Chapter Nine #2
Fear churned in her body. She carefully placed the key between her index and middle fingers and made a fist. He tracked the movement and smiled. Sweat broke out along her body, and her vision narrowed to the man. Everything else around her became static.
“Here, I’ll help,” he said as he closed the gap and reached for the key in her hand.
“No,” Ophelia breathed out as she sidestepped him, holding the keys close to her chest.
“Whoa, okay! No need to be so jumpy,” the man tsked.
Could she make it to the top of the stairs? Her bag was on the ground, which was now lying by his feet, and had her phone in it. Her volunteer friends would be there soon, in ten minutes. But that was too long.
“You need to wait out on the front steps. Brian, our program coordinator, will meet you there. He should be here any minute,” she said with a shaky voice.
He cocked his head. “But I’m not here to see Brian.” He took another step closer to her.
He was around six feet tall, lean with muscle, and looked to be fifty-ish years old. Ophelia could hurt him, maybe, but not win in a fight. She needed to run. She took one glance at the stairs and bolted.
Before she got one foot on the stairs, he grabbed the faux fur-lined hood of her puffer coat and slammed her into the ground.
The key fell from her hand. She was sprawled on her back.
Scream, Ophelia, Scream. Someone will hear you.
She couldn’t. She had no breath. It had been completely knocked out of her, and he was now on top of her with both hands pinning her chest to the ground.
He hooked his feet onto her legs, effectively restraining her lower half.
No, no, no.
Ophelia’s eyes rounded in shock as a four-hundred-pound tiger walked out from the shadows and stood above her head, growling.
The man didn’t flinch. Could he not see it?
She wondered if her fall was causing her to imagine things, or maybe it was the adrenaline coursing through her veins.
It didn’t matter, though. The sudden roar of the tiger fueled her.
Her shock and fear morphed into pure rage.
She became a feral animal, thrashing and clawing and growling.
“Stop moving, you witch,” the man snarled as he tried to regain control.
Ophelia leaned forward and bit his wrist, tearing his flesh with her teeth.
She bucked her body, kicked her legs, and knocked her head against his.
The tiger’s roar eventually fell silent, so that the only sound she could hear was her screaming rage.
Energy surged through her as the man struggled to keep her down.
He reared back and punched her in the face, then kneed her in the ribs. Pain exploded throughout, but she refused to acknowledge it. She was yelling and twisting.
Minutes passed that felt like hours.
She eventually began to slow, but the tiger remained with her, standing watch. Exhaustion was on the periphery as her adrenaline began to fade. Doubts crept into her thoughts. Doubts that said this could be the end. No. NO. She changed strategy.
As her movements slowed, she cataloged the details of the monster.
White male, gray scruff scattered across his jaw, a nose that indented to the right in the middle of the bridge, bushy eyebrows that were beginning to gray, and ice-blue eyes.
A large ornate cross made of silver hung from his neck.
He quickly took advantage of her momentary lull of energy and grabbed a short dagger from the back of his pocket.
He pressed it to her throat. Ophelia’s hands gripped his forearms, keeping the dagger only an inch away from her throat.
As if in solemn prayer, he looked up and said, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.”
Ophelia noted the odd phrase as well as the long, nasty arm hair peeking from underneath the dark gray sleeve of his nondescript hoodie and a dark mole in the shape of an oval on his neck. He was out of breath, too.
The dagger had a short blade and black marble handle adorned with a silver crucifix, the same as the medieval-looking cross around his neck, like he was cosplaying a crusader with his trinkets. Pathetic.
Looking back on this moment, she had no idea what possessed her to relax her entire body.
Maybe it was from the tiger who suddenly became eerily still, or perhaps she was relying purely on instinct.
Regardless, she let her body go completely limp, and her hands dropped from their vise grip on the man’s forearms. Her back sank into the cold ground, and her attacker was left hovering over her, knees straddling her.
He looked at her in shock as she let the tension leave her body and turned her head to the side as if in defeat.
And right in her line of vision was the key. Right there. Two inches from her hand.
It was in that instant of confusion, that half-second, where her attacker clearly had not realized that she now had space and leverage to move up under him.
So with as much force and swiftness she could manage, Ophelia thrusted her right knee up into his groin.
He doubled over and moved both hands to his crotch, removing the dagger from her throat and allowing her to grab the key.
“Fucking witch!”
He dove back to her throat with the dagger in his right hand just as she launched her fist, key first, into his face and dug deep into his flesh. She dragged the key down the side of his left face, catching his eye and drawing blood.
“ARGHH!”
Ophelia scrambled out from under him and desperately crawled to the stairs. It felt like the tiger was nudging her along with its snout. Suddenly, the stairwell darkened as two figures blocked the minimal morning light. A sob of recognition burst from her.
“Help,” she breathed out. Her plea was desperate and just loud enough for Gregory and Brian to determine the severity of the situation.
Her attacker looked up, eyes frantically glancing among the two men and Ophelia. Gregory and Brian raced down the stairwell, shouting. Her attacker ran like a wild man. He sprinted past her and shoved Gregory into the stairwell wall as he fled up the steps and into the stream of morning commuters.
The tiger was back. What did that mean? The sound of her steps was the only thing preventing her from being consumed by her past. The tiger represented such a dark and turbulent time in her young adulthood. One that she thought was over and done with.
She ran for five more minutes until she reached a creek that flowed out from a bayou set in the distance.
She hastily removed her shoes and sat on the dirt-and-stick-covered bank, allowing the water to cool her feet.
Lying back, she tried to focus on unclenching her jaw.
She reached for that internal strength she knew was within her.
She began to recite two lines of poetry by Rainier Maria Rilke that helped her through the aftermath of that dark time.
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
Again, she told herself. And she recited it again and again until her breath returned to a steady cadence.