by Riley Mason
There was a chance I was going to make it out of this, back out into the open air if I could stay hidden just for a little bit longer.
It was still too much for me to move out of my seat. I’d ducked down a bit, most of the people in the chairs and at the table around me provided enough height to keep them at a good length to block any sort of downward eye contact with me. That and I’d kept my head mostly down, my phone out, an emergency number already ready to go, but to the glancing world, I was just another person playing on their phone during their lunch outing.
Through strands of my hair, those bars of blonde that hung down over my face, I saw the changes in him as he moved closer to me. The hair that had grown not thick on his face but coarse. His eyes were more angled, dark circles hung low on them, but he’d filled out. He was no longer holding onto this athletic build that he’d had. It was like he’d just forgotten it.
As he got closer to me, I could feel the chain that carried my breaths begin to speed up, the sound of my heart was deafening, swallowing my hearing whole as I heard the percussion coming from the center of my chest.
All I could hear is the crashing waves of blood in my ears, turbulent inside of my body. Then a hand came down on the table. A man’s hand, threaded with a ring on it, one that I immediately recognized because I had given it to him only days before the miscarriage had ripped us apart. “Hi, Aly,” he said to me.
CHAPTER 28
The terror bent to panic and real fear was born. I could feel it step out of its shell and climb into the boundaries of my body like some invisible life was coming alive inside of me, finally waking up.
My hand that was on the table was still trembling, it didn’t matter that I had it pressed so hard onto the surface of the table that my knuckles had bleached themselves white.
I didn’t want to look up, my head was locked in place that I could see enough of him through the prison of hair that I needed to protect me.
My other hand was still on my phone, my thumb close enough to the call button that I could hit it. It was not much protection but I felt that next to the boiling hot coffee, it was the best one I had at my disposal.
I felt his hand caress through my hair and peel back the layers that were being used to hide my features, to hide my face from the predator hunting me. He knew it was me, there was no longer a point in pretending that I’m some stranger that he’d this chance encounter with. I could tell in his voice, I could tell in his feeling, that he was sure of who I was the second that he’d walked up to this table.
As he brushed my hair away, a drop of burning touched my eye and when the hair was cleared from my face, our eyes finally got a chance to connect, after years of absence. A meeting that I had hoped would never happen again.
His eyes were cold and dark, twisted, it almost bled a chill down my back. The green eyes he’d had at one point seemed to have gone, encasing themselves in whoever this was now, and allowing a helping of new features to come out.
I could see that this man that had sought me out, that had found me, that he had been patient in what he wanted to accomplish was not Luke. It may have been him, on the outside, the man I knew, the one I loved, but this wasn’t him any longer. Luke was dead, that Luke who held my heart, who I very nearly shared a child with was long gone. I didn’t know who this was in front of me, which decayed version of him was leftover, that had thought to do this, something so stupid, so dangerous. This was the one who I was afraid of, this was the one who was born that night, the one who struck me, the one who wanted me dead.
Finally, he unhinged his hand from the table, I imagined that my lack of action had given him the impression that he could take this a step further. My finger hadn’t quite injected the call into the open air to get the police next to me, to get them on their way here, light’s flashing, their sirens howling.
I waited while he took his seat, gently, as if any move beyond slow and grueling would set me off, would make me panic, I was giving him what he wanted. A lethargic target, a woman terrified to move, this was what he chased.
I looked to the woman at my right, hoping she made eye contact with me, hoping she noticed me, some movement out of the corner of her eye to make her turn her focus to me, even if it was just for a second. Hoping that if she could see my face in the seconds that I was offering it, she could remember who I was if someone asked her, in case I went missing, in case I was never seen again.
I couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. What actions he’d taken to push him down this path, to change him for such worse in the years since I had seen him. Knowing that he was so content with the doctor’s orders, that he was willing for forfeit a family, to see him this starved of humanity scared me. It forced me to believe he would hurt me and he wouldn't hold any remorse for it, there was no remorse for him to feel its bite, he could act without consequence.
“You and I need to talk,” he said to me. His voice was thick, hoarse, and tired with anger. His lips were thinned, his mouth barely moved as he spilled those words out to me, not in a request, but in a demand, one that I had no choice but to comply with.
“About what?” I slipped back. “There is nothing left now and there was nothing left before.”
“You robbed my kid from me and then you shut me out of your life. You made sure that after that night, I would never be able to see you again. That any chance we had to fix what our problems were disappeared the second I put my signature against those forms.”
“You tried to hurt me,” I tell him. My voice felt like thinned ice that was already held more weight than it should, it was going to crack and both of us were going to fall through. I could hear the rippling sounds of stress against the ice inside my inner ear. “When would it have stopped?”
“So, you were allowed to break but I wasn’t?” he asked, flames sliding up his throat, his words were venting from him in chokes of smoke.
“You don’t just start to hit a woman, Luke. That isn’t something new, that doesn’t end once it starts because it was always there,” I told him, seeing the truth in his face. Words that should’ve touched him, unsettled the part of him still clinging to the humanity I knew he had, but none of them did. The words, the imagery, did nothing to alter his face, to change his appearance to me. I saw a psychopath, plain and simple.
I glanced at the woman next to me again, Luke watched me as I did it, I was sure he was calculating every single shift the muscles in my body made, testing me to see if I was signaling someone, if I was going to panic and he was going to have to act. Wondering if I was going to do something he didn’t want me to. He didn’t know and I didn’t know either.
CHAPTER 29
The phone was still set to the keypad, I put it in my pocket, and I got up, the emergency number was already dialed against the screen, all three digits were in place.
I was still public, the rush of crowds funneling into the Starbucks still gave me the numbers I needed to feel some sort of safety, if not total protection.
It wasn’t. The second that I was up, I felt his hand slide over my forearm, his fingers clenched my arm as if my flesh was locked into a vice. Pain erupted from the spot that he was holding, I moan, I knew that he knew where he chose to grab me, reminding me that I wasn’t perfect, reminding me that he wasn't the only one who was crazy after all.
“Let go of me,” I said, my voice was pouring out of me, its panic, pain, anger, and anxiety blended together. For a second, I thought to yell, to scream at the top of my lungs, to let everyone know I was in trouble. I wanted to, I know Luke could only threaten me while I remained quiet, once I went public, he’d have no choice but to act. If I did it, there was a chance that he would be caught, captured, and thrown in jail for what he'd done today. On the other hand, if he wasn't, there was always a chance that he'd come back for me, find me again, not in a Starbucks, in my house, in the parking lot of my job, places with far fewer people to watch out for.
Luke stood, his eyes watched me on his way up to his f
eet and then they peered down at me when he’d reached his full height. With his other hand, he handled the hood on his back and managed it over his head. “Come with me.”
CHAPTER 30
Luke didn’t drag me through the Starbucks, at least not out the front door back into the street, the very thing that I felt helped me was the thing that was hurting me. No one was watching because no one needed to pay attention. In Manhattan, not a second of attention was spared in any direction that it didn’t have to be, where it didn’t belong.
My body was petrified, it was like I was encased in a cocoon and I had nowhere to move. When he opened the restroom door and pushed me in, slamming it closed and pressing the lock, my heart caught in the middle of my throat.
He pulled his hoodie back, stretching out his neck, I heard a pop and he started to pace, his eyes on me like some animal that was about to make a kill to feed a hunger that had nearly sent him into madness.
This was the first time that he and I were together alone since the night that he’d attacked me, I knew he was filled with as much if not more than me right now. He knew as well as I did what was put in front of us and what it did to us as people. I saw now that he’d tried to tie all his off, anchor it somewhere, and drop it into some part of his body that he could hide from, but despite his efforts, it found him anyway.
There was too much pain in his face, that was the thing that terrified me, fear was a switchboard that had no rational solution to it. I watched a smile spread over his face. “Don’t do this,” I said to him. My mind was already busy wondering what his plan was. Paralyzed to know what he wanted to accomplish by doing this, by taking me, by hiding me in the bathroom.
“Do what?” he asked, and then his hand sprung to my throat, squeezing as he had on that night except with nothing held back, no strength left in his arm, it was all for me now.
“This was the very last thing that you and I shared. Before I felt the guilt burn inside of me. Before I let you go, because this isn't who I was, but it was enough for you to paint a picture of the man I was about to become... No, wait, the man that I always was. The one that our dead child brought out of me.”
My fingers start to dig into his hand, scraping for a bit of space so that air could get to my chest again, but it barely worked. His grip was too strong around my frail throat. He didn’t want me to breathe. I could see it in his eyes, somewhere, he had lost that sensation in there that I used to love, he'd forgotten the human being he used to be. There was no conscience, there was no guilt, there was nothing inside of him that would change this decision because there was no remorse waiting for him.
I mouthed the word please, thinking that it would do something to break this psychopath concentration he had. I watched as his eyes breathed in the shape of words that my mouth was making. I watched as he understood it, as it found some way through the barriers he’d put up around himself that allowed him to do this. He knew what parts of his body he needed to shut-off to make sure he could see this through to the end.
For a second, breath fell back into my chest. Like a waterfall of air breaching my mouth and slamming hard into the pumps on either side of my heart. They were quickly ejected when he punched me right in the stomach.
Air exploded out of me and I went down hard to my knees, my hands moving to cradle my stomach. It was a feeling I’d never felt before, one that shut down the air function in total. The only thing I could see were stars, the only thing that could move through my head was the fact that I knew I need to breathe, every part of my body agreed in full, but I couldn’t, not until the organs that needed to refine that air were put back together.
Moans spilled out of me, shouts of pain that did not require air to fuel them. The slow shrill sound effects of pain leaving a body. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed he’d started his pacing again. Back and forth against the tile of the bathroom. I knew he was looking down at me, I didn't need to see his eyes to know they were smeared all over the back of my head, but I didn’t think he was wondering what he was doing. I couldn’t imagine he was feeling remorse, he was feeling anything that could stop this before he killed me.
Instead, that feeling was running through my veins, the one that told me he was deciding, and it was confirmed when he spoke to me again as I was down there on the floor. “If that body of yours killed my baby, then it doesn’t deserve anything.”
CHAPTER 31
Luke grabbed a handful of my hair, twisting his fingers through its length, and pulled me back up to my feet, a groan escaped him as he did it. I couldn’t trust my strength or my weight but with my hair tied into his hands, the back of me slammed hard enough against the bathroom wall it caused the pipes hidden behind the walls to quake, I realized I wasn’t not putting any weight on my feet. He was actually holding me up by the grip that he had knotted into his hand from my hair. My feet dangled below me, my toes reaching down for the floor that was just beyond what they can touch.
For the first time, I could smell the alcohol that was laced in his breath. That heavy cloud of whiskey against his soiled tongue, soaked in countless amounts of Jack Daniels.
Slowly, he lowered me down, staring at me in the eye, his eyes so packed with rage, mine falling, broken against his stare. I was nervous, my face showed it, it was all I could do not to scrunch it up, terrified at what was coming next, what was playing through his head. Then the back of his hand swiped forcefully across my cheek, splitting my lip and sending blood into my mouth, spit onto the wall.
"I hate you," he said to me, his voice still a low growl.
When I looked at him, I knew there were tears in my eyes, I held myself together, I tried to be tougher than I felt, knowing that on the inside, I was falling apart.
I didn’t want to show pain or panic or fear, but those things simply couldn’t hide anymore, they are were, with me in that bathroom, companions that I couldn’t forget. They were there because he’d dragged them out of me, resuscitated them from me when he’d forced me into this room. They were always there because I had never learned to soothe them.
CHAPTER 32
While I looked at Luke, studying his face, I realized how strange he was to me now, there was nothing redeemable left in him, there was not a single thing in him worth saving. He was a man who beat a woman, kidnapped her, was going to kill her.
“I’m going to kill you, Aly,” he said to me. “You took what was most precious to me and then ruined my life in the process.”
“I didn’t do anything that could be prevented,” I plead to him, chaos was in my voice, panic was in my face, my words projected because I felt they might be the last thing that could save my life.
I watched him as he turned and pointed into the corner of the bathroom. The room lights had gone out, for some reason that I couldn’t remember, that I didn’t recall, the room had gone red now. He turned and pointed to the corner again, with no words, just standing there waiting for me to see.
I was there, at least I could see myself there. It was my brain regurgitating memories that I’d sought closure for, old, filthy memories that had no place in my mind. Those raw and stained memories that I’d never had a chance to deal with because I was scared at what they would do to me when I exposed them to the rest of me. I had been worried what would happen if I let them out while I was going through the depression of the miscarriage, but now they were surfacing in time for this moment, arriving when I least wanted them to.
I had tried so hard to put them some place where I was safe from what they could do to me. They had never listened, and I had ignored them in kind because I felt like that was the only fair thing to really do.
But, now, this memory was on display. The woman there, laying in the corner of the room, tears filling her eyes. I watched her hysterical tears so heavy it shook her entire body to pass them. Her mouth so angled and crooked in the weight of the tears it nearly broke her jaw voicing the moans that followed that sadness. It was a pain, but it was a crushing symphony going on inside
of her. It wasn’t just her womb that had taken the punishment, it was the ache that had spread to the rest of her body like some deadly disease infected what was left inside of her that still worked.
Then she watched the phase of her life come into existence that she had never shared with another living soul.
It was out, it was coming.
CHAPTER 33
I looked in the corner, at that image of me sitting there, almost waiting. Watching while the man that I loved and adored had his hand wrapped tight around my throat, suffocating me.
I was losing air, I knew this because the version of me who was watching, sitting there in her grief and suffering, her pain and agony looked at me with indifference, hatred.
It was like she couldn’t stand the person she was watching but she refused to look away, she couldn’t. She wanted me to suffer just as much as I was.
My eyes started to roll into the back of my head because even after Luke hit me in the stomach, forcing the air out of my body, he wanted to keep the air out of me, make sure I couldn’t take another breath.
He wanted to watch me leak that last bit of air until he either decided to go through with it or to stop all this at the last minute and have that change of heart I hoped he had. I could see in his eyes, those beaded pupils that rotted inside of his eyelids now, that he hadn’t quite decided yet, he hadn’t made the choice if he was going to kill me, but he hadn’t ruled it out.
I looked at him, trying to show my soul to him in that stare. Thinking for a second, if he could see something, some essence of humanity tied to my eyes he might call this whole thing off and run. Leave me alone forever because he didn’t want to face the consequences that he’d decided to take before they all catch up to him, if he went through with this, even if he didn’t.
It was this woman looking at me, though, who just wouldn’t let me settle. She wouldn’t let me focus because she was in a position that I’d been in before. Something I’d been forced to see, the horrific scars I’d decorated onto my own body in dealing with this.