How the hell had he found her?
Her heart thundered like a herd of galloping zebras.
“I was hoping you’d have a message for me.” Richard said. “What a shame.”
He seemed to be speaking directly to her tits. Or maybe her shirt. But why would he do that?
Richard stepped further into the room and he seemed to grow larger with each step. It was obvious that he felt powerful, completely in control of the situation. And, in a way, he was. She knew she didn’t have the physical strength to fend off his attacks when they came. She’d been down that road already. No, she needed some way to get to that knife. Some weakness she could exploit.
“I don’t know whether to fuck you and kill you,” Richard said, the words slightly slurred through his busted lips, “or kill you and fuck you.”
His laughter filled the room again as if he’d just told the joke of a lifetime. But it ended as abruptly as if he’d choked it off.
“But maybe I’m thinking I should just outright kill you.”
Polly had backed up to the point that she’d bumped against Mrs. Haversham’s desk.
Richard came closer still and she could now see the large bulge in the front of his pants.
“I’m thinking that might just be the thing to do, you little cock-tease bitch.”
That was it. His weakness. Now, she only had to work it to her advantage. She pushed her revulsion deep down within herself, tucked it away in a cold little spot somewhere behind her stomach.
She slowly wetted her lips with the tip of her tongue.
“Now, dearie, you don’t really want to do that do you? Not before you’ve had a little taste of this.”
She slid her hands seductively along the curves of her breasts, down her sides, to her hips.
There was a sharp intake of breath from Richard and he stopped for a moment.
“I shouldn’t have fought you back there, but I was scared. Because of Jane, see….”
“Jane’s dead.”
The statement was so cold, so as-a-matter-of-fact that for a moment her mind balked. But she knew she had to keep going, had to play this scene out to its final conclusion. They words were hard to say, but necessary.
“Good. Now there’s nothing… no one to get in our way, Richard, and…”
“Richard is dead!” he bellowed.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry. I’ll call you whatever you want.”
She tried her best to act simpering, subservient. Totally enthralled like a groupie in the presence of a rock star.
Sitting down on the edge of the desk she slipped out of the t-shirt and tossed it to the side. Licked her lips again and leaned back on the cool wood as her fingertips traced circular patterns over her bra.
“Come on, baby. Let’s do it. I want you inside me.”
For a moment Richard seemed to teeter on indecision. He started forward but then stopped. Started and stopped.
She moaned, really turning up the juice on her performance as she arched her back slightly.
“Oh god, I’m so wet…”
One hand over the mouth. Giggle. Shy. Coy.
“I need you, Richard. I need a big strong man like you
“I told you, call me….”
“I’ll call you anything you want, sugar, just do me. Do me hard.”
She’d finally pushed him over the edge. He came rushing at the desk and Polly held her breath, waiting to see if he were buying into all of this. Or if he really was coming to kill her.
He towered above her, staring down, practically panting through his nose, eye ablaze with some strange glow she’d only seen that one time before. In the kitchen….
His hand balled into a fist which he pulled up to chest level and his nostrils flared.
But then the hand opened and he was squeezing her breast so roughly it felt as if he were attempting to rip it off her chest.
“Be gentle.” she whispered.
“No. I’ll be whatever I want.
He lowered his face toward her chest, wanting to smell that scent… the wildflowers and spring rain. Never noticing her hand as it crept across the surface of the desk.
“Richard?”
It was a light, sing-song tone but anger flared within him.
“I told you, call me… “
His bellow morphed into a scream as Polly rammed the ends of the little flags directly into his eyes. The sharp tips, like tiny spears, ripped into the tissue easily and they were spaced apart just enough so that each one plunged into a separate socket. Blood and some sort of milky white fluid oozed from the twin wounds as Richard reeled backward, screaming in agony.
Ripping the flags out of his eyes, he stumbled about the room, tripping over desks, falling, struggling to regain footing as he slid on pencils and books and loose sheets of paper from the toppled desktops.
Polly skirted around the perimeter of the room, over to the little bookshelf. The knife felt cool and natural in her hand. She watched as Richard spun in drunken circles, screaming repeatedly:
Timing it just right, Polly dashed in and lunged with the knife, driving it deep within his back, near the left kidney. She pulled it out, ducked low beneath his swinging arms, and grasping it’s hilt with both hand, plunged it upward with all her strength.
No words now, only animal howls of pain as Polly stabbed the blade into his groin. Over. And over. And over.
Richard fell to the floor, cupping the shreds of his mutilated manhood and Polly dropped down, driving one knee into his throat. And then the knife was nothing more than a silver blur as it sliced the tip of his nose, jabbed into his cheek, plunged into the gore-filled eye socket.
And then she realized she was screaming, too:
She stood and kicked him in the side of the head once. And then, pointing the knife downward, she dropped again and the blade disappeared deep into his chest.
He was moving so very slowly now. The life draining out of him. Sprays of blood coming up with his weak coughs. The wheezing sound of chest wounds as he struggled for breath.
She leaned in close to his ear and whispered.
“How bad do you want me now, Richard?”
He tried to say something, to form words, but there was only a gurgle from somewhere within his chest.
“Oh, I’m sorry…”
She gave the knife in his chest a little twist.
“…
She’d watched him die in that classroom. Had waited to make sure there was nothing he could do, no way that he could wiggle out of this one. But she didn’t have to wait long. By the time two cigarettes had been smoked down to the filter and crushed out on his stomach, he was dead.
Outside, the sun had just begun to rise above the horizon. Time to move on. There had to be a way out of this town. And she would find it, even if it meant swimming ten miles upriver. She would find a way out and would try to reclaim her old life again. Or at least as much of it as she could. Be she would never be the same. She had
