This couldn’t be it. I was so close.
Something collided with my back, shoving me into the door, then my feet lifted off the ground, and I was flying backwards. My back smacked into a solid object, popping my spine from the impact. Groaning, I watched him stomp towards me from the door, then kneel over me. His brows pinched together, his lips curled up in a snarl. “You’ve ruined everything.”
Smoke billowed in like a cloud above Mr. Grady’s head. He didn’t put out the fire? He’d locked me in this cabin with no means of escape while a fire raged inside. Thunder cracked in the distance as his fist came barreling towards me.
Years of surviving abuse taught me to block the head, and on instinct, I pulled my bloody forearms up and over my face. His knuckles hit my arms, sending them into my nose. Tears sprung in my eyes. It still hurt, but it was better than knuckles. I turned my head to the side, holding my nose, which now gushed blood down the side of my face when the table collapsed, sending the fire towards the record player.
His furious gaze shifted from me to the burning table. The classical music warped into a haunting, elongated noise, as the record melted from the heat until, finally, it stopped, and all I could hear was the sound of our breaths and the wood snapping in the fire. I wiped the blood from my face, then drove my fist hard into Mr. Grady’s balls. He doubled over. The veins in his neck strained against his skin as his face turned red. He rolled away, holding his hands between his legs.
I pulled myself to my feet, then ran down the dim hall, now lit with flames. To my left was the kitchen, to the right, a bathroom, at the end of the hall, a bedroom. Not one room had a window. I hit the wood-paneled wall with my hands, screaming with anger and frustration. I rushed back into the room, where the fire licked up the bookshelf. The world slowed around me.
His eyes flashed from me to the fire.
People say that time slows down when the end is near, but I always thought that was a metaphor. But it’s true. It slowed, not like how you see in the movies, but like Father Time gave you two more seconds to think things through.
“What have you done?”
Mr. Grady’s shouts brought me out of my time phase. The world sped back up, the flames now higher on the bookshelf and his frantic cries piercing my ears as he tried to bring it under control.
I smiled.
If I was dying here today, I’d do it with a smile on my face. He couldn’t hurt another human being again because he’d be dead. I ruined his plans, his life, and everything he owned. I brought a man to his knees, and I liked it.
Of course, I wouldn’t make it out of here alive to enjoy it much longer.
Smoke filled the room as the books burned and, in turn, burned my eyes and lungs. I ran back into the kitchen, grabbed the towel off the stove handle, and covered my nose and mouth. My eyes watered from the smoke, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Mr. Grady worked on stomping out the flames that hit the rug before him, and that’s when I noticed it. The shiny objects, catching my eye as it swung with motion.
My ticket out.
My freedom.
The keys.
They hung from his belt loop, connected by a carabiner.
I glanced around the burning room. Veronica sat in her seat, her hair singed on one side up to the scalp, giving her a modern look like the kids wore it these days, while blackened skin covered her cheek and neck. Blood slicked my thighs as I stumbled towards the chair he’d sat in and swung it at him.
He turned on the downward swing and caught it in his hand, ripping it out of my grasp and throwing it away from the fire, then lunged forward, wrapping his hands around my throat and threw me into the burning bookshelf.
Thunder boomed overhead again. Or was that the sound of me breaking the shelves with my body?
Embers of burned paper rained down on me, burning through the lace, and hitting my skin. I fell forward, rushing at him, barreling him into Veronica. We landed on top of her; the chair protecting most of her lower half. A noxious odor of rotting flesh and feces expelled from her body.
I gagged, trying not to breathe in the smoke and the decaying body as he stared at Veronica in a daze. I felt around his waistband, searching for the shiny keys.
He enclosed his hand around my wrist, wrapping his other arm around my waist, and held me tight to his body. “If we die today, you’ll die in my arms. Together, forever.”
Mr. Grady tightened his grip around me, holding me in place to burn alive. I’d be damned if I died in his arms. The only charred remains they’d find together would be his and Veronica’s.
I thrashed against him, forcing him to release his grip on my wrist, and used it as leverage, holding me in place. “Stop fighting. It’ll be over soon.” My hand slipped down to his key chain, keeping him distracted with my wriggling, then unclipped them from his belt as the flames replaced the smoke clouds on the ceiling.
The fire would soon engulf the cabin, and it wouldn’t matter how hard I fought to escape, I wouldn’t be able to. Heat spread throughout the small area, burning hotter than the midday sun in the Sahara. I fisted the large key, the point hanging out from my fingers. Then I grew still, looked into his eyes as he looked back at me, and thrust the tip of the key into his neck over and over until he released me. He held his hands to his neck as the blood spurted from his shallow wounds.
A shelf holding the heaviest books broke in two, sending fire laden paper and jars with women’s lips inside, tumbling to the ground.
I stumbled towards the jar, picked it up, feeling its weight, then smashed it into his head. Glass shattered over his skull, sending a wave of fluid filled with body parts all over the floor. His eyes rolled, his lids closed, and he crumpled to the ground beside Veronica.