9. IF HEAVEN WON’T HAVE ME, I’LL TAKE A ROOM IN HELL #2
For a single biting second, the reality of what I’d done hit me, but I didn’t let it take hold.
Instead, I turned my focus to Nell. To her injury.
To something tangible, something that could still be saved.
I swallowed, my throat dry and tight, and when I finally spoke, my voice came out more clipped than I intended “Nell,” I said, a sense of urgency in my words, “we need to get that hand tended to.”
As I spoke, Emil’s attention shifted instantly to his wife, and I watched as his expression changed immediately to concern, softening the hard lines of his face.
He stepped toward Nell with urgency, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
The gesture was so simple, yet it struck me hard, a stark contrast to the rough, brutal hands I’d just escaped, the ones that had tried to tear me apart.
His touch wasn’t just gentle, it was loving.
Intentional. A quiet act of care in the middle of all this wreckage.
It reminded me that compassion still existed in the world, even when horror tried its best to drown it out.
I rushed to gather what I needed, moving through the house like a ghost, my mind disjointed.
My steps were automatic, driven by necessity rather than thought, as I staggered past the lifeless forms of the men who had taken part in my violation.
I collected what I could—carbolated Vaseline, bandages, a bottle of laudanum—the bare essential for tending a wound.
My hands trembled as I set them on the kitchen table, glass and tin clinking against the wood.
I turned to her and nodded toward the table, a silent cue that Emil instantly picked up on. He guided her into the chair, his hands firm but careful on her shoulders. I pulled out the chair beside her and sank into it, my movements slow, steadying myself as I prepared to begin.
I worked carefully, peeling away the charred remnants of Nell’s shirt where it clung to her raw, blistered skin, my hands trembling even as I forced them to be steady, to be gentle.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Emil flinch.
It was small, barely more than a wince, but it cracked straight through the mask he’d been holding onto.
He looked away, jaw tightening, his throat bobbing around words he didn’t speak.
I sensed it wasn’t the injury itself that broke him but the sight of her like this—vulnerable, hurt.
And in his eyes, I saw it all: the sorrow, the helplessness, the guilt.
He hated that he hadn’t been able to stop it.
I kept my focus on the task, knowing that what I was about to see would not be pretty.
Nell was trying to hide the pain, but I could see it in the set of her jaw, the way she refused to make a sound, but her eyes gave her away.
Without a word, I slid the bottle of laudanum across the table toward her, pushing it within reach. It wasn’t a suggestion. She needed it.
When I finished, I leaned back, my eyes trailing over the shape of her hand, now wrapped in clean, white bandages.
The sight of it felt like a minor victory in the wake of everything else.
My fingers lingered just a moment longer, brushing the edge of her skin, desperate to grasp onto something that could feel like home, before I finally let go.
She sat still, her face carved in stoic control, not a sliver of pain betraying her before her voice broke the silence. “And what about you?” She asked.
I dropped my gaze, letting it settle on the bloodied cloth and scattered remnants of our efforts—anything but her. “What about me?” I echoed, the words softer than I intended. It wasn’t an answer, it was a deflection, and we both knew it.
Nell shifted in her seat slightly, bandaged hand resting on the table between us, palm up like an open invitation. “You think you tending my burns is going to stop me from seeing what they did to you?”
My hands stilled, and my jaw tightened as the words rose. “I’m fine,” I lied.
Nell leaned forward, her voice low with empathy. “You’re not. And it’s okay that you’re not. But don’t go burying it. That kind of pain? It doesn’t stay buried, it rots, it eats through the good parts.”
I pressed my lips together, to keep everything inside.
I didn’t have words for it, the right words for it.
Only fragments, only heat behind my ribs that wouldn’t cool.
“I feel like I’m . . . leaking,” I whispered, surprising myself, “like if I stop moving, it’s all gonna pour out of me.
Every scream I swallowed, every second I couldn’t fight back. ”
Nell didn’t speak right away. Instead, she reached out with her good hand, her fingers brushing mine. “Then don’t stop moving,” she said gently. “But don’t pretend you’re not bleeding. We see you, Bernadette. Emil and me, we’re not going anywhere.”
My throat tightened, and my eyes burned, but I refused to cry. “Thank you,” I managed, the words thick on my tongue tasting foreign and heavier than they should have.
Nell gave me a small, tired smile. “You don’t have to thank me. You just have to keep going.”
I swallowed, taking a shaky breath while the room seemed to grow heavy, steeped in the residue of violence and pain. But Emil’s voice yanked me back from the edge of my thoughts.
“Well, what shall we do with these sorry sacks of shit?”
I looked over at Emil, his gaze already fixed on the bodies. There was no space for hesitation or second guessing now. What's done was done.
“I save almost all of my old newspapers and paper bags,” I said, the words tumbling out in a single, urgent breath.
“We take them out back, cut them into manageable pieces, wrap them into paper bags, and haul them into the mountains. We scatter the remains for the wildlife to feast on. After that, we burn the bags, make sure there’s nothing left.
Emil thought on that for a moment and then gave me a nod.
We helped Emil drag the bodies to the backyard, where he hung them upside down beneath the pine tree before slicing their throats.
Their blood ran steadily into the tin buckets that had once held soil and fertilizer for my garden.
Nell and I stayed behind to clean the house while Emil handled the rest—the cutting, the packaging, the hauling into the mountains under cover of night, and burning the evidence.
It was well into the early hours by the time he was finished, and all we could do was sit in the aftermath.
“I have never been more thankful for a casserole in my life,” I said, my voice dry, attempting to break the awkward silence with a hint of humor as we sank onto the couch. “It’s a shame I never had the chance to taste it, though hearing it collide with his skull was almost satisfying enough.”
Emil didn’t react. He sat silently beside Nell, his eyes fixed on her bandaged hand, looking utterly spent and drained to the last reserve. Nell offered a faint, barely there, smile.
“We’ll be staying here for the night,” her voice was firm but kind, and I didn’t argue. “And you wouldn’t have liked that piece-of-shit casserole anyway.” She added with a wink. “But I’ll fix you up something real nice tomorrow.”
I leaned over and kissed Nell’s forehead gently before standing and making my way toward the stairs. As I passed, I gave Emil a quiet look, one filled with unspoken gratitude. “Good night,” I said, my voice barely audible as my hand touched the banister.
“Good night,” they both replied, their voices merging in soft harmony, as if we had somehow found a fragile moment of peace in the middle of everything.
I scrubbed my skin until it burned. Letting the water run scalding over me, turning my shoulders first pink, then an angry red, but still I didn’t stop; I couldn’t.
I needed to strip their touch off me like it was a film of rot.
It felt as though if I just kept going, if I pressed hard enough, stayed under the heat long enough, I might somehow cleanse myself of it entirely.
I wanted to erase them: their breath against my neck, the weight that pinned me, the cruelty that lingered long after they were gone. Yet no matter how fiercely I tried, the water carried nothing away.
The bruises stayed, blooming on the surface of my skin, and when I finally collapsed into bed—skin damp, hair knotted, heart plummeting—the silence wasn’t a comfort, it was a cage.
My ceiling stared down at me while my mind spun in slow, punishing circles, pulling me deeper into the reality I was too exhausted to escape.
I just lay there, haunted, like something freshly buried.
And then, when all the numbness had settled, the rage came.
It simmered low in my gut, a quiet, murderous heat, that only seemed to grow.
“Damn you, John,” I whispered into the dark, my voice splintering around his name. “You get heaven. You get Ray. And I’m the one left here with the ache, with the emptiness you left behind, trying to pretend it doesn’t tear through me every time I breathe.”
And then I cried myself to sleep.