My chest hurts.
Is this what a heart attack feels like?
My ribcage feels tight.
Maybe I’m dying.
I try to breathe.
If I just died right now, would King let it all go?
Part of my brain hears a chime echo through the house. And part of my brain recognizes King’s footsteps as he walks out of the room. But I can’t move.
I should run, but I can’t move.
The screens are all black. Showing nothing but my own distraught reflection. That doesn’t matter though. I can’t get the images out of my mind.
I’ll never get those images out of my mind.
I don’t really have a relationship with my family. My parents probably wouldn’t know until Christmas if I went missing. And it’d take months before the one cousin I like would notice that I stopped liking her kid’s pictures online.
Her kids.
My stomach rolls. The feeling of fear-nausea becoming familiar.
Even if no one would truly miss me, I can’t be responsible for the death of…anyone. It doesn’t matter how estranged or ignored I am by someone, it doesn’t mean I want them killed.
I couldn’t live with that.
I press my hands against my belly.
I don’t want to be sick again, but it would serve this bastard right if I puked all over his fancy desk.
It doesn’t make sense…
King doesn’t make sense.
He’s so…up and down. Hot and cold.
He kept his sister from attacking me at Mandi’s house.
He killed Lee. His own brother-in-law.
He kidnapped me.
He helped to calm me down when I had a panic attack.
He locked me in his bedroom but he fed me. And he didn’t touch me. Not like that.
He hurt himself to catch me on the stairs, rather than just let me fall.
But then he…
A tear drips off my chin.
There were so many photos.
Anyone who’s ever meant anything to me.
I don’t know how he even found anyone. He has pictures of people I barely remember. And he didn’t even need to say anything.
Because the final images…
I suck in another breath.
It wasn’t the ones of my personal information. Wasn’t the screen that showed the results from my last abnormal pap, and how I had to go back in. How much those tests hurt, just to tell me that everything was fine.
No, it was the images of the burned down houses. The remnants of explosions. The…blood.
The evidence that Lee wasn’t the first victim of King’s violence.
You’ll marry me.
Another tear.
I’ll do it. I’ll say the right things. Sign the right papers. But I won’t stay. I’ll never just accept this fate and stay.
