Darkest Before Dawn

by Stevie J. Cole

  Her eyes widen before they narrow with confusion. “You’re…letting me—” Suddenly, her chest begins to rise and fall in rapid swells. “Are you leaving me? Max, please. I don’t want to—”

  Shaking my head, I grab both sides of her face with my hands. “No, we are leaving. Me and you. Together. This is not where you belong.” I can’t help myself, can’t fight the draw I feel to her, so I kiss her lips—gently, apologetically, innocently—because even after all of this, there is still a sliver of innocence left somewhere deep inside of her. “You belong with me,” I say before I even realize it.

  I lift the tattered shirt over her head, pull her messy ponytail loose, and help her into the tub. When the water touches the battered parts of her body, she winces.

  I pace in front of the tub, dragging my hands through my hair, trying to steady my breathing, but I can’t. The longer I think of Lila, of Ava, of all the girls I’ve helped beat down to nothing—I lose my ability to rationalize. The blood shoots through my jugular in hard pumps. I’m dizzy with hate and anger, my skin literally on fire and covered in sweat.

  “I’ll be back,” I say through a clenched jaw.

  Ava glances up at me from the tub. She shakes her head, her lips trembling. “Please don’t leave me. They’ll…” She swallows, choking on her words.

  “No, they won’t, I promise you.” I give her a stern look. “They won’t, understand?”

  She gives a quick nod, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth as she goes back to washing herself off.

  “I’m going to get you clothes.” I place my hand on the doorknob and stop, but I don’t turn around to look at her. “And no matter what you hear, don’t leave this room. I will be back.” And with that I open the door, closing it behind me and locking it with the key.

  Garth Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls” floats up from the kitchen. I pull my gun from the back of my jeans, cocking it, the distinct click becoming lost in the twang of the guitar.

  Death will come for us all, but some people don’t deserve to slip away quietly in the night. People like Johnny Donovan and Andrew Biddle, Earl and Bubba and Jeb, they need to be snuffed out. And that is why there is a hint of excitement drumming through me right now. Murder, to some, may seem cruel, but I can tell you, the power that surges through you when you watch some sorry motherfucker take his last breath, when you know you are the last thing they will ever see, that is unmatched by anything else.

  My pulse remains steady as I calmly descend the stairs, my finger resting over the smooth curve of the trigger as I approach the doorway. Earl’s singing along with the radio, shuffling a deck of cards with a cigarette dangling from his lips. I step into the room and he barely gives me a second glance.

  “Need to get yer head on straight, boy. That girl ain’t—” Bam. Bear scurries out from under the table as Earl slumps over in the chair. Blood pours onto the table from the hole in his head, and within seconds, it’s trickling over the edge and splattering onto the linoleum floor. Bear cautiously creeps over, his tail tucked. He sniffs the puddle and looks up at me before lapping up some of the blood.

  The cellar door flies against the wall with a bang, and I spin around. “The fucking shit?” Bubba mumbles. I lift the gun and he holds both hands up, his face going white. “Now”—a nervous laugh bubbles from his lips—“Max, put that gun down. You don’t wanna…” The splat, splat, splat of the blood hitting the kitchen floor pulls his gaze over to Earl and he swallows hard. “You don’t wanna do anything more than you done did. Jeb and Earl…I ain’t gonna say shit. I’ll help you cover it up, just don’t kill me.”

  “You took my sister.”

  His brow furrows as he shakes his head. “I don’t know what the hell you’re on about, Max.”

  “Shut the fuck up.” I feel the rage battering my insides. My chest heaves, my pulse clangs in my temples. I step toward him and shove the gun in his face. He backs away and I follow until his heels are hanging over the threshold of the cellar steps. “You let Jeb do that to Ava, you sick fuck!”

  His jaw clenches and his eyes flicker. He goes to grab the gun from me, but I pull the trigger, the bullet flying through his jugular. Flesh tears loose, blood gushes out in an arterial spray, and he falls back, his heavy body banging down the old steps until he’s nothing but a lifeless heap at the bottom.

  “She wasn’t yours,” I say. “She’s mine, she’s always been mine, motherfucker.”

  I lift the gun and pull back on the trigger three more times. Each time a bullet disappears in his body. Smiling, I tuck the pistol into the waist of my jeans before I make my way down the steps, carefully sidestepping around Bubba’s body on my way to Ava’s room.

  I quickly gather several pieces of clothing and grab her journal from the end of the bed, then hurry back through the kitchen and up to the bathroom.

  “It’s just me,” I shout through the door as I dig the key from my pocket and place it into the lock. When I round the corner, I find Ava is already out of the bath with a towel wrapped around her and a blank stare on her face. She doesn’t question me when I hand her the clothes, but instead, quickly dresses.

  I reach out to her and she places her hand in mine. “We need to get outta here, darlin’.”

  She gives a subtle nod. We leave the bathroom and hurry down the stairs. Passing through the kitchen, I see Earl face down in a puddle of blood. Ava’s breath catches and she pauses, her eyes wide and fixed on the gory mess.

  “Don’t look at him,” I say, leading her to the foyer and straight out the front door.

  The cold night air nearly takes my breath. Ava gasps and I pull her close to me, her damp hair sticking to my neck. It’s not until I open the door to my car that she really looks at me. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for saving me.”

  And those words cut me. I didn’t save her. I broke her and she doesn’t even know it yet. Ushering her inside, I shut the door then jog over to the driver’s side and climb in. I immediately crank the engine, not waiting on it to warm up before I throw the gear into reverse and back out of the driveway.

  We ride in silence. My hand rests on her thigh, my thumb gently drawing circles over her jeans. About a mile down the road she places her hand on top of mine and our fingers intertwine. “Don’t stop until the sun comes up,” she says. “I just want to see the light. I want to see the sunrise.”

  And I drive, not knowing where the hell I am going. We keep barreling down the country highway until the dawn breaks, and as the sun rises above the horizon, painting the sky in that faint blue that so quickly turns to bright orange and pink, a soft cry slips through her lips.

  I don’t want her to break anymore and I turn to look at her, surprised to find a deep smile on her face.

  “I never thought I’d see the sun again.” Her smile widens. “I don’t think I will ever appreciate another sunrise the way I do this one.”

  I pull the car over into an empty grocery store parking lot, park, and climb out of the car. And we just stand, she and I, watching as all of the darkness vanishes. Sometimes in life there are such subtle things that symbolize significant events, the thing is, we so rarely notice them. This moment, it’s one we both notice.

  The pinks and yellows seem so vibrant, the whispers of clouds gray against the rising sun. Everything seems so big. The open spaces seem endless. I was beginning to believe the world was really nothing more than four walls, wondering if I’d made all this up, but I didn’t. I suck in a lungful of frosty morning air as though I am a person dying of thirst and this air is water.

  After several moments, we climb back into the car and drive another hour and a half until we come to a run-down motel complete with the cliché fluorescent light flickering on the side of the highway. Max turns into the gravel driveway and parks.

  “Wait here,” he says.

  He anxiously looks around as he makes his way to the front office, briefly glancing back at me when he places his hand on the door handle to walk inside. The do
or closes behind him, and I can’t see anything through the tinted window. For a split-second, something inside of me tells me to open the door and run. My heart slowly picks up its pace. I reach for the handle, but…he saved me.

  When Max steps out of the office, my hand is still on the door handle. I snatch it away quickly as the guilt drowns me. The key is still in the ignition which causes an alarm to buzz when he opens my door for me.

  “Come on, now,” he says, gently taking my hand to help me out of the truck.

  My hand remains in his as we walk down the sidewalk, stopping in front of a rusted door at the end of the walkway. This seems so peculiar—us out here, going into a hotel room. And I don’t think it should, but it is strange not having my hands bound and not being in that house.

  Max opens the door and the smell of bleach immediately slaps me in the face. I crinkle my nose.

  “Fuck, that’s rancid,” Max groans, waving his hand in front of his face. He closes the door behind him and I sit on the edge of one of the double beds.

  “Shit,” he says. “I didn’t get the bags. I’ll be right back.”

  And with that, he leaves me alone.

  Alone with a door I could easily open. I could easily leave. Run to the office. I could be free, but my legs don’t want to carry me to that door. And why? Because I do not want to leave him.

  And all alone, I panic. Vertigo sets in. Sweat pops from every last pore. I need him. I grab onto the edge of the bed in an attempt to feel grounded, to keep myself from thinking I am about to sink right through this grimy hotel floor. I count in my head, making it to one hundred and twenty before the latch to the door pops. The door swings open, and the moment I see Max’s face, I feel like I can breathe again.

  His brow wrinkles. “You okay?” He tosses the keys down on the nightstand and drops the bags at the foot of the bed.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  He shoots a curious glance at me, smirking ever so slightly. “You look worried.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Good.” He nearly trips as he kicks his boots off. “Shouldn’t be.”

  Max grabs the bottom of his white shirt, lifting it over his head. I watch the muscles in his stomach bunch and flex, my eyes skimming over his bare flesh. He catches me staring at him and smiles before tugging his jeans down and crawling onto the bed next to me. “Shitty motel, but that’s what you get in the middle of butt-fuck Egypt.”

  I laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks, lying on his stomach and grabbing one of the pillows. He scrunches it up under his massive arms before he rests his chin on it. “Huh?” he says. “What’s so funny?”

  “I like that term—butt-fuck Egypt, I use it all the time.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah…” He grabs my knee and gives it a playful squeeze, but instead of moving his hand away, he leaves it there, gently rubbing his fingers over my leg.

  “Figures.”

  “Figures?” I ask.

  “Yeah, figures you’d say some shit like that, too.” He grins again. And that smile—it does something to me. There’s a few moments of silence where we look at each other and all I want him to do is kiss me. Hold me. Love me…

  “It will all be okay now.” He tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I promise.”

  “I know.” My mind is racing. I worry that he’s going to leave me. He cannot leave me. Ever. My pulse kicks into overdrive again.

  “What?” he asks as he trails his fingers down my jawline. “What are you thinking?”

  “Don’t leave me,” I blurt, realizing how desperate I sound.

  The thing is, it’s not just that I feel lost without him or that I love him, but that there is something about him I know I’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere else because it’s something I have yet to put my finger on. This connection—it’s deeper than any I’ve ever felt.

  His brow wrinkles and he sits up. “I’m not. I’m not leaving you…” There’s a pause where his eyes narrow. His gaze grows intense like he’s trying to pull something out of me without words. “I want to know what happened to you. Not in that house, Ava. What happened to you? Long before I ever met you, you were fucked up by something.”

  My lungs cease to pull in oxygen for a second, and my mind goes to those places it shouldn’t, those places I’ve blocked out and trained myself to forget:

  The dark.

  The footsteps outside my bedroom door.

  The way the laundry detergent smelled, the whiskey on his breath.

  The second I close my eyes, I’m sucked down that twisted tunnel of fear and shame. All these years later and I can still feel his rough hand slam over my mouth to muffle my cries, smell the cigarettes on his fingers. It still—even though I wish to God it didn’t—feels like his hands are all over me. I can actually still hear him telling me how terrible I am, how if I tell, no one will believe me, and most importantly, that no one will love me. I’m unworthy of love. That kind of shame and confusion, fear and betrayed trust, drowns you no matter how well you think you’ve recovered. It always devours you. And the thing is, when you’ve never told anyone about this kind of demon, this hell you relive within the realms of dreams and sometimes within your waking thoughts, well, you are alone. Absolutely and utterly alone in the dirtiest place imaginable.

  And I’ve yet to tell anyone because the thought of it makes me feel sullied.

  I don’t want anyone to see me for what I am.

  I drop my head to my chest, and Max immediately takes my chin and gently lifts it, but I close my eyes. I don’t want to look at him because, if I do, he will know. He will know and he could never love me if he knew. People can say what they want, but no one wants something soiled.

  And that is why I build my walls up. Why I push people away because then they can’t hurt me…but with Max, my walls are crumbling and it terrifies me.

  “Ava, look at me,” he whispers, his thumb gently stroking my jaw. “I want to know you. I want to know those parts you think are broken and ugly because anyone can love the light. I want to love the dark inside of you.”

  Does he really love me? I sit, my stomach flitting and fluttering. Could he really love the ugly person I hide deep down inside? Max grabs onto me, pulling me to his chest. And I find myself sobbing because that is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said—he wants to love the parts of me I hate.

  Piece by broken piece that barrier I’ve spent my entire life building falls away, and I allow myself to come apart in his arms—within the embrace of a man who anyone else would say wants to destroy me. And I feel safe. I feel unjudged. I feel whole.

  I have always been enslaved to the memories of something so wrong, so fucked up…and I’d rather be imprisoned to a man who will love the parts of me that need to be loved—to a man who will live in the shadows and hide in the dark with me.

  “I can’t…” I whisper.

  “It’s okay, but I want you to feel free of it,” he says. “No matter how horrible you think it is, I want that part of you more than anything else.” He kisses my lips with reverence and I sink into the bliss only he creates, thinking…but I’m afraid to be free.

  The soft lull from the TV plays in the background, the eerie blue light from the screen casting shadows over the wall. Ava is asleep on my chest and I’m combing my fingers through her long hair, wondering what in the actual fuck I am doing.

  Her face has been plastered all over national newspapers. Her family has been interviewed on TV—there’s a hefty reward for her safe return. And here I lie in a scummy motel with her asleep on me, pretending that she is with me because she simply should be. But she should.

  Something about her—there is something so goddamn deep to her that can only come from trauma and despair and heartache. When you get down to it, there are two types of people in the world: those who have struggled and those who have not. And by struggled, I don’t mean financially or physically, I mean psychologically, emotionally. People
who have experienced things so fucked up and twisted that, at times, they long for the peace of death. Experiencing things we shouldn’t, learning how to compartmentalize all the bullshit and the evil and the anger, it carves out jagged crevices inside a person’s soul, creating a dark level of depth the human mind isn’t meant to really know.

  And I can see that depth in her, within the pain ridden glimmer in her eyes. It sucks me right in, making me want to know what’s happened to her, making me want to love her. I could love her…I believe I need to love her, and maybe it’s the guilt—maybe it’s all come to a head and I’m just desperate to know what actual love feels like.

  No, fuck love.

  To hell with that emotion. Love is like the holy fucking grail. It is something we chase and chase and then, right when it’s within our grasp, we realize it’s been nothing but a mirage. It disintegrates in our hands and all the promises, all those passionately heated words turn to lies and dust that is swept away and forgotten within the sands of time.

  Love is not a real thing. It is contrived, whether by someone like me or by the person themselves. We believe what we want, because the truth is when you realize something as pure as love is nothing more than a fucking fairytale in a world of shit, well…that epiphany is enough to make the strongest of people crumble.

  I want to love her. And all that does is terrify me, so I lie to myself: You’re too fucked up to really understand the concept of love. Her eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted in her sleep and I sweep my fingers over her cheek. I want to covet this woman and pretend I could love her in ways no one else ever would.

  She is merely deception—all I want and can never have. She has been molded to see me as love. And love I am not for I have demons so deep, so fucking violent—even something as pure as love can’t cleanse this.

  Shifting ever so slightly in her sleep, she rolls onto her side and takes a deep breath. And fuck me if she isn’t beautiful. Raw beauty, completely unintended.