“What a martyr. Where is she?” Tom asks. He doesn’t shoot him right away. He needs him to find out if I’m long gone or still reachable.
“What do you care? You’re surrounded. You’re going toprison. What does it matter where she is?” Raff says. And this is when I start to move. I have precious little time.
“Prison, I can beat. I think I’ve already demonstrated that. But taking care of you? This may be my only chance,” I hear Tom say as I crawl on my hands and knees across the floor as soundlessly as I can. I hold a pair of kitchen scissors that were lying on the bottom of a plastic dish tub on the floor tightly in my fist.
“Please,” Raffy pleads. “Let her go.”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up. She’s not yours! She’s mine,” Tom screams, and then he cocks the gun and the expression on Raff’s face falls. A recognition that it’s his last moment on this earth—a look that’s indescribable and heartbreaking. And then there is a glint in his eye when he looks up, something catching in the corner of his vision. Movement. He sees me standing up, moving silently behind Tom’s back and holding the handle of the scissors so hard my knuckles feel like they’re bleeding. Tom must register the change in Raff’s face, because he hesitates and then starts to turn, to look behind him, but it’s too late.
With a scream so hard and loud my lungs ache, I thrust the blade into the side of Tom’s neck. He doesn’t cry out or scream. Eerily, he doesn’t make a sound. The gun softly drops from his hand. His eyes bulge and blood starts to pour from the side of his neck. More blood than I’ve ever seen. And then he collapses, wordlessly, almost gracefully, to the floor and begins to convulse.
Raff runs to me, pulling me away from the body, taking the weapon. I fall to my knees and hold my head in my hands, shocked at what I’ve done even though I know I had to do it.
Tom’s body goes still, and Raff just holds me in his arms on the floor, letting me sob.
“It’s okay,” he says, and he keeps repeating it until I can breathe again. The sirens are louder, the front doors open, and medics and police are shouting.
“You’re okay. I’m here. You’re okay, Sash. It’s over.”
* * * * *
