Page 4 of Lamb

I can do this.

I lifted my hand, cautious to keep it obscured from view of my target’s accomplice.

His tongue pushed through, and my gasp of protest was smothered beneath his sloppy lips. The man delighted in my struggle and growled into my mouth.

I can do this!

I reached up, arm aching and shaking as I poised the knife where I needed it, the blade finding aim towards his throat.

3 … 2 …

“Monster …”

The words raced into my head, and the concrete disappeared beneath me. Ice swept into my soul, and darkness swallowed me whole.

A different dizzying and disorientating void took hold, but it was one I had never forgotten. My eyes burned, and chemicals filled my nose. Pain flashed across my face, my muscles aching and exhausted, but my grip on the blade was tight, my knuckles white. I could feelherchest quaking beneath me, felt the shiver of the blade and heard the gargle of blood in my ears. “You … monster.”

BANG.

I was startled, the scream of a man filling my ears. Concrete pinched at my skin, and the hallucination vanished.

Knifeman stilled above me, his eyes bulged as wide as a frog, his face contorted with frozen rage. It did not last. The arm holding him aloft collapsed, his body falling rigid, like a felled tree, down onto my side, crushing my arm and knife beneath his titan mass.

I cried out, my bones being crushed into the uneven concrete. I curled towards him to find relief, pushing against his stiff chest, trying desperately to pull my limb free, but it was impossible. He weighed too much, and I was too weak.

His scream still rang in my ears as panic began to writhe in my chest and cortisone surged through my veins. I needed this manoff.

The bile I tried to hold back, projected out of me and onto the still body of the man now lying motionless on my arm. His eyes remained wide open, pink neon light glinting lifelessly across his stark features. The acid burned my throat, and tears well in my eyes, as a cold reality dawned on me.

The man screaming was not this man.

The searing pain only grew; no adrenaline or shock comforted me, no numbness or cold, no blissful unconsciousness.

Even still, it could not distract me. Not as my body racked with tremors, not as I fought to stop myself from turning.

Don’t look.

Don’t look.

I looked.

At first, I could see the accomplice doubled over on the floor. His knees were soaked with dark red blood, hands clutching his waist, the handle of a hunting knife pressed between his knuckles. His yelling began to dull as more blood sunk into hisshirt, and he began to sway. It was less than a second before he collapsed onto his side, hands falling limp on the ground.

The blood continued to spill, the thick puddle growing across the concrete, reaching towards a pair of expensive black dress shoes.

It cannot be …

My eyes climbed. The shoes were attached to a pair of slender, tailored suit trousers, the black colour untouched by blood, grime, or dirt. I rose higher, to the red silk shirt and the black suit jacket, the matching red silk handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket.

I knew this man.

Both neon and moonlight vanished as dark shadows swept across the hallway. I could not see well.

Beyond my poor vision and the crippling pain burrowing deeper into my arm and mind, he stood as an abstract blur—nothing more than shapes and soft edges. But even if I could not see him, I knew how the suit would cling to his frame, the sharp slope of his shoulders, the long length of his neck, and the cut of his languid lean legs.

He stood with one hand tucked into the pocket of his trousers, the other with a silver pistol hooked around one finger, swinging loosely at his side. Smoke rose in ribbons from the barrel as he stared down at the injured man curled on the floor. He watched with a neutral, unchanging expression as the withering slowed and his gargled groans ceased.

The shadows swooped closer, dancing across the edges of my vision as my lids grew heavy. My blood thickened in my veins, and my arm numbed beneath the weight as even the pain began to grow distant and dull.

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