AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The gunshot resonates, a soft but ominous thud that reverberates through the room. The bullet slips into the silencer with a muted click, a fleeting echo that lingers more as a visual tremor than a sound.
Then I feel the blood that splashes across my face, my neck, my hair, and my body. My mouth parts as I watch my boss gaze at me with those brown eyes one more time before he falls forward and slumps on the tile floor in front of me.
Shock weaves its way through my veins, creeping and pinching until it’s all I know.
He killed him.
He… He who now stands before me. Words fail me. Time slows.
He steps over Sal, that hidden gaze watching my every move. He picks up his gun while holstering the other. This one doesn’t have a silencer, just feathers engraved on the side. My eyes dart back and forth from the weapon to his hidden eyes. My heart pounds so hard in my chest that black spots dance in my vision.
He hunts me like a predator, each heavy footfall a deliberate, echoing step. One. Then Two.
I can feel my heartbeat in my throat now, my ears drowning out all noise. My breath turns into a shallow pant.
Amid it all, I remain frozen, immobilized by a blend of fear and anticipation. The blood adorning my face dries, its chill a stark contrast to the tension in the air. He advances, his proximity almost close enough to catch his scent.
I keep my gaze on him, an unbroken visual connection between us. In turn, his covered eyes bore into me, capturing my every movement. A gun dangles from his grip, an ominous symbol of the consequences should I dare to shift. The hood concealing his features only just grazes his forehead, leaving the rest of his countenance cloaked in shadows.
We are nothing more than a horror story with no ending in sight, a nightmare brought to life by Mary Shelly herself.
My breath burns as he lifts one gloved hand to my face.
This is it. Death.
Am I ready? It’s a fleeting thought that flitters through me, then is gone just as fast. I can’t hold on to it any more than I can grasp a handful of sand.
He touches me. His cool leather glove brushes across my cheek to grip a handful of my hair. There’s a slight pinch before he works the glove through my hair until he fists it and jerks my head back.
The sudden movement propels my body forward, my chest colliding with his as I instinctively clutch his woolen coat. Coarse fibers abrade my tender palms, a prickly reminder of the danger surrounding us. An electric surge of fear courses through my veins as I sense the slide of the gun against my body.
I still can’t look away.
There’s no explanation for what I’m feeling—horror, fear, shock—and as the gun brushes over my hip, a slight tremble of arousal. Later, I’ll dissect this moment when I remind myself of this man, this masked intruder who killed my boss, whose body lies in a pool of blood not three feet away.
If I’m going to die, I’m going to soak in every last emotion available to me.
As the gun brushes over my chest, my breathing turns erratic. Whether that’s due to fear or arousal, I’ll never know, and when he pushes the barrel under my chin to tilt my face higher, my world slows down until there is nothing but the man destined to kill me and my own haunted thoughts.
It’s a standoff. A stalemate. I imagine his thoughts are just as haunted as mine, just as confused and unsure.
He drags the barrel up my chin and over my lips, his hand tightening in my hair as he slowly pushes the gun into my mouth, forcing my lips to part. Even so, I don’t look away from his hidden face.
A blink.It’s so faint, I almost imagine it just beneath those dark glasses, and I wonder what his eyes look like.
Saliva pools in my mouth, dripping down around the gun as he glides it in and out of my mouth slowly. Minutes roll by as my tongue drags along the metal, as my cheeks hollow and my heart thumps in my ears. His hand tightens in my hair until I feel the burn and tug of strands releasing from my scalp. A moan slips free, surprising me in this taboo moment.
Tension seems to wrap around us as he leans in, his cheek lightly grazing mine. The fine cloth is soft in comparison to his gun dragging out of my mouth. Then, in a twist of the unthinkable, I feel his tongue, a daring intrusion, trace a heated path up my jawline, pausing at my hairline. There, he inhales my essence, his breath mingling with my own in a haunting dance of intimacy and danger.
He releases me almost as fast as he grabbed me. Stepping away, he lifts a finger to his lips and backs down the hall, leaving me alone in the diner kitchen with Sal’s cooling body.
I don’t move until I hear the milk crate getting knocked to the side, and then, I finally reach for the phone.
Six
Sound is a strange thing,hearing even more so. The fact that we, as humans, hear and process noise in a way that allows us to filter through different sounds will always be one of the underappreciated wonders of the world.
And more than that? How in a moment of shock, all sound can just disappear, blurring behind the thudding beat of a heart.
