be able to push it in. I want to scream at how useless it all seems. I try…I try…and I try. I just can’t seem to get it.
Then, I hear Michael’s voice, “Is she dead yet?”
“She’s not cold, though I don’t see how the bitch could still be breathing,” Donald answers.
“She’s like a fucking cockroach, that’s how,” I hear Michael answer and desperation swamps me.
With renewed strength, I push until I feel the spring snap and the blade unfold. It is Crusher’s hunting knife. I saw it before I left and had to take it. I had hoped to use it on Michael, but since that opportunity didn’t present itself, I have to do what I can.
I want to yell at Michael and give him a great big, fuck you. I can’t. I’m too weak and they might stop me before I can carry this out. All I can do is be satisfied with the fact that I am ending this. Me—not Michael. I’m taking the only thing from him that I can—his pleasure in taking my life.
I should have done it long ago. I just didn’t want to accept that it was my only choice. I’m glad I didn’t. If I had, I would have never met Zander. I would have never got to love him and somehow that is worth all the pain. I do wish I could see his face again, or hear his voice one more time, but perhaps its better this way.
With that thought, I summon up what strength I have left and plunge the knife into my chest. I was aiming for my heart. I don’t think it made it. My hands are shaky and so weak that I know instantly it didn’t do the ultimate damage, but I can feel the blood leaving my body and know it was enough.
“Fuck!” I hear someone growl and I could almost smile. It’s not physically possible even if I wasn’t tumbling into the darkness.
Chapter 38
Crusher
I’m living on fumes. I look like some motherfucking junkie. I can’t even remember the last time I ate or did any of the things that you normally do to prepare for the day. I don’t even care. I’ve been casing out this motherfucking barn for two days. With each hour that passes it feels like a piece of my soul is being chipped away. The woman I love could be dying, hell maybe she’s already dead, and I’m sitting in the weeds, twiddling my goddamn thumbs and waiting. I try not to imagine what they’re doing to her, but I’m failing. Each thing that comes to my mind is more horrific than the other and my own imagination is slowly driving me crazy.
I just pulled to the end of an old, forgotten road that leads to the barn. I went home last night. I didn’t want to, but I needed to refuel and see if there were any new leads at the club. It’s been two days and I can’t afford to waste more time. I need something to do. I need to find Dani. The problem is, I don’t have any more info and not a fucking source to find more. None. I pour a cup of coffee out of a thermos and watch as my hands shake. Jesus. I have to grip the thermos cup with both hands.
I know I’m fucked up. I know I haven’t been acting rationally. I keep asking myself would it have been different if I had talked to Dragon. Would he have listened when I told him that Kavanagh’s patsy did give me more information? Would Dragon admit he was wrong? The shit I’ve done…I don’t even recognize myself. I don’t know how I knew that Dani hadn’t got away. I just did. Sometimes her face would come to mind, and then I would think of my mom and the fucking shit she put up with and then Melly…and that horrible night when I found Melly with her brains blown out, lying on the floor beside that sick fucker of a father she had and I’d lose it.