Epilogue
Istare down at the large mound of fresh, dark dirt as the cold, wintry air blasts around me, yanking on my black coat. Dark clouds are filling the sky, and I know it's only a matter of time before they pour icy rain down on me. I shouldn't be here, yet I couldn't bring myself to stay away.
A painful tinge races up my arm, strapped in a sling, as I shift my body so that I can place the bouquet of colorful flowers down on the dirt in front of me, among all of the other arrangements.
They remind me of all the anonymous ones that arrived before at my apartment, and how I still don't know for sure who sent them, but I have my suspicions.
Josslyn's family and friends are making their way toward their vehicles, filled with sadness, and mourning a life lost far too young and violently ended by a psychotic killer.
I force myself to straighten as I acknowledge that I should be lying in a grave just like her, and yet here I am alive, with my whole future ahead of me.
Does that make me luckier than her? At the moment, I don't feel that way.
I know I'm fortunate to be alive, to be relatively unscathed other than a few broken ribs, a dislocated arm, a sprained ankle, and lots of cuts and bruises.
I survived, I'm still breathing, and Noah Tisdale is rotting in hell where he deserves to be.
The problem is that I'm covered in brutal scars deep inside of me, the type no one but me can see, and every day they bleed with the haunting reminder of the choices I made.
I'm a killer now too. I can never change that, and knowing that I did it in self-defence doesn't make it less brutal.
Noah haunts my nightmares, calling me his sweet baby girl, and begging me not to leave him, and at the moment, I don't know if I'll ever be free of them.
When I finally awoke in the hospital a day after the attack, Faye clutching my hand, and my parents crying at my side, I was told that the police found me in the woods, naked, raped, and injured, and a dead Noah fifty feet away from me.
At first, I tried to correct them, but everyone, including the police, just spoke over me, filling me in on what had been discovered, and eventually I stopped trying to tell them that I had gone to those woods willingly, and not because Noah had lured me.
The reality is, I no longer know which is the truth, and at this point, it doesn't matter.
There is no one alive but me to tell the tale.
The club rapist's body was found mutilated in the woods, ravaged by wild animals, after the police canvassed the area.
Josslyn's body was discovered hanging, maimed, and desecrated in her bathroom.
Forensic evidence, and Noah's sperm still inside of her, confirmed to the authorities who her killer was, and corroborated my story of what he told me.
Two more murders were eventually linked to Noah, one of which was a male barista who worked at the coffee shop we used to frequent when we were together.
He was found with his throat slit, in one of the large dumpsters behind his work by a coworker.
When they reviewed security tapes, they caught a glimpse of Noah's profile waiting for him.
The other was poor Tyler, whom I tried to save at that party.
Someone realized they caught Noah slipping something into Tyler's drink on their phone, and came forward to the police with the information.
No one but Noah knows why he killed them.
Two more bodies lying dead in the ground because of a madman I once loved.
Sly also came forward while I was in the hospital, and confessed that Noah was the one who attacked and brutally beat him.
He told me when he came by to see me that Noah had threatened him to stay away from me.
He’s barely left my side since I was released from the hospital.
The police suspect that Tyler and the barista's murders are also somehow linked to Noah's obsession with me, but so far, I've been unable to figure out the connection. I barely knew either of those men.
A large metal dog crate, a leather collar, a leash, sexual paraphernalia, and drugs were found back in Noah's apartment, along with the address to an abandoned farmhouse in the next state.
He was really going to kidnap me, and keep me prisoner in a cage, so that he could breed and rape me.
I don't ever want to imagine the horror my life would have been if he had succeeded.
Noah was labelled a serial killer by our local police, and the FBI confirmed it.
They've labeled him the Anti-Valentine's Killer.
I've been fielding daily calls from reporters wanting to hear my story since I was released from the hospital, and they're camped out in front of Faye's and my apartment, trying to catch a glimpse of me.
They want to know how I survived a serial killer's attempt to kidnap me and keep me captive.
Maybe one day I will sit down and tell my story, but that time is not now.
I'm still trying to process everything that happened, and how I managed to survive.
Every day is a struggle, wondering if I missed the signs while we were together, or if I caused him to lose his mind when I left him, after I caught him with Josslyn.
Faye says I need to let it go, that he was already damaged, and staying with him wouldn't have changed anything, except that I would have died when he eventually turned on me like he did Josslyn.
I'm not so sure about that. I think a part of Noah Tisdale did love me, more than he ever loved himself.
Could I have saved him from himself? Probably not, but we will never know.
"Hey, girl, you ready to go?" Faye steps up and wraps her arm gently around my waist. She's been stuck to me like Velcro the last couple of weeks.
When I wake screaming in the middle of the night, with images of Noah and the woods blaring through my mind, she's right there to cry with me and hold me tight.
"I still don't get why you wanted to come here, Cordie?
She was awful to you. I'm not saying she deserved to die the way she did, but I'm not sure you should be mourning her either. "
I stare at the thick mound of dirt, a shiver racing down my spine at her words.
She's right in a way, but Josslyn wasn't always like that.
She used to be filled with sunshine, joy, and kindness.
I think Noah damaged her, just as he did to me.
We were both his victims, both of us in love with an unhinged psychopath.
"I'm not only mourning her." I take a deep breath of the cool air, filling my lungs, and allowing the slight pain in my chest to remind me that I'm still alive despite the odds.
"I'm mourning Cordelie Wynyard, the broken, pathetic version who also died in those woods.
I'm not her anymore, Faye, I'm now irrevocably changed. "
I turn away from the grave with a last glance, my mind filled with the possibilities for my future now that I'm free. They're endless now that I'm unburdened of Noah Tisdale, and the hold he had on me.
I survived, and lived to tell the tale of the big bad wolf and his Red Riding Hood, and one day I will tell it. I might even make my way back into the woods with a masked stranger one day, who knows, you only live once, and I plan to now live without regrets.
The End.