AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I can only see one fool now,’ I said, ‘and he’s right in front of me.’
Murphy narrowed his eyes, opening his mouth to reply, and I took that as an invitation to jam the barrel of my beautiful gun between Murphy’s lips and teeth.
He spoke angry, unintelligible words around the gun in his mouth, his fingers curling around my biceps and squeezing.
I thought of how I’d been stuck here for nine shitty fucking years. I thought of them, screaming as they burned and died. And any hesitation that lived inside me was replaced with a cold, numb nothingness.
‘Fuck you,’ I whispered.
Before I lost my nerve, I pulled the heavy trigger back.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MARIANA
The blast deafened me, the force of the kick throwing Murphy off of me momentarily. What goes up must come down, though, and he landed heavily on my chest a second later, my grip still firmly around the gun in his mouth as his dead weight knocked every ounce of air out of me. His mouth was not what it had been three seconds ago. My eyes had adjusted to the light enough to see his cold, unblinking blue eyes and the gore the bullet had created beyond his shattered teeth.
He was as dead as they come. I’d just killed a man as he hate-fucked me, and I was pretty sure I was going to be murdered brutally for it.
My senses went haywire. My eyes could see better than ever in the dark, every detail soaking into my brain and lying in wait for later, when they’d become my nightmares, no doubt. I drew in a panicked breath as I tried to push Murphy’s bleeding corpse off me, but he wouldn’t budge. Jesus. I was pinned, blood rushing from his mouth onto my stomach and chest and sliding down my right side, pooling underneath me where it quickly grew sticky and cold. I panicked. I started to scream, clapping a hand over my mouth as I shrieked into it, tasting the heavy, metallic blood that coated my lips and palm. Vomit rose in my throat and I swallowed it down.
I forced myself to stop screaming. The immediate threat was gone. Murphy was dead. I’d just successfully avenged the murders of my family in some small way. There was more to do, further to go, but I’d just taken the first brutal, bloody step towards my own redemption.
And it felt fucking scary, but more than that, it felt exhilarating.
But still my primitive brain was freaking the fuck out. I started to wail again.
Focus.
I let go of the gun, let go of my mouth.
Figure it out.
First things first. Get Murphy the fuck off me.
I braced the heels of my palms against his shoulders and pressed my left knee against his leg, leveraging his dead weight enough to haul him, painfully slowly and inch by excruciating inch, until his body sagged onto the bed at my right. But now his weight was pinning my arm, trapping me. I pulled, hard, my tendons stretching painfully as I wrenched my hand free.
I crawled to the edge of the bed and slid onto the floor, backing away on hands and heels. The smell of blood was so thick in the air, it was like I was swimming in the stuff.
Using the wall for support, I stood, my legs trembling violently. I made it three steps to my bathroom and puked in the basin. Adrenalin, maybe. I’d need a new mattress. Would somebody call the cops after hearing that gunshot? I hoped not. I didn’t need any attention.
I leaned against the bathroom doorframe and watched as the remainder of Murphy’s blood drained out of the dirty hole in the back of his head and onto my Egyptian cotton sheets.
An angry buzz rang in my ears. I couldn’t hear a thing. Maybe I’d blown out my own eardrums when I pulled that trigger.
I turned the faucet on to wash the vomit away and noticed blood running down my bare arms for the first time. Dreading what I’d see, I slowly raised my eyes to the large mirror that hung above the basin.
It was as if the devil stared back at me. A pair of dark blue eyes and a shock of long, tangled dark hair were the only things I recognised. The rest was a garish caricature, soaked in blood from head to toe. Was it really possible for one little bullet to do all that harm? Make all that mess? I looked like something out of a slasher movie.
And the blood wasn’t the worst part. As I studied my right arm closer, I noticed a fine coating of gritty stuff. Like grains of sand, but bigger.
His skull. My arm, the one that had been trapped underneath him until I’d wrenched it out, was covered in pieces of Murphy’s skull.
Luckily I was already in front of the basin, because otherwise the second puke would have gone all over my feet and the floor.
I retched until there was nothing left in my stomach but a hollow ache. I used a towel to wipe the blood from my face, hands and feet as best as I could. I stared longingly at the shower, wanting nothing more than to step underneath the hot water and let it wash every trace of Christopher Murphy from my skin. But I couldn’t. I knew I had precious time left to do something.
I crept past Murphy’s still form, my eyes returning to his face. His mouth. His broken teeth and the hole in his head.
