Chapter 8 Roxana
ROXANA
It is a testament to how vile Willow Baker’s breath is that even with a shooter on the loose in the building, I’d rather come face-to-face with him than be face-to-face with her for another minute.
“Willow, let fucking go of me!” I snarl at her, but it’s no use.
Holding me by both my arms, she keeps trying to pull me out of the door, her hair frizzy and wild around her swollen, beet-red face.
“We have to go, we have to go!” she screeches, and a fresh waft of rot and watermelon gum assaults my nostrils. “There’s only one exit here, we can’t stay here, if he finds us, we’ll have nowhere to run—”
My stomach turns unpleasantly, though it’s hard to tell whether it’s in reaction to her words or just her in general.
“If he finds us, he’ll shoot us on sight. What we have to do is hide, you dumb twat!” I hiss at her, not bothering to mince my words.
First of all, we’ll be dead in an hour, and second of all, judging by her wildly panicked, bulging eyes, she won’t remember a thing even if we do by some miracle survive.
Despite the gravity of the situation, despite my own terror shrouding me in ice, there is something very liberating about the freedom to say whatever to her face without consequences.
And, oh boy, do I intend to enjoy that freedom if it is the last one I’ll ever have.
Especially if it is the last one I’ll ever have.
Willow continues tugging at me, making noises not unlike a donkey’s braying.
“Let fucking go of me. Do you have any idea how much I hate you? How much you get on my fucking nerves, trying to talk to me about your stupid brats all the time? Why the fuck would you think I was interested? And your fucking remarks about the way I dress and your constant reminders that I’m not from this country?
Oooh, green tea, Roxana, is that what you folks drink in Poland?
How would you say this in Polish, Roxana?
Ooh, how strange we must seem to the Polish gal,” I mimic her whiny voice before my tone hardens.
“I’m from Romania! Not Poland! Ten fucking years of this shit!
” I attempt to free myself from her grasp, but the grip she has on me with her stubby, ringed fingers is surprisingly strong.
“I don’t care what you do, but leave me the fuck alone.
You’re on your own! And stop making all this racket, he’ll hear you and you’ll get us both killed! ”
Not that they don’t already, but my words would give me even more pleasure if they had any effect whatsoever on Willow. But she is completely demented. No comprehension of what I’m saying registers in her expression.
How undignified that is!
I am terrified too, more than I have ever been in my life, my extremities numb with dread, my hands shaking. But I don’t think I could ever lose control of my faculties this way. People who can are revolting.
I look in the mirror above the vanity top, at the reflection of the long bathroom, two opposing rows of wooden toilet cubicles against the backdrop of cracked white tiles. And at the two of us at the front, in our hostile half-embrace. I see it written all over my face that I’ve had enough.
I drive my knee hard into Willow’s crotch, a move which is just as effective against women as it is against men—one of the few valuable things I learnt in school.
Willow finally releases me and shoves her hands between her legs, gasping and bending over in half.
Much as I’m enjoying the show, I waste no time watching her.
Whipping around, I head towards the cubicles to hide inside one.
But I only make it a few steps when a loud bang sounds behind me, followed quickly by another, deafening one. A violent tremor runs through me like a cold front slicing through the atmosphere.
I turn around slowly, so sure of what I’ll see that when my eyes finally land on the scene, I almost have a sense of deja vu, of having lived through this moment a thousand times.
Willow lies sprawled on the floor, a spatter of her blood marring the whiteness of the tiles next to the hand dryer, and a larger pool of it spreading silently around her lifeless form.
Corduroy-clad Andrew fucking Wilson stands above her motionless body, sweat glistening on his balding head. Like a pair of pitch-black eyes, his shotgun’s barrel stares straight into my face. Dread coils through my stomach like a tangle of snakes dipped in acid.
Andrew regards me coldly, one eye squeezed shut next to his beak-like nose as he aims at me.
“Wait! Wait!” I choke out, raising my hands in a gesture of surrender, completely unsure what it is that I want to say to convince him not to shoot me on the spot.
My eyes land on the rectangular bulge in the pocket of Willow’s knitted dress.
“Let me have a fag off her,” I indicate it, not knowing that’s what I want to say until I say it. “I quit two years ago because Silas kept nagging me about it, and damn it, I wish I hadn’t. Let me smoke one. Come on, Wilson, it’s not that much I’m asking here.”
He stares at me silently for a heartbeat, and my legs threaten to buckle underneath me.
But then he lowers the shotgun, and with a jerk of his head, he gives me his permission to indulge. I stumble towards Willow’s corpse—if it already is a corpse.
I cannot decide whether I want to crouch or kneel by her, and in my frenzied indecision, I do something in between, and crash to one knee inelegantly while bending the other in front of me.
My pantyhose rip vertically along my crotch, and stupidly, I feel embarrassed.
That makes me angry, at myself and at Wilson.
He’s about to shoot me dead. I don’t owe him my decorum.
Even if I were to shit myself with fear—and I’m sure people do, in these situations—I’m not going to blush for him.
It’s bad enough he gets to see me scared. He doesn’t get to see me mortified.
My fingers are notably steadier than before as I reach inside Willow’s pocket and grasp the foil-covered packet and pull it out.
A fresh bout of nausea crashes through me when my eyes land on the small, crimson bloom on it, not an inch from my thumb.
I suppress the urge to retch, focusing instead on extracting a cigarette while standing up.
My fingertips leave oily prints wherever they touch the foil.
Straightening up to my full height—such as it is—I fix my sight on Wilson.
That’s when I notice that his eyes seem off, his irises darker and larger than usual, red-rimmed when I look closely.
Is he on drugs? I don’t know what kind of drug could do this; I thought they only caused the pupils to dilate.
And Wilson is the last person on Earth I’d ever suspect of substance abuse. Still, it would explain a lot.
Even so, does that change anything for me?
He’d likely be more unstable, more unpredictable.
Harder to reason with rationally. But perhaps more amenable on an emotional, instinctual level.
It may not matter what I say. Same as before with Willow, between these four walls and with deranged Wilson as my only witness, I have the freedom to say anything I want, anything I feel like saying, letting words roll off my tongue without thinking.
“Fuck me, mate, if you haven’t done the world a favour.” I nod my head towards the limp body. “What an insufferable woman.” I succeed in prying a cigarette out of the packet. “Too bad, I suppose, that I won’t be here to enjoy the quiet.”
Placing the unlit cigarette between my lips, I hoist myself onto the vanity top, leaning back against the mirror.
I undo my boots, letting one and then the other drop to the ground with a thud, echoing ominously in the tight space.
The counter is too wide for me to recline on comfortably without my legs sticking out.
And so I just think ‘fuck it’ and sit with my legs in front of me, bent at the knees, the edge of the vanity top cutting into my feet.
I’m fully aware that my very short dress has slid further up my hips.
My pussy is now on full display for Wilson, clad in nothing but a skimpy black lace thong and thin pantyhose, its tear running alongside my slit as if in an invitation.
If anything, my pose is deliberate. I can only hope that the sight incites him to rape me.
That would win me a few more minutes at the very least, and those might make all the difference between someone—police, security, anyone—making it up here in time.
I bring the lighter up to the tip of the cigarette, cupping my hand around it. I inhale deeply, that first nicotine kick rushing through my whole body like electricity. I close my eyes as I exhale.
“So fucking good!” I say. “I should’ve never quit.”
Wilson regards me without saying a word, but something shifts in his expression. It’s as if something came alive in it, amusement or ... curiosity. Have I intrigued him? Is it possible that I might, just might, keep him distracted for long enough for some sort of rescue to arrive?
“Who else did you get?” I ask.
Let him talk about his conquests. Men always love to do that, and it doesn’t matter much what those conquests are: animals, fish, computer game avatars, collection stamps, model trains, women, murder victims .
.. men love their prey. They cannot help it; that predatory hunter compulsion has been ingrained deeply into their genes since prehistoric times.
Every man is a hunter. Every man is a predator.
I’d even go as far as to say that the male preference for very young women has less to do with female fertility and more to do with vulnerability.
Past a certain age, we women can never quite reproduce that dewy-eyed naivete, that malleability, of our younger years, irresistible to men on a primal level.