Not yet.
I sat down at the piano, lifted up the cover. I ran my cut strewn hands tenderly over the keys. I flattened my hands across them, not pressing down. No shakes. That was something. I closed the cover without playing a note and went and curled my body up into a ball at one end of the sofa. It must have only taken seconds for me to dive into a deep sleep.
37
Swimming through into consciousness. Something in my mouth.
Something in my mouth?
I tasted hard metal in my mouth. I opened my eyes to see it was a gun.
“Fucking stay where you are, ya wee bitch.”
Sammy had a smug grimace spread across his battered face.
He pulled the gun from my mouth as I lay and gawped at him. Congealed blood clung matted in his head. Some had ran down his forehead and remained there like a crimson frozen waterfall.
Was this a fucking nightmare? Was I stuck in a horror film?
The jolt from my sleep and the shock of what I woke to was enough to beat my heart out of my chest and onto the floor. I started to lift my head.
“Don’t fucking move,” he continued.
Sammy straightened up, keeping the gun aimed at my head. Then I noticed behind him that the door was open and a car was parked outside. He must have come inside while I was asleep.
How fucking stupid am I? Lying here sleeping, defenceless.
He went over and shut the door, then returned to me.
I propped myself up, desperately trying to think what to do next.
“I suppose ya didn’t expect to be seeing me again,” he said menacingly.
He sat down at the far edge of the sofa.
I took in his beaten and battered head and face. No, I didn’t expect to fucking see him again. He looked like he should have been dead.
“You just gonna sit there? Nothing to say?”
I felt my eyes damp, focused and ready to pop out of my head. It was like there was a fizzing behind them that needed to be released.
“Yeah… You’re gonna pay for this…” he started to say, casually tapping the end of the gun against his own head.
I flew at him.
My best option was to be quick. I had nothing to lose. He was startled. I had gripped both of my hands around his gun hand and at the same time stamped my foot down his shin. He swung at me with his left hand, only hitting me half assed in the side of the face. I’d felt worse that night, maybe I was growing immune. I couldn’t wrench the gun from his hand, so I pulled back my right arm, formed a fist and punched him square on the nose.
It was perhaps the single most satisfying moment of my life.
His nose exploded as he released the gun amidst the scarlet spray. I dived after it, scooping it from the floor. He moved as well, but was too slow. I spun around, the gun gripped both hands. We were both down on our knees. He was two foot away, both palms up.
“Now hold on Vicky,” he said, shaking his head. His face was too much of a mess to gauge much from it. I’d like to think he was scared.
I said nothing, but held the gun out straight, inches from his face.
My hands were steady.
“Now just give me that gun…”
“Stop!” I said firmly.
“Now listen…” he began, starting to get up.
Then I put a hole in his head.
38
Not twenty minutes had passed when I was speeding along down the final decent of the hills and out towards the town-land. I gripped the wheel hard, my clammy and callused hands reddening further.
I couldn’t crumble now. Just a little further.
There would be a time soon to digest all of this. For now, I had to keep going. After I had shot Sammy, survival instinct continued to guide me. I had got up on my feet in a daze. I didn’t look at him. This time he had to be dead. I stumbled into the bathroom and began to wipe his blood from my face and arms. My top was splattered, so I borrowed some man’s shirt from the bedroom and bagged up my stained one. I wiped down the gun and threw it on the floor. I did a cursory wipe down of where I’d been, but I knew as long as I kept myself unconnected, the police would never know that any prints belonged to me. There was no reason for me to be on any data base. There would be plenty of prints from various undesirables in the room to keep them busy. This was no time for paranoia. I had a last look at the room, shut the door and drove away. I stopped at a dumpster a few miles past and threw in my top. Then I had lit a cigarette and driven off.
The illumination from the street lights were dazzling. I had come from darkness. Everywhere was suddenly bright, albeit artificially. I drove down towards the sea and found a little car park away from the main resorts. I pulled up by a mossy stone wall, just low enough to allow me to see over it and out towards the gentle laps of the night sea. I threw my cigarette out the window and fixed my eyes on the deep blackness beyond.
How would it
