Chapter 13 Little One #2
“What I did to you earlier …” He shook his head and swallowed deep. He curled his upper lip and closed his eyes tight for a second, then shook his head and stopped moving away. The thought of him not being afraid of me blazed my wrath even more.
I wanted to stay the predator, not become the prey again. Never again the prey.
“I’m sor—I didn’t help you before, but I couldn’t. T-they’re … they’re very powerful, his family. It’ll be a miracle if we survive this. If their families find out, they’ll annihilate everyone we’ve ever loved.” He paused. “Do you understand?”
Only the bugs and the wind spoke as we stared into each other’s eyes.
I want to be the predator. Be the fucking predator, Magdalena!
He gently raked his hand through my hair and caressed my cheek.
He had been the only one to show me any gentleness, and he’d helped me kill Mael.
I shook my head violently at the memory.
Why was I remembering this? What the fuck did it matter?
There was something about his green eyes that calmed my hunger to use my knife on him, and I despised it.
Something about him drew me to him. I couldn’t explain it.
It was a strong energy, something I’d never felt before.
I hated that I was susceptible to anything other than killing.
Stop being the prey … Self-disgust and shame washed over me.
I was hesitating to kill him, and I didn’t understand why.
“Is-is it true?” I stuttered, not wanting to think about it but it was too late.
“About the psych ward?” In that moment, I needed him to lie to me.
Instead, he nodded, crushing what was left of my heart …
“His family … They force others to participate in this … and that’s how they control us. It’s no excuse, but I had no choice. I had to protect my family.”
I didn’t give a rat’s ass about his fucking family.
All the images and nauseating sensations rushed through my mind again.
I even turned to either side to make sure they weren’t there because the sensation of their fingers digging into my arms was that vivid.
Then I remembered, I’d killed them all. Now, I just need to kill this one and then all my monsters will be dead and I can go on with my life and forget this ever happened.
Uncontrollably, I shook my head while sliding the knife back and forth, slicing my leg.
I struggled to stay grounded, even with the new cuts bleeding down my leg.
Go away. Go away. It was as if I couldn’t control certain movements as my mind broke down without the height of adrenaline driving me.
At the same time, I needed to feel the pain, the punishment for not killing him yet.
A whimper escaped me as tears fell from my eyes like raindrops in a violent thunderstorm, flying as I shook my head.
“Magdalena …” he whispered. I met his gentle gaze again. How long had I been gone? How long had I been in the trance? “S-stop stabbing yourself … please.” There was anguish on his face, for me. Why?
It hurt to not kill him, but a part of me refused to do it, and it pissed me off that I couldn’t figure it out. “It’s no excuse,” I repeated over and over again.
I think he nodded his head. “You’re right. There’s no excuse.”
Finally, I gathered my thoughts, then released a feral scream and lifted the knife in the air to penetrate his throat with it.
A part of me anticipated his warm blood on my frigid skin.
He flinched but didn’t move, as if he was willing to die for what he’d done to me. I stopped midair and dropped my arm.
“It’s no excuse! It’s no excuse!” I didn’t know how much time passed while I wept. Nothing would make me feel better again. There was no way I could hide this. I got lost in the symphony of buzzing bugs and the whoosh of the wind as it swept by, dancing with the trees, caressing my skin.
“Do you have someone who can help you get rid of him?” The change in subject helped distract me from the need to kill myself.
“T-there’s no signal up here.”
“There will be now.” He took out his phone, typed, then slid his finger on it. “Mael was blocking the signal so that you couldn’t call for help. I already moved Gabin, and I’ll take care of Sylban, but I need to leave to have an alibi.”
The adrenaline must have been dropping fast because I couldn’t stop shaking or shedding tears.
“Magdalena,” he called, and I realized I’d been staring at Mael for a while.
How many times had he called my name without a response?
“You need to leave the country, okay? You need to really hide. Change everything. If you can have plastic surgery to change your face, do it. Are you listening to me? You’ve become a target.
I mean you’ve been in their target for years now.
” He bent his knees to lower himself to my gaze, but I couldn’t stop staring at Mael.
His body had so many cuts. I smiled when the phrase death by a thousand cuts came to mind.
“Fuck, don’t go into shock on me now. Come on, Little One.”
“Leave,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Fucking leave! Go get your stupid alibi before I kill you.”
He sighed, shaking his head, and ran his thumb across his nose once. “Hey. Look at me. I know this sucked, okay? I know this was the worst night of your life—”
“Is it true? Did I really have an abortion?”
He stared at me, and the silence was a deafening confirmation that it was all true.
So, I hadn’t been clean for a long time; I was just fooling everyone, lying to them and myself.
God, was there no end to the evil inside me?
I was just a fraud. The realization gagged me, and bile slipped from my mouth onto the dirt.
The force of it hurt the cut in my stomach so much I dropped the knife, needing to hold my belly as my legs gave out.
He sat on his shins in front of me once I was done. We stared at each other in silence for a long time.
There was that pull, that connection again. “Listen to me. This is my way to show you my regret, by telling you something you need to understand. Are you listening?”
I answered him with a glare.
“You’re a tiny girl but fierce. You can do this.
I know you’ll get past this, but what’s more important is that you can run faster than you did tonight, because you just put the worst target on yourself and your family.
I’ve destroyed all the evidence on their phones.
There will be no video, no record of us being here.
It will not deviate them forever, but it will give you enough time to disappear. ”
“Were you there?”
“Where?”
“At the psych ward.”
He sucked his teeth. “Goddammit! Yes. I was. He makes—made me witness everything he ever did to you.”
“What’s your name? Did y-you touch me? Th-the first time? This is not the first time you raped me?”
“My name doesn’t matter. What happened at that psych ward doesn’t matter. Your first time doesn’t fucking matter! What happened here doesn’t matter! You need to get the fuck out of this country! You need to disappear!” he screamed in my face, and I grimaced.
He thought I wanted to keep living after this.
That was quite the assumption. All of me was trembling, and my tears marked new hot trails on my face and neck.
I squeezed my eyes close, wanting to remember, yet fighting the memory when it would start appearing in my mind like some broken old film.
How could I not remember my first time? I only had tid bits.
I could see the men. There were so many of them surrounding me and someone was screaming. Was it me? Had I been screaming?
“Magdalena!” he yelled, and I knew he’d been trying to talk to me.
I scratched at his hands on my shoulders like a rabid cheetah.
He held them up in the air, opened to show he wasn’t a threat.
“Promise me you’ll try to escape. Promise me you’ll survive.
Come on, Little One, show me how strong and fierce you can be. ”
“I don’t owe you anything! Go!” I’d missed something. Would he kill me if I couldn’t handle this? We looked at the knife lying next to his hand. Even if I tried to reach for it, I wouldn’t get it in time. Slowly, our gazes met. As he stood, he grabbed the knife and stepped away from me.
“I’m taking this with me.”
I lost it. “No! Let it go! Let it go!” I screeched. “It’s mine! It’s my knife. Let it go!” When I stood and charged toward him, he allowed the knife to fall and again backed away from me. Only with the knife in my hand, squeezing it, did I feel like I could function.
“Maggie.”
I met his gaze.
“Please...” He paused allowing the birds to start chirping and the wind to blow. “D-don’t kill yourself.”
Shortly after, tires screeched in the distance. I had no idea when he’d left, but he had.
You know what sucks? That horrible willingness we all have to keep living even when we’re living in the pit of hell. For the longest time, I lay there, humming, bleeding, breathing, with my only consolation, the knife in my hand and Mael’s dead body by my side.
“It’s over. All my monsters are dead. It’s over.”
“I’ll forget this soon. I will.”
“Come on, Magdalena, get over it. It’s over.
They’re gone. It’s over. We can do this.
We can do this.” While sitting on my shins, rocking myself back and forth, coming in and out of this world, I kept talking to myself, trying to will myself to reject the sweetest call I’d ever heard, the song of death.
It promised me a peace I needed so miserably, it promised me the end to all my pain and shame.
I’d never have to pretend again to be normal, to be good and clean. It would really end it all for me.
I just had to sever the arteries in my wrist, and then I’d be completely free. I kept telling myself it was the right thing to do.
But I couldn’t.
Had he put some spell on me to keep me from doing it? It would have been his cruelest act yet.