She frantically reached up with her left hand and grabbed the thick, coarse rope above her head. She pulled with all her strength to at least take some of the weight off her throat, but more importantly it gave her the ability to more easily twist her shoulders so she could reach down with her right hand. She wasn’t able to keep the rope from strangling her, but it at least helped ease the excruciating pain a little so that she could focus on what she needed to do.
With her right shoulder tipped downward, Angela bent her right leg at the hip and knee, as if she were squatting, to get her boot up closer to her hand. She tensed her neck muscles as hard as she could to try to help blood get to her brain before she blacked out.
Although her whole arm was tingling like it had fallen asleep, nerve pain shot down the length of it, so moving it was difficult. She wanted to scream at how hard it was to reach down. She needed to reach down if she was going to save herself. Her tingling fingers were going numb.
Holding her leg up with the little strength she had left, she felt around blindly, desperately, until the tips of her fingers found the handle of the knife down inside the top of her boot. It was a moment of giddy success amid the icy dread of death cloaking her in darkness.
She reminded herself that she was going to lose consciousness and die if she didn’t hurry.
As frenzied as she was at not being able to breathe, Angela forced herself to be as deliberately careful as possible as she worked the knife up out of the boot. She knew that once she got it partway out of the sheath, if the knife slipped and fell from her numb, tingling fingers, she would lose her only chance to live.
It was so frightening to be hanging by her neck, and so difficult to try to pull the knife up, that part of her wanted to give up. It seemed so inviting to simply let the darkness smother her. It would be over, then. If she gave up, she would have everlasting peace. There would be no more pain. No one would ever again be able to hurt her. As her vision and her mind dimmed, that option seemed ever more inviting.
It felt as if the peaceful realm of the dead was calling to her, whispering promises that if she simply gave up, she could be forever at peace and safe. If she just stopped struggling it would only be a moment longer and there would be no more pain.
A moment longer and she could be with her grandparents again.
But some part of her deep down inside wanted to live.
Move!
She didn’t want to be one of those women who died, never to see their killers punished. She didn’t want this to be the way she died. She wanted her life to be more, to mean something.
She didn’t want those men to win. She had made a promise that she was going to kill them. She couldn’t do that if she gave in to the sweet whispers.
Even as the specter of that inviting end to the pain called to her, with her last, waning bit of strength, Angela’s weak fingers kept working at the knife until she wiggled the end of the handle up far enough to be clear of the top of her boot. She struggled to muster the power to lift her heavy leg up even more, to bring her boot up closer to her quivering fingers. It felt as if it were made of lead.
Her lungs burned with pain. Her brain could hardly think of anything other than the desperate want of air and the simultaneous desire to give up. She had never known how much it hurt to strangle to death. She knew now what the women in those visions felt when their killers strangled them to death.
Tears ran down her cheeks as she felt herself losing the battle.
She was so close, yet so far.
She just didn’t have enough left in her to do it.
And then, her fingers closed, almost reflexively, around the handle and she pulled the knife free.
She would have screamed in joy as she finally grasped the handle in her fist, but she wasn’t able to breathe, much less make a sound. For a very brief instant she held the blade up before her eyes in her trembling hand just so that she would believe she truly had it in her fist.
And then, her eyes closed.
She no longer had the strength to keep them open.
Eyes closed, she clenched her teeth, straining the muscles in her neck in an attempt to keep the noose from crushing her windpipe and from cutting off the blood supply to her brain. Once she had stretched her arms above her head, she held the rope with her left hand as she started dragging the blade across the rope with her other hand. Her knives were always razor sharp. She heard some of the fibers make a snapping sound as they tore. That sound urged her on to find the strength she didn’t think she had to keep sawing at the tough rope.
Even though Angela sawed as fast as she could, it wasn’t very fast, and consciousness continued to fade away. Tears of frustration seeped from her closed eyes.
Then, when the blade had cut partway through, the rotting fibers of the rope that were left couldn’t hold her weight and they suddenly ripped apart.
Angela dropped heavily to the ground. Her legs were unable to hold her weight. She collapsed to her knees.
The pressure was off, but she found that the rope was still choking her. When they had hoisted her up it had tightened the rope around her neck as well as the knot.
She was horrified to realize that cutting herself down wasn’t enough. She still couldn’t get any air. Her eyes felt like they were bulging out of her head.
She told herself that she had done her best.
It just wasn’t good enough.
With that thought, she remembered the smug faces of the men as they looked back at her as they were leaving, knowing that they had won.
She didn’t want that to be it. She didn’t want them to win.
On her knees, bent forward, Angela felt blindly behind her neck until she located the knot. With the trembling fingers of her left hand she guided the blade onto the knot. She carefully but urgently worked with both hands to saw back and forth to cut the knot, the fingers of one hand grasping the sides of the blade and helping to push as she pulled the knife back and forth with the other hand.
The fibers of the straining rope finally started to pull apart. She could feel it in her neck when some of the strands popped apart; then at last they all separated, undoing the knot and finally releasing the pressure on her throat.
Angela flopped back onto the moving pad, arms splayed out, loudly gasping in breath after breath.
She lay there for a long time, simply breathing in and out, with hoarse gasps, letting the life come back into her. Once she had gotten the air that she so desperately needed, she was finally able to pull the remainder of the noose away from her neck.
The men had left her to die. Instead, she was alive—in crippling pain, but alive.
TWENTY-FIVE
For quite a while, Angela lay on the greasy moving pad where she had been raped, gasping in air, sucking in life, getting her breath, both from the hanging and from the sheer terror of the ordeal.
Tears ran down her face but this time they were tears of joy. She had beaten her would-be killers. She had beaten all four of the bastards.
After a time, she made herself get up on wobbly legs. She couldn’t straighten up all the way because her abdomen hurt so much from the blows. She feared something inside was broken. Blood dripped from her chin to the concrete floor, leaving growing pools of vivid red. Her face throbbed in pain. She looked around and finally saw her shorts and panties lying against one of the shelves where Miguel had thrown them.
Angela shuffled over to her clothes. She pulled a blanket from the gray metal shelf. Blood was splattered all down her legs from the beating.
She stood for a few minutes to regain enough strength, then used the blanket to wipe off the semen running down her thighs before she pulled on her underpants and shorts. Her top had been torn off. She put it on with trembling hands and tied the front shut as best she could.
She almost shouted with excitement when she found the keys to her truck still in the pocket of her shorts. She wasn’t sure she could drive, but she knew she had to.
The door grated on the buckled concrete when she slowly pushed it open just enough to carefully poke her head out. She was worried that one of the men might have remained behind to stand guard.