by Matie Cole
She counted herself down from ten, trying to prepare herself for what was to come, before she finally did the unthinkable and she dragged herself upwards. She pulled herself to her feet and allowed her eyes to dart anxiously around. Thank goodness there was no one. Not a soul looking back at her, not even a bird. Maisie allowed a small smile to play on her lips as she thought of herself as foolish. How could she be so silly? Lauren and Ray were probably still entangled in one another. They did not hear her fall at all. And even if they had done, clearly they were not bothered enough to follow her. She was free to leave and walk at whatever pace she wanted to. She did want to be fast though, but that was because she missed Bryson so much. Maisie needed to come back with him sooner rather than later. She could hardly stand this...
“There you are you little bitch!” The words rocketed through Maisie so painfully that she almost fell once more. Lauren seemed to appear as if from nowhere and she had taken on the true appearance of a mad woman. Her hair was all over the place, her face filled with sheer fury, her clothing all covered in mud and sticks from the forest. Not that Maisie thought she looked much better herself, and even worse she was wearing a wedding dress. “You thought that you could escape me, and your fate?”
The sgian dubh waved in the air and Maisie immediately knew that it was meant for her. She tried to run off once more, but Lauren had taken on an inhuman amount of strength and she pounced on Maisie, knocking her to the ground. Pain seemed to come from every angle, Maisie could not keep her thoughts straight. She was doing her best to bat away Lauren’s hands as they came for her over and over again, to punch and stab her, but it was impossible. Lauren’s rage and greed transformed her into something else.
“I have... wanted you dead... every moment since I met you,” Lauren puffed out in between every attack. “I hate you, Maisie... Ferguson. You are... pathetic. An absolute... waste of life. I hate you so much.”
The viciousness in Lauren’s words was only overtaken by her attacks. Maisie knew that this was a life and death situation, so her main focus needed to be on the blade. If the sgian dubh got to her, then everything would be over. If she could knock that from Lauren’s hand then she would stand a chance.
“Oh, my goodness, stop fighting back, Maisie,” Lauren spat out. “Accept your fate already.”
And there it was. The blade hanging over her head, aiming for her heart. It was now or never. Lauren had the expression of someone who already thought that she had won, which was not good news for Maisie. If she was going to keep herself alive then this was the moment that she needed to act.
Maisie reached up. She grabbed the blade between her fingers and twisted it around. She could feel it cutting into her skin and piercing her but it was better that her hand get injured than her body. She did her best to block out the sheer agony and used as much force as she could manage, she tuned out everything that was going on inside of her body, she focused only on her mind because that was what would get her thought and keep her alive. It was not easy against Lauren, who had rage on her side, but Maisie thought of Bryson, of June and Anice, of everyone that she wanted to keep herself living for. She thought of them and fought for them as well, twisting Lauren’s wrist around until the woman howled and loosened her grip. Maisie was not expecting it, but thoughts of the life that she really wanted gave her strength and finally she was the one holding the sgian dubh.
Chapter 19
“G et off me,” Maisie panted. She turned the sgian dubh around to show Lauren. Not to threaten her, but just to make her move. “I am not going to let you kill me, Lauren. You will not get what you want to. You want money and my father’s estate? Fine, that is not worth my life. You can have it. You do not deserve it, especially since you were the one who killed my father, but I will not die for it as well.”
Lauren raised herself up so that she could stare at Maisie, but she did not get off. She was not done murdering Maisie yet. She did not care what the girl said, she was going to finish her off.
“I do not trust you, Maisie Ferguson,” Lauren sneered. “You are untrustworthy. All people born in your position are. You do not know about hardships and real life. You have no idea how someone like me has to fight to get to the top. All that will happen if I let you go is that you will run back to your boyfriend and tell him everything. Bryson will then rage war on me and Ray, and we will never be allowed to live in peace.”
“I will not say anything.” Maisie knew that deep down she was probably not being honest with Lauren, but she would have said anything in that moment to put an end to the nightmare that she was living in. In all of the dreams that she had suffered leading up to this moment, she had never been caught. This was something new to her and she was not quite sure how to negotiate it properly. “I will simply tell Bryson that I only want to be with him, so I ended the engagement with Ray. You will never hear from me again. I will even take on the name Rosalyn because that is what I have been living with anyway.”
Lauren tossed her head back and laughed nastily. “This is how I know that you are a liar, Maisie. Stop trying to pretend that you are a much better person than I am. Stop acting like you are above us all. We are all terrible people. At least I am honest enough to admit who I am. You are not an angel.”
That word shocked Maisie to the core. She assumed that Lauren did not know how Bryson referred to her and this was just a coincidence, but still she froze exactly as she was with the blade pointed upwards and Lauren staring at her with sheer hatred in her eyes. She wanted to be an angel, she wanted to be a good person, she did not understand what Lauren meant about everyone being evil...
“Oh, for goodness sake, I am not tolerating this any longer.” Lauren pulled an arm back to snatch the blade from Maisie. “You are going to die here on the forest floor and be forgotten by everyone...”
But something happened. Lauren seemed to misjudge her own weight. She could not hold herself up with one arm like she thought that she was going to be able to and she fell. She tumbled, screaming, onto Maisie, her full weight squashing the girl. Maisie let out a strangled sound of pain and yelled for Lauren to get off of her, but she did not seem to be moving. It was as if she wanted to choke the air from Maisie and finish her off that way. A much slower murder than a stab wound, but probably effective.
“Why am I all wet?” Maisie blurted out. “There is a warm wetness. What is happening?”
She used every scrap of strength left within her to shove Lauren to the side. It was a little shocking that Lauren was not fighting back after her determination to have Maisie killed, but that was something she simply decided to be grateful for. Lauren hit the forest floor and Maisie sucked in more air than she had ever needed before, trying to regain the wind that had been stripped from her lungs.
“What is this?” The warm wetness remained upon her. Maisie patted her hands over herself and screamed as her hands were covered in red. Blood, it had to be, but where was she bleeding from? She could not feel any stab wounds, but since she had never been stabbed before, she did not know what it should feel like. Perhaps she needed a moment for the shock to wear off and then it would come to her.
“I am covered in blood.” Maisie tried to wash it off of herself, but it covered too much of it. It had sunk into the fabric. It did not seem like there was anything that she could do about it. “Oh no, this is bad...”
If this was the end of her life, then she wanted it to be filled with happy memories. She wanted to think of Bryson and everything that he had done for her. She needed to recall what it felt like to be loved. Yet somehow, he would not come to her. It was as if something was blocking his path and he could not get to her. There was still something that she needed to figure out before she could cave to her injuries.
“Oh, no.” Panic set in. Maisie instantly scooted away from Lauren. She tried desperately to figure out what was going on here. She did not know fully what was happening and it had her panicked. “Lauren.”
Lauren lay beside her, motionless
, with a glassy stare to her eyes. Her gaze was fixed on nothing yet pointed up towards the sky like she was waiting for something to come to her there. Maisie could not accept the sight of the sgian dubh sticking up from her chest, piercing her heart, clearly killing her instantly.
“I am a murderer,” Maisie realized. It did not matter that Lauren had fallen onto the dagger, the end result was the same. “I pointed the sgian dubh at her, I threatened her with it, and now she is dead.”
She leaned to the left-hand side and tried to throw up once more to let some of her negative feelings out, but Maisie had nothing left inside of her. Nothing but a bitter burning bile which made her sicker.
“I have killed,” she wept. “I am as bad as them. I am no better than Lauren and Ray... oh, no.”
As soon as she recalled Ray’s existence something snapped inside of Maisie. She leapt up and began running, her animalistic survival instinct setting in. She could not be next to Lauren’s body when Ray finally came across her, then she really would die. Maisie felt awful, knowing that she was running towards Bryson with even more baggage than before, but she knew him to be a wonderful man. He would care for her. He would assist her during her darkest moment because he loved her.
As Maisie ran, memories that had evaded her before flooded her and made her feel terrible. Now she could remember fully what a wonderful man her father was, and she hated Lauren for ruining him and the lovely life that they had. It hardly seemed fair for her to be destroyed as she was because of that woman. And now she had managed to wreck things again because she had turned Maisie into a killer.
“I want to be good,” she cried out to herself as she ran. “That is all I have ever wanted.”
Well, that and the man she was supposed to marry. She wished that she had gone through with that as well. If she had simply told Lauren and Ray that she did not wish to go with them then no one would have had to die. If they had asked her about her father’s fortune, she would have told them to take it. She had love, she did not need anything from her father as well. Certainly not if they wanted her dead.
“I did not want my father to die,” she howled as the tears began to make it challenging for her to see. “I did not want anyone to lose their life. I just wanted to have a normal life.”
The medallion was still between her fingers, reminding her of her mother, but this was not enough to comfort her any longer. Maisie no longer felt like someone who deserved her mother’s love and comfort because she was so bad, rotten to the core. Her mother would never support her becoming a killer.
The next time that Maisie stumbled she allowed herself to fall to the ground willingly. She no longer had the fight within her to keep on going. If Ray was going to find her and kill her then so be it. It was all that she deserved anyway. Maisie could not live with herself, knowing that she was a murderer.
“Just find me,” she whimpered into the dirt. “Find me and end me. I am bad as well. I deserve nothing.”
She could not hear anything other than her own weeping for a while, but soon footsteps rocketed behind her. Maisie ignored the animal instinct inside of her that wanted to run because it would not get her anywhere anyway. She had no choice but to lie where she was and wait for death to come for her.
“It is happening.” She braced herself right at the moment a giant weight leapt on her and caused her head to smack on the floor hard. Maisie’s headache became ten times worse but that was the least of her problems right now. “It is happening, and I do not get to say goodbye to Bryson. That is all I regret.”
“Where is Lauren?” Ray grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled it hard. “What did you do with her? She came this way to find you, yet I cannot see her. What did you do to her? Did you force her to get lost?”
“I... I...” He did not know that Lauren was dead, and Maisie could not find the strength to tell him. She was out of her mind with the pain and the shock. She just wanted death to come for her already. She knew that Bryson was much less keen on killing than Lauren, but she did not have the patience for him to work up to it. “I do not know,” Maisie stammered out. “I have not... not seen anyone...”
Ray repaid her lies by slamming her face back into the dirt. Maisie swallowed more than she ever wanted to, which caused her to cough repeatedly, trying to get the dust out of her before her lungs got infected... not that it mattered really, she would not be breathing for too much longer.
“I will kill you,” Ray screamed. “I have to kill you. Lauren has ordered me to do so. She needs you dead so that she can have everything that the world believes should be yours. She wants me to kill you, but there is no point if I do not know where she is. See, for me to win in the plan, she has to be there. So, Maisie, I need you to tell me where she is and what you have done with her. It might save your life.”
Maisie wanted to tell him now that Lauren was dead because it could have stripped the fight from him, but he kept hitting her head on the floor too hard. She could not find the words. Any minute now she was going to die throw the blows to the head anyway, so none of this would matter.
I am going to die, she thought to herself as the sadness crushed her painfully. I am going to die right here and my last act on earth will be killing another human...
Chapter 20
W hat on earth was happening? Maisie was not sure how much longer she could continue bracing herself for. This was getting silly now, why was Ray not just killing her? Was this some sort of torment?
“Fine,” Maisie muttered out. “I killed her. Is that what you want to hear? That I killed Lauren? But I did not want that to happen. She was attacking me, she would not stop... I took the blade from her and I do not know what happened. I have no explanation, so just kill me already, will you? Kill me dead. It’s what I deserve.”
But nothing happened. Nothing at all. Maisie was starting to grow impatient with the whole situation. If Ray was no longer going to kill her then she wanted him off of her. The more that he weighed up on her, the more uncomfortable she became. She hated the feel of his body on top of hers.
“Ray?” She twisted uncomfortably but he did not move. There seemed to be something else grabbing his attention which Maisie clocked on to not long after. A weird whistling sound that she could not place at all. “Ray, what the hell is going on? Can you please...?” She twisted over onto her back. “Get off me?”
And he did. Surprisingly, he did exactly what Maisie commanded him. Only he did not move like a normal person. He sort of slumped to one side and fell off of her, a little like Lauren did when she fell, when she was dead. But there was no sgian dubh this time, Maisie had no weapon to defend herself with. She could not be a murderer a second time around. It was far too painful for her.
“Ray, what happened?” Maisie turned to look at him, but he had fallen away from her. His body was not facing her anymore and she was far too afraid to lean closer to him, to see what had really happened. “Oh, no.” She leaned forwards, with her head in her hands and wept hard. “No, no, no, no more.”
It was too late to fight. Too late to run. Maisie was not sure that she could go anywhere right now. Every emotion that she could possibly feel darted through her, shocking her, sending lightning bolts all the way through her. She could not grasp on to anything. Maisie was overwhelmed by her emotions.
She seemed to be free now, free of anyone coming for her, and she had her identity back as well, which she did not expect to happen, and yet she had never felt so lost either. She wept for everything that she could have had and everything that was not going to happen anymore. She had lost.
“Ray, I... I did not mean for you to die too,” she called out. “You were not the one who killed my father. You probably did not want to kill me either. You were just doing what Lauren told you to.”
She leaned forwards and held on to her knees, sobbing hard and fast. A pair of arms circled around her which she assumed to belong to Ray who was finally going to put her out of her misery. She did not fight it, she went with him
as he lifted her from the floor, and she began to realize that her brain was playing tricks on her. She was attaching who she really wanted to see to the man who was going to kill her.
Bryson. The arms felt like him, the man smelt like him, at least she was feeling like she was with someone that she loved before she passed away. That was better than knowing Ray was wrapped around her. She lost herself in the daydream of Bryson, wondering how incredible her life would be if she was with him right now. She would have loved nothing more than to be in his arms, loving him.
“Bryson,” she whispered to herself. “Bryson, I wish that it was you here. I wish that it was you...”
She leaned into the man’s chest, inhaling him deeply, loving every second of the fantasy that she had created for herself. It did not need to be real, it could be whatever she needed it to be, and this was him. Bryson MacGregor, the only person who she had been in love with for her whole life.
“I am here.” The whisper back sounded all too real, and it really did seem to be coming from Bryson as well. Her imagination was incredible. She could not believe how wonderful it was. “I am here for you.”
A finger slowly wiped the tears away from her cheeks. She could not believe that this was Ray being so tender with her. He was never that sort of person. She assumed that this was imagination as well. She was creating a whole scene for herself. Or maybe she had actually died, and she was able to live in her favorite memories of all time. She wanted that. If this was what death looked like, then Maisie was alright with it.
“Oh, Bryson.” She cuddled into him tighter. “I never should have left you. I never should have believed those people. It has only ever been you for me. I wish that I had stayed and married you. That is what I wanted. I was just... just afraid. I was scared. I was silly. But now I get to live in the afterlife with you. I can really be your angel. I can really be the person that you thought I was. I can be your Rosalyn.”