AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Help,” I tell him. “Help me, please. I can’t feel my legs. Call my mom. I want my mom.”
“What a fucking mess.” He shakes his head. “Darci, it’s important that you know I was never going to do this. I just wanted to scare you enough to make you stop. You really are such a pretty girl.” He kneels beside me on the road and smooths some hair away from my face. “What a waste.”
“What do you mean? You’re going to help me, right? Mark?”
He rolls me onto my side, checks my back pockets, then turns on the flashlight on his phone and starts searching for something on the road. A few minutes go by before he finds it.
“There it is,” he says, holding up the cell phone.
I hear his car door open and close, and then he’s back at my side. I’m relieved when he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. I expect him to take me back to the car and then to the hospital, but he walks toward the woods instead, taking me home.
“Mark? Did you call an ambulance? I can’t feel my legs. I can barely move my arms. I’m scared.”
“I didn’t call an ambulance, Darci,” he says.
My head starts to swim as I hang limply over his shoulder. I’m beginning to lose consciousness; I can feel it. No longer able to feel my arms, I try to focus on the bracelets lining my wrists and the sounds they make as we move. I need to stay awake.
“Can you carry me differently?” I cry. “I think…I think I’m going to pass out like this.”
“Go ahead and let it happen,” he says. “That will make it easier on both of us. I really did care about you, Darci.”
“What are you talking about? What will it make easier?” I ask.
He’s not going to hurt me. He’s not going to shoot me, or he would have done it already.
Right?
I fight against my body to remain conscious as Mark hauls me back to the house. Relief washes over me when we emerge from the woods, even though I can’t quite see where we are. Then, the ground changes from grass to the pavers of our back patio. I see my mom’s rhododendron bushes. I smell the chlorine of the pool.
And then I’m in the water, unable to fight my way to the surface. I panic, thinking I’d become too heavy for Mark and he’d dropped me by mistake. Then, I open my eyes and see the silhouette of his figure standing at the side of the pool, looking down at me, watching with his hands in his pockets. He makes no moves to help me, and I finally realize what’s happening.
For once in my life, I don’t even try to fight. I just wait for the lights to go out.
Devon’s dad runs across the living room with a gun in his hand. He rolls Mark’s lifeless body from Devon and onto the floor, then starts punching what’s left of his face over and over again.
“You son of a bitch!” he cries. “You killed her? You killed my daughter?”
“Dad, stop!” Devon groans, attempting to pull himself into a seated position. “He’s dead, Dad. He’s already dead. You got him. It’s over.”
The man falls into his son’s arms and weeps.
“He was our friend,” he cries. “We trusted him.”
“I know,” Devon says. “I know. Dad?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Dad, you need to call 911. We need to get the police. I…I need to go to the hospital. I’m bleeding a lot. It’s my back. He got me.”
Jeff moves to get a look at Devon’s back, lifting the shirt soaked in dark blood, and snaps back to reality. “Don’t try to move,” he tells him. “I need to get my phone. I’ll be right back.”
He leaves him and runs back to the bedroom, and Devon lies on his back on the hardwood floor.
“I’m okay,” he says to me. “You should see the other guy.”
I shake my head, still in shock.
“Come here, Allyson,” he says.
