“That’s…That’s it,” Aurora stutter.“He hasn’t done anything else.”
“Oh, really?”I smash his face down again.“That’s for hitting her with your gun.”Again.“That’s for putting her in danger by driving us off the road.”Again.“That’s for fucking taking her from me.”Again again again.“For even fuckingthinkingthat you could.”
Maybe some survival instinct is kicking in for Messina now.Or maybe he’s just tired of getting his goddamn face crushed in against this stone.Whatever it is, it gives him a sudden burst of strength.He hurls his head back as hard as he can, catching my cheekbone and jaw.If I hadn’t just gone through that car accident, it probably wouldn’t have had much of an effect.But my brain’s been rattled once already.And I’m momentarily stunned.
“Curse!”
Aurora’s voice drags me back.Just like it always does.
Messina has made it out of the bathroom.He’s staggering towards Aurora, who is now backing away from him with terror in her eyes.
Both times he took her, I never actually saw it happen.I never saw him advance on her this way.Never saw her fear.But I see it now, and it does something to me inside.Twists something.Maybe breaks it entirely.Snarling, I leap at Messina like a fucking wolf, tumbling with him through the balcony door that I’ve left open.He tries to gain the upper hand, to get on top of me, but all that face-smashing has taken its toll.He’s slow.Sloppy.Even with my injuries, I’m able to subdue him.
I gather his pathetic, shuddering body in my hands.And then I throw him over the balcony’s railing.
He makes a wet, snotty sound of shock when he drops, like he’s tried to gasp through his destroyed nose, but can’t.The next sound is that of a butcher’s knife through meat.Only it’s not a knife.But the spikes of the fencing below.
Messina has landed on them.
His body is a sordid arch, his feet grappling weakly against the grass, his back pierced by the fencing.Two of the wrought iron spikes protrude from his stomach, having passed all the way through him.A third spike has torn open his side, spilling blood and the hot ropes of his guts.But he’s still breathing, still alive enough to writhe like a worm on a hook.One of his hands flops against his stomach, as if he can somehow pull the fenceposts out.
I’m back on the trellis now, clambering down.
I’m compelled to experience this shit up close.To watch the life drain out of his body the way his blood currently is.To get as near as I can to his pain.Fucking drink it down.
My own pain is a distant echo as I approach his shuddering form.Even now, that golden euphoria is unfolding in my bloodstream, that sick sense of calm.
“This is what happens when someone touches her,” I say, coming to a stop beside him.I place my hand flat on his abdomen, between the black posts sticking out of him, and shove.With a crackling lurch, his body slides further down the spikes.When he opens his mouth, out pours a river of blackish blood.I don’t let up the pressure.Not until the stare of his swollen eyes goes blank.Not until he’s dead.
I give one final, furious shove for good measure before stepping back.Moonlight scalds the scene, gleaming on the black spikes, so shiny with his blood.
He is never going to touch my fucking wife again.
I turn back to the house to find her on the balcony, bathed in that same moonlight, fucking glowing with it.Her slender fingers are wrapped around the balcony railing in a death grip, her face whiter than I’ve ever seen it as she stares down at the scene, at Messina’s body, at me.
Then, she turns and flees into the house.
I follow at once, her name like smoke in my throat.
“Aurora!”My pain from the accident comes rushing back in, my leg throbbing, head spinning.I have to find her.I always, always have to find her.
I can never be without her now.It will never work.I won’t fucking survive it.
When I find her, it’s not in the main bedroom upstairs, but a much smaller one on the first floor.She’s sitting on a tiny single bed, one that looks like it might be meant for a child, her knees drawn up to her chin, her stare glassy.Tears course silently down her cheeks.
“He had to die, Aurora,” I say.
What other words are there?I’m sorry?Yeah, well, I’m not.
I kneel before her, a supplicant at her altar.I wish that I could suck the guilt out of her, like pulling poison from a wound.I wish that I could make her as unfeeling as I am.So that she wouldn’t have to suffer this.
But then she wouldn’t be Aurora.
“I know,” she whispers.The tears shimmer in the hushed darkness of this little room.“I’m not sad.Or…I am.I don’t know.I don’t know what I feel.”She presses her forehead to her knees, showing me only the top of her shining head for a moment that makes my fucking rib cage feel too tight.I want to see her face.
“This is the room I slept in.”
I absorb this, unsure what the significance is, or why she’s telling me at all.It is strange this random room is the one she’s ended up in.I wait for more.It doesn’t come.
