AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She races down the narrow way, hearing the crashes behind her, deafening smashes of family portraits and vases knocked out of their place to shatter on the floorboards. Like he’s intentionally wrecking all that he nears.
It only feeds her panic.
Somehow, she doesn't hear her own screams over all that noise, as though even her own wild heartbeat thumping against her eardrums is louder than her eternal shrieking.
Her cries cut off.
The weight of a solid strong body smacks right into her back.
She's thrown off her feet.
Flying through the air, she can only cross her arms over her face to brace for the impact.
And the impact is hard. She hits the wooden floor, head bounces off, stars erupt in her sight, and leaves her winded.
The landing was hard enough that in the two, three dazed blinks that she can manage, her breath won't come back to her. Stolen from her body. Robbed.
With a wheeze, she flattens her shaky hands on the scratched surface of the floor and tries to push up. Before she can so much as bend her own damn knees, a man’s impossible weight hits the small of her back.
It takes her ragged mind a moment to picture it—his knee pressing into her spine.
A whimper is all the escapes her as she is shoved back down on the floor in an instant. It happens so fast that her hands pressed against the wood boards are now trapped between the floor and her chest, and her face is smooshed so much that she can't utter a word, only moans and groans of protest.
The coarse texture of something like a rough snake wraps around her neck.
A rope.
It scratches her skin like sharp claws… and it tightens too quickly.
She has only the time to open her mouth for a silent scream that turns into a gasp.
It tightens more.
Blood is pooling in her face, bulging her eyes.
Tightens more.
Head is going to explode. She shoves her hands free from between her body and the floor.
More.
Her hands hit out at nothing, they scramble over the floorboards, more scratches on the surface. But the hooded man keeps his weight on her back pinning her down, the rope around her neck twisted at an angle.
Through the silent tears and screams, Gigi has a twisted thought… a fleeting horrifying thought of her red hair and the arch of her back, a brutal thought of that little fucking mermaid posing on a movie poster.
She can't fucking move.
Tightens again. More.
Her hands are on the man’s gloves now, scratching and tugging at them as though reaching back for the attacker will somehow pry her free. But she is losing strength.
Her body jerks.
So dark out here in the hall already, yet she can somehow tell that her eyesight is fading away.
She twitches.
Hears the creak of the rope.
