Chained (Caged #2) by D.H. Sidebottom
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
—Helen Keller
HE WALKED IN QUIETLY, SIGHED, and picked up the mail from my doormat. His feet were loud as they padded across the carpet and I squinted when he pulled open the curtains and light spilled into my lounge. Turning, he jumped and gasped as his eyes widened on me.
“Jesus, Klo!” I hated that he called me Klo. Hated it. “What the fuck?”
He stood regarding me quietly as if he was frightened to come any closer – that was mainly because I had a gun pointed at his head from where I sat on my sofa.
Point and click, he’d said. Point and click.
“Hello, Richard.”
He paused, his brow pinching as he tried to get a read of me. “What’s going on?”
Clicking my tongue, I smiled, but it wasn’t at all welcoming. “How did you get in?”
His eyes flashed. How stupid was I? “You gave me a key, remember?”
Slowly shaking my head at his lie, I chuckled. “That all you got? I gave you a key? Try again, Richard. Or should we even the odds? You call me Samantha and I’ll call you Robert.”
Fear caught his breath and he licked his dry lips.
Point and click. Simple, he’d said. Just point and click.
“Where is he?”
Shaking his head, he frowned, “I don’t know…”
He didn’t say any more. His blood sprayed across my lovely cream curtains when I forced a bullet straight through the middle of his forehead.
Apparently it was as easy as just point and click.
Slowly loading another bullet into the pistol, I smiled, gently stroking across the cold sheath of metal.
And then I sat.
And I waited.
For Anderson.
Day turned to night, and then back to day.
I knew he would come; in my heart, I knew it. I was prey to him, and he would hunt me down for the rest of my life. I was his toy, his plaything to abuse and hurt. To twist within his grip and then toss into the dirt where he believed I belonged. Maybe I did, but fuck, I wouldn’t go without a fight.
So as I sat in the dark for those long hours, staring at the blue, bloating face of Richard as his blood painted my carpet like a modern art canvas. I was calm and so very relaxed. More sure of nothing else in my sorry life.
It was funny, really. I’d fought my past, my childhood, since the care system had transformed Samantha Rowan to Kloe Grant. I’d lied to myself, refused the acceptance that maybe could have fixed something so unfixable. I hadn’t allowed that little girl access to my emotions and my mind, and she’d wanted to retell her story but I’d refused to let her remind me of those dark days. I’d hunted for the stars in the black night. I’d looked for the dimmest light in the black tunnel and prayed for quiet in the midst of the storm in my heart
Yet now I stood in the storm as it saturated me with its carnage and hatred, and I granted Samantha Rowan freedom.
At 10.47pm, two days later, Anderson finally walked through my front door.
He closed the door behind him, turned, and jolted in surprise when he saw the gun in my hand pointed directly at his face. I stood firm but my resolve, for the swiftest moment, slipped. The storm in his vivid green eyes was wild and undiluted, the passion that always structured him intense and open as he looked at me.
He smirked, the cruel sneer making my fingers tighten around the handle of the gun. “Ohh, Kloe.” His eyes dropped to the gun I was so desperately trying to hold steady, and then back up to my eyes. “You do realise that before you can take another breath, I can have that gun out of your hand and so far up your pretty little cunt that you’ll be begging me to fire the fucking thing.”
He took a step towards me and I fired. The bullet embedded into the wall beside his head. Shock covered his face but then he smiled. “I’m not sure whether I’m proud of you, or surprised you’re that fucking stupid.”
“Stupid?” I scoffed as I stepped to the side and farther away from him. My arms were locked in front of me, my knuckles white with the fierce grip around the metal I held. “Oh, I’ve definitely been very stupid.”
As he stepped to the side, Richard’s body came in to sight. He ground his teeth together, his jaw twitching angrily when his furious glare returned to me. “Did he touch you?”
I was confused by his question and for a minute I faltered. “What? Why do you care?”
It was his turn to look confused. “Because if he did then I’d trade my soul in to give him life just so I can kill him all over again. Yet I won’t be so quick about it.”