Page 48 of Karma
Gasping for breath, she wants to scream at him as he bends over her. His figure blocks out the sun, and blood drips onto her chest from his forehead. She expects it to burn her. It has to be pure poison that runs through his veins, right?’
“Oh, sorry. I forgot you didn’t grow up here. Zane knows his place, though.”
Picking her up, he holds her tightly against his body, one arm around her waist while his other hand firmly holds onto her hair. She finally catches her breath but has no leverage to fight him off in this position.
“You see that spot right there?” he asks, turning them to a spot next to the metal shop. “That’s where I’d hide and watch the comings and goings of our father. How I learned his routine. It’s also where I’d wait for Zane to run around to talk to him.”
There’s no reason to tell me any of this. He’s definitely going to kill me.
“And this house,” he says, whipping them back to face the dilapidated structure that looks like it may have been painted blue once upon a time, “is where I helped kill Zane’s mother.”
“Margaret,” Lex says. “She has a name.”
“She’s a bitch who had to die,” Phillip says, and yanks her hair painfully. “He didn’t deserve to be happy after leaving my mom and me.”
He tosses her to the ground, and she lands on her side. She’s thankful she doesn’t lose her breath again, and she pushes onto her back to see him straight on. The gun isn’t in his hand, and she glances over to see it lying on the ground beneath the car still. Right where he dropped it.
That’s my out. I have to get to that gun.
Kicking her legs out once he’s close enough to her, she trips him, and he falls onto the dirt beside her. Scrambling to her feet, she moves towards the car. All she needs to do is reach the back of the car, and she can save herself. She can kill him and drive back home.
His long arm reaches out and grabs her foot, pulling her back hard enough that she falls forward, landing on her stomach. Her cheek scrapes on the small pebbles and rocks beneath her, and she feels the warmth of blood.
“You are a fighter,” Phillip says and laughs. Flipping her over, he straddles her and smiles. “I have to say, we have a lot more in common than I ever expected. I wouldn’t make it easy for me, either.” He bends down to whisper in her ear. “It wouldn’t be fun if you didn’t fight me.”
The way he looks at her when he sits back up fills her with more fear than she’s ever felt before. If given a choice, she’d rather be tied up in that basement with Scarface again. At least she knew she had a chance of being rescued. Here, she’s out in the middle of nowhere with a psychopath who seems to be getting off on the fight she puts up.
The Slashers didn’t scare her nearly as much as Phillip does. They seemed human no matter how much they hurt her. But Phillip? He has a void in his eyes she’s only ever read about. He’s the type of person who only feels when he hurts someone.
Someone like him becomes desperate to feel anything, especially when he experiences the pleasure from inflicting terror and pain on another living thing. It becomes a high, and it’s a craving he can’t quit. But just like all drugs, each kill needs to top the last to give him what he seeks. He builds up a tolerance.
He punches her, and she sees stars. His other fist hits her side, and they repeat in succession as she tries to deflect and stop him. It only fuels him, and she reaches up to claw his neck and face, drawing blood as she collects his DNA under her fingernails.
Please let me fall unconscious. And stay unconscious. I don’t want to know what he’s doing to me. Not like how I remember the torture in the basement in Black Valley.
The blows suddenly stop, and he climbs off Lex. It surprises her, and she tries to get to her feet to crawl back towards the car. Thoughts of the gun disappear as she focuses on getting in the car and driving away. Or running him over. Maybe both. But she’s stopped when his boot kicks her ribs hard enough that she flies a few feet and lands on her side with a horrifying crack.
All she can do right now is curl up to protect herself from another blow. Her hand feels along her side, checking to see if that crack was a full break. At least one rib is broken, and it hurts to breathe in.
“I’d say you shouldn’t get in the way of my plans, Alexis,” Phillip says and walks away from her. “It makes it that much worse for you, but I fucking love it. It’s so much more exciting for me. So far, you’re even feistier than Nina was.”
Walking away from her confuses Lex. He continues for a few more yards before turning around to run at her in a full sprint. He’s going to break as many bones as he can before he takes her into the torture dungeon.
She flips onto her backside, and she lifts her leg when he’s too close to stop. He’s not the only one who can use his momentum to inflict pain, and she has a sense of satisfaction when her heel digs into the soft flesh of his balls.
Hands cupping his junk, Phillip falls to the ground, coughing and groaning. But when she turns to look at him, she’s terrified. He stares at her and smiles.
This sick fuck doesn’t just like others being in pain. He gets off on feeling it himself, too.
She knows he won’t stay down for long, and she also knows she can’t make it to the car. Not with her rib broken. She needs another plan. If he yanks her down when she runs again, the fight will be over, and she isn’t ready to be done yet.
Desperately looking around, she finds a rock bigger than her fist, and she crawls to the dead grass to grab it. The pain in her side disappears as her adrenaline kicks in when he crawls towards her like a predator laying low before jumping on its prey. Which is exactly the roles they play. Predator and prey.
Lex swings the rock up and hits him in the face as he pounces on her. He falls to the side, and she takes control. Getting up, she smashes it down onto his face, breaking his nose as blood splatters. Over and over again, she continues to hit him, hoping he’ll fall unconscious soon.
Phillip reaches out and grabs her wrist, squeezing and breaking it, forcing her to drop the rock as she cries out. Takinghold of her, he lifts his foot to her chest and tosses her backwards hard enough that her head bounces on the ground when she lands.
The evil grin appears again, made even creepier with his teeth and face covered in blood, and he says, “Oh, I am really going to enjoy killing you. I haven’t had this much fun yet, and even though you’re my sister, I gotta say… I’m so fucking hard. See what you’ve done to me?”
