Chapter Sixteen Sinnerman #2
I jump when Michael pounds his fists against the keyboard, sending up a jumble of off-key notes.
He stands up and faces me. His eyes are red and wild, glasses nowhere to be found.
His usually neat blond hair is all over the place.
His skin’s red and blotchy and there’s a sort of unhinged madness to him.
I back up a step, feeling like I’m in a room with a wild animal.
He laughs coldly, mechanically, and it sends chills down my spine.
“That’s rich.” He grins with too many teeth. “That’s bloody rich. ‘Not working out between us,’ is it? And it wouldn’t have anything to do with fucking a certain bloody Paki?”
That hurts worse than if he’d just come out and called me a cheating bastard.
I mean, it’s true -- and fuck if I know how he found out I’ve been carrying on with Rahul -- but he didn’t have to say it like that.
It’s bloody racist, innit? And why do people keep calling him a Paki? His family isn’t even from Pakistan.
I’m sort of stuck halfway between being outraged on Rahul’s behalf and apologising for getting off with Rahul when Michael upends the armchair with a great big crash that has me jumping back, heart jumping into my throat. Bloody hell. He’s gone wrong.
He’s started ranting and raving now. I can’t even begin to understand what he’s talking about.
He’s saying something about owning me, or about letting me go, or about not trusting me.
I’m not sure. I can’t follow his train of thought.
He just looks more and more mental, eyes getting bigger and spit flying out of his mouth.
I just make out something about no one getting to have me before he goes and grabs me by the front and pushes his mouth onto mine.
I can’t even call it a kiss. A kiss has soft lips and tongues.
This is all hard and painful, just his teeth and bone sort of mashed up against mine.
It’s so out of the blue it takes me a couple of seconds just to figure out what’s going on.
Once I do, I’m pushing and shoving at him, trying to get him off me. He’s really lost the plot this time.
Shoving at him is like trying to shove a bloody brick wall.
Not being able to push him away, I do the next best thing and thrash my head about ‘til I’ve gotten my mouth loose but he still won’t let go of me, the drunk wanker.
I don’t know what he’s trying to do but all he’s doing is proving to me I’m doing the right thing in dumping him.
Gone and shown his true colours, hasn’t he?
If he’d only just let the fuck go of me --
“Stop it.” I try to say it all commandingly, but it comes out high and squeaky. “Michael, stop it. Let go. You’re drunk.”
He suddenly does let go, only I’m still trying to push away with all my might so I stumble back, nearly keeling over.
That’s when I see his hands up, grasping at air.
He let go ‘cause he tried to grab for me. No, not grab for me. His hands were going for my neck. I’m looking at his big hands, still hung there between us like a big flashing, neon sign that’s trying to tell me something, only I’m too thick to get it. What is it?
That’s when it hits me. I remember all at once that night, after the double date, when his hands were around my throat.
I thought it was just a bit of kink, but now my memory’s getting re-written like a VHS that’s being taped over.
It wasn’t a bit of fun. He’d wanted to do something bad. He’d meant to --
The whole world goes sideways suddenly and I’m too shocked to realise what’s happened ‘til I figure out he’s only just gone and thrown me over his shoulder like a bloody caveman, hasn’t he!
Absolute bell-end. Fucking nobhead. Wanker.
Tosser. I’m pounding my fists against his back and kicking his front to get him to put me the fuck back down, only I might as well be punching a lorry for all the good it does me. I might even dent the side of a lorry.
“Oof!” The air goes out of me in a great big rush as my back hits the floor.
I’m disorientated, head spinning. For just a second of a second, I can’t figure out what I’m doing on the floor or how I got here.
But panic’s got me springing to my feet before it can even come flooding back to me.
I see Michael coming round the sofa like some kind of puma, all bared teeth and extended claws.
My heart’s beating fast before my brain fully makes sense of it.
He means to hurt me. He means to -- But he wouldn’t.
He’s my boyfriend. Was my boyfriend. He’s meant to love me.
Not hurt me. Not k -- Not do that. That happens to other people.
People on the telly, police procedurals.
People whose smile lit up a room, top of their class, so sad they had to die so young with so much promise.
Not me. Julian Bloody Collier. Not me. Never me.
There’s adrenaline pulsing like a second heart in me.
It’s making everything slow motion. I have time to look around the room, past Michael, at the hallway to the front door I’ll never get to.
Escape, some primal, ancient part of my brain whispers.
But I can’t, I want to cry. Help, it hisses back at me.
Help? Help! Police, you fucking numpty. Call the bloody police!
I can’t get to the phone in the living room so I book it for the bedroom. I haven’t gotten one step before my scalp’s on fire, my head being yanked back. Michael’s bloodshot eyes come into my vision.
“Michael, stop,” I try again, with as much authority as I can muster, but it’s even worse this time than last time. I still don’t have enough air in my lungs, for one, and I’m trembling like a bloody leaf, so it just comes out all high and shaky like a plastic bag caught in the wind.
He can’t. He just can’t. This isn’t supposed to happen. He’s supposed to love me. Even if he’s angry, he’s not supposed to hurt me. Not like this. “Please.” I hadn’t even realised I’d said it. I wish I hadn’t. It sounds pathetic. It sounds like begging.
He makes a sound like rocks falling down a cliff and I realize he’s laughing. His face. God. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. There’s no Michael left in it. It’s this… joy. Like he’s this big predator cat that’s just found a mouse and can’t wait to pounce.
That ancient, primal part of me that knows what it’s like to be prey, it knows what to do even when I’m too bloody stupid to move.
It makes me drive my heel into his foot with all the strength I once used to win the footy regionals for my secondary school.
The moment his grip slackens, I’m already legging it for the bedroom.
He lets out this howl, like some great big wounded animal.
“Whore!” he spits out. “Ungrateful slag!”
“Fuck you,” I spit back, but it’s for show.
I couldn’t care less what he calls me. It’s what he does to me that I’m worried about.
Besides, I’ve been called worse. I slam the bedroom door shut and I’m throwing myself onto the bed, reaching for the phone -- thank Christ, that wonderful, beautiful phone.
The door bangs open and I look up to see Michael coming towards me. Not Michael. This stranger, monster, thing. The thing that wants to hurt me. Kill -- no, I can’t even think it. I can’t think that word or I’ll fall to pieces. But it’s written all over him.
Before I know it, he’s on me like a bloody ton of bricks. I’d never fully appreciated how big he was ‘til I’ve got his full weight on top of me, pinning me down to the mattress when I don’t want it. When I want him to get the fuck off. When he’s crushing me and I can’t bloody breathe.
He gets my wrists in his hands and then that primal part of me, that fight or flight part of me, pumps me full of so much adrenaline it’s got me going before my thinking brain can make the choice to.
I’m a fucking mongoose in a trap. I’m an arc of lightning.
I’m a beam, I’m a ray, I’m a speed demon.
I ain’t even in my fucking body anymore.
I’ve bloody transcended, haven’t I? My arms are snakes.
My legs are pistons. My mind’s gone, gone, gone.
It’s all the way back at my flat, with Rahul, snuggling up on the couch, watching telly, laughing as Rahul complains about the rubbish the BBC’ll broadcast nowadays.
All that’s left in my head is the primal brain, the caveman brain.
The one that bashes in sabre tooth tiger skulls and runs away from stampeding mammoths.
Instinct mind, adrenaline brain. All action, no thought. No Julian, just escape, escape, escape.
It all collapses into a singularity when the oxygen evaporates from my lungs.
A painful hardness is around my throat, keeping the air out.
It hurts but the pain is like this distant, unimportant thing that Instinct Brain has filed away for later.
That’s a problem for Julian, when he gets back into the office.
We’re in charge right now and we don’t care about pain.
We care about Escape. But Escape can only happen if we can move, and we need air to do that.
And air’s gone. It’s all gone, really. A sort of blackness creeping in, stealing everything away, including Escape, and even Instinct.
It takes the fight right out of me, cause the fight’s fuel is all dried up.