Page 51 of Still Beating

Still Beating.

She doesn’t say anything. I wonder if maybe she doesn’t understand, so I start to explain. “I was thinking you can wear it over your heart as a constant reminder of everything you survived. As long as it’s still beating, you’re okay.”

She is still silent.

I’m starting to doubt the gift, thinking maybe itistoo much. Maybe it’s too personal. Too triggering.

But then Cora throws herself into my lap, her arms around my neck, and I feel her tears slip underneath my shirt collar. “Thank you,” she whispers in a ragged breath. “It’s perfect.”

The necklace remains clutched in a tight fist as her tears continue to fall, hard and relentless, wracking her body with everything she tries so hard to keep inside.

She doesn’t need to pretend with me, though. She doesn’t need to hide.

I’m here, and I see her—every scar, every flaw, every broken, hollow piece.

And I understand.

Blood. Blood everywhere.

So much goddamnblood.

I feel it spatter my skin and I taste it in my mouth, but I keep going. Flying fists, cracking skull, brain matter. Dreadful, painful moans…death.

He needs to pay for what he did to her. He needs to die. I promised I would snuff his worthless life away for touching her, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

No remorse. No going back.

It’s over.

I think I hear her voice, far away, calling for me to come back to her.

“Stop. He’s dead.”

Cora breaks through and reality sinks its teeth into me as I stare down at the grisly crime I’ve just committed. Dear God, it’s like something out of a horror film.

A fitting end to a gruesome tale.

I did this. I fucking did this. I murdered a man in cold blood with nothing but my tattered, dirty knuckles.

The motherfucker deserved it.

I’m about to jump back, get as far away from this bloodbath as I can, but then his eyes fly open. Terrifying white eyes with irises so black, so barbaric, they almost skin me alive. Earl lifts himself up on his haunches, his wide, bulbous eyes sunken into mangled flesh.

Then he reaches out his hands and curls them around my throat, his grip vice-like. Impenetrable. He snarls through broken teeth, blood misting my face as he smothers me. “That’s a very bad dog.”

It’s not over. It’s not over.

It will never be over.

I launch myself into a sitting position, slicked head to toe in sweat, my breathing coming quick and uneven. I throw my legs over the side of the bed, my hands squeezing the bedsheets, and I vaguely hear my ringtone going off in the distance as my thoughts begin to find their way back to reality. As I search for my cell phone, lost amongst the dampened sheets, I realize my head is still spinning from the alcohol. Mandy dropped me off at home around eleven P.M., and I promptly chugged a quarter bottle of vodka before passing out well after midnight.

Fuck, I feel like shit.

I locate the ringing phone and see that it’s Cora’s name lighting up the face.

It’s also two o’clock in the morning.

My heart starts to race as I accept the call and slur into the receiver, “Cora? Where’re you?”

---