I slam my hands on the steering wheel repeatedly, cursing myself a thousand times for being such an idiot and not seeing something that would have been visible to a blind man, for not having listened to my heart that is screaming at me that I need to stop acting like a coward. I have to go back in there and tell her that she…
… She is my salvation.
I go to open the car door and jump out when I see a vaguely familiar image cross the street and head straight towards Ciara’s house. I stop my hand on the door handle as I watch the scene from the rear-view mirror. A man, maybe a boy, with a black hooded sweatshirt… something that brings me back to…
Shit.
I head towards the garage in four seconds.
He’s already inside.
I go back to the door I left from and can hear talking, almost sobbing.
I swallow without being able to get anything down because I’ve got my heart in my throat. I try to concentrate as best I can and I can hear his voice over Ciara’s cries.
All of my muscles tense up in alertness and my tendons swell in order to remind me that I would be able to kill with my hands, any man who even thought about getting close to her.
I go to open the door but then I realize I don’t know what it is I’m going to find in there, I can’t risk it. So, I go behind the house, jump the wooden fence that guards the garden. I look around, take a terracotta vase and throw it at the window. I move the glass away without thinking about those shards that are lacerating my hands, and I jump through the window into the dark kitchen. I head towards the door that leads to the basement garage and open it, trying not to make too much noise, although my instincts are to kick the walls down. I go down the few stairs that separate me from the scene when I hear his last words: “Now you’re mine and no one will be able to separate us again!”
And the blind fury that strikes me full on is something instinctive, uncontrollable and violent that falls directly on him.
He isn’t aware of my presence until I’ve got my hands on his shoulders and I throw him to the ground. I sit on him and start punching and punching and punching. I can’t see anything, I can’t feel anything other than this crude rage and the irrational need to feel his cold dead body under mine.
I hit with no regard to what’s around me, I hit without thought of tomorrow or what the consequences will be.
I hit to kill.
Because the sight of her squashed up against the wall by his body is something I will never be able to erase from my mind.
The pain, crude and splitting as it is, is eating my heart and mind in one sole bite.
He wriggles under me as I hold him in place, squeezing my legs around his hips. He tries to hit me back, to scratch me to escape. But he won’t succeed.
I will not let him go until he’s dead.
