AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Before I have a chance to respond he punches me in the jaw, my neck whipping and pain radiating like I was struck by a baseball bat. The impact makes me bite my tongue hard and blood wells in my mouth.
“I’d ask if you have any idea how terrible that makes me look, but I’m sure that was your intention, huh?” His face is scrunched in rage as he bellows and I’m just catching my breath when I spit bloody saliva at his feet.
“Or maybe I just wanted a real man to get me off before I’m forced to marry you.”
His jaw bears down and his nostrils flare, red spreading into his cheeks. Enraged, he reaches for me again, but this time I duck and dodge around him. He spews filthy cuss words and accusations while he comes after me.
I don’t make it far, my airways feeling bruised and winded. He catches me before I reach the door, fisting the back of my shirt and flinging me back into him. I collide into his chest, and he hooks his arm around my neck.
“You fucking bitch,” he hisses, and his elbow squeezes, pinching my circulation.
I claw at his forearm, but it’s as immovable as a tombstone. Very quickly my vision blurs and black dots begin to speckle the room. I have an out-of-body awareness that this is a much better way to die than being shot. I’ll black out before he completely deprives me of oxygen.
Perhaps it will be an almost peaceful death.
Something I never considered I’d get in this life.
A calm settles over me as my eyelids droop. My surroundings become fuzzy. Still, even in this state, my thoughts float to Finn.Would he come to my funeral?
Before my eyes give into the darkness, I spare a passing glance out the window to his building. There’s a light on in the living room. A soft, cozy, warm tone. I picture him reading a book in a big leather chair. Perhaps his hair is ruffled and unstyled after doing whatever he does all day. Maybe he’s in sweats and relaxed, or maybe he’s still in his business suit but has the top buttons undone. What tattoos might be showing?
For some reason that final thought—the fact that I will never know what tattoos sprawl across his chest—spurs me into action. A sudden and inexplicable burst of energy makes me swing my legs, fighting back.
Hudson grunts against my renewed strength and bends backward so my toes dangle off the floor. The black dots are turning into fully-formed, encroaching shadows, but something gold breaks through my haze.
A gold letter opener on the foyer table.
I swing madly. Using every last, fading morsel of strength I have to distract him by flailing all my limbs so hopefully he doesn’t notice me reaching for it.
The black has nearly seeped completely through my consciousness. I can’t see anything but faint bursts of light. Yet somehow I manage to bring the letter opener behind me and not stop when the blunt tip meets the resistance of his flesh.
A strangled cry is ripped from my lungs as his grip begins to slacken while I put everything I have into plunging the opener deeper into his neck.
I feel the wet heat of his blood spill onto my hand, still gripping the handle so hard my fingers ache. I only let go when he crumbles to his knees with a garbled, choking gasp and releases me.
My head spins, feeling dizzy as the room comes back into focus with the pressure on my neck gone. I scurry back on the floor until I hit a wall.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
My pulse beats heavily in my ears, ringing hollow and deep. It keeps me from hearing whatever sputtering sounds Hudson makes as he chokes to death on his own blood. I watch him writhe until he stops but I don’t hear anything other than the thumping.
I don’t know if it’s minutes or hours later but eventually my senses return. Hudson is no longer making any noise. His body lies lifeless, even the blood has stopped spewing with the halt of his heart.
My mind draws a blank on what my next steps should be. I feel like I’m in a dream, still in a daze and waiting to wake up. Maybe I will sit here forever next to Hudson’s body until it turns gray, then blue, then purple and decays.
Somehow, I find myself holding my phone to my ear, the ringing feels distant and rumbly like the sounds of waves on a beach.
“Effie?” Finn’s voice cuts through my cloudy mind, and I suddenly remember how and why I ended up with my phone in my hand.
“Do you—Do you remember when you made me promise to—to call you and you’d—”
“And I’d be there.” He finishes my sentence and a weighty sense of relief I don’t quite understand settles in my chest. I hear rather than feel myself heave a gulp of air.I think I’m crying?“Effie, where are you? Are you at the apartment?”
I nod as if he can see me and somehow he infers my silence as a yes.
“I’m on my way.”
1.Lost It All—Jill Andrews |
