Page 59 of Torn By Fate

The wheeze in my throat became a soundless rattle. He wasn’t human; he couldn’t be. Humans felt pain. Humans reacted to pain. This thing was crazed, frenzied, and utterly maniacal.

I was going to… die.

My lungs burned in my chest, my body screaming for oxygen that his hands would not allow.

So, this was what dying felt like.

I was… going to die, right now, on this carpet, in this random hotel room in Lisbon.

My arms grew heavy, my fingers slipping from his eyes, all my strength leaving my muscles. My legs stopped kicking.

I… was… going… to… die.

My eyes closed.

Death was ugly; I couldn’t bear to see it.

My heart slowed.

Death was painful; I couldn’t bear to feel it.

My body surrendered.

Death was soundless; I couldn’t bear to hear it.

My mind succumbed to the inevitable, recognizing with slow cruelty that I had been defeated.

And then the weight was gone.

Wrenched away with a force so violent I barely had time to feel it.

One moment I was pinned beneath him, the next his crushing hands had vanished from my throat.

My mouth opened with a gasp. My body convulsed furiously with the first breath I took.

Ragged, shuddering breaths tore through my damaged windpipe like broken glass. The air hit my lungs, and I choked on it, coughing violently.

My hands flew to my neck, fingers pressing against the bruised flesh, feeling the pulse beneath. Wild and erratic, but there. Still there. Still beating.

My body curled inward as it tried to remember how to function.

Another sound filled the room.

A sound that wasn’t coming from me.

It was the resonance of violence—brutal, vicious, and utterly without mercy.

The wet, meaty impact of fist meeting bone, over and over, a rhythm so relentless it sounded almost poetic.

I heard something crack. Multiple cracks.

I heard the splatter of blood against the wall, against the carpet.

I couldn’t see.

My vision was still blurred, the darkness receding slowly, reluctantly. But I could hear. And what I heard was the… complete and absolute annihilation of a man.

The punching didn’t stop.