Snapping out of the shock from realizing my own brother sold me for a few hundred dollars’ worth of drugs, I smash my foot against the man on the right. He’s laughing and cracking jokes that stops the second the pain registers, and for a brief second, he lets go of my arm.
I use that moment to send a knee into the other man’s crotch, making him double over.
A renewed sense of adrenaline hits me, and I start running. Until a blinding surge of pain shoots up my scalp as a strong hand grabs a fistful of my wet hair and drags me back.
“Stop playing around, or she’ll run away!” Aaron shouts to them. “Do what you want to her now and let’s go. I’ll wait in the car.”
“Fucking bitch!” the one who I stepped on snaps, throwing my body against the brick wall behind me and I feel it scrape my back raw. “I was gonna go easy on you. But you want it rough? I’ll make that happen!”
“No! No, no, no,” I shout.
But once again, he silences me with one hand as his other starts tearing at my clothes.
Every inch of my body is shaking, fighting, but I can feel the fight leaving me. My heart can’t keep up. I can feel the life leaving my soul as those dark, dead eyes stare at me with possessed hunger.
I sink my teeth into his hand, and he jumps away with a yelp at the same time his friend slaps me across the face, making my head snap to the side, and again into that same brick from the strength of his blow.
I can taste blood in my mouth.
I can feel the rain on my face.
I can hear the storm roaring.
My borrowed heart gives out a painful squeeze inside my chest as the flashes from five years ago become like a blurred film in front of my eyes.
You can’t escape your fate…you try…you run…but even a cat eventually runs out of his lives.
My baby…my Emett…I can’t leave him alone. I can’t…I can’t…
Silent tears stream down my face, mixing with the blood in my mouth as I keep fighting, keep twisting and pushing but it’s fruitless as I feel hands pawing all over me, tearing at my shirt, taunting their prey like a pack of hyenas.
A roar comes from above, and I pray to the skies that I live through the night. That I make it. For my son…I need to make it. So I stop fighting and fall into a haze.
There’s another roar…a flash…and then nothing.
I feel nothing but warmth.
Hiswarmth…
But then I hear, “Lychik!” and my eyes snap open.
16
16 – Toljko Moya
Severin
IfIthought,Iknew what nightmares were made of…I was wrong.
So. Fucking. Wrong.
Because the one in front of my eyes makes my blood freeze, my heart stop, and something switches off in my brain as I watch two men pin Aurora to the brick wall. Her clothes soaked through as one of them slaps her across her face with the strength of a bull.
This time it’s not just some wind, it’s lightning and thunder that pierce the air around us, and the jolt runs through me and straight into her and only one coherent thought runs through my mind. Or rather, one word…
Moya…and she’s hurt. She’s being hurt…
“Vi zdohnite, syki.”
