Page 58 of Ends of Being

I take a beat after he moves away from me before I open my eyes and see him kneeling down on the floor with his back to me. I quickly and carefully ease myself off the bed, creeping closer to him as he assesses the damage onCurt’sneck. There is no way this knife is sharp enough to slit his throat in one shot, so I’m stuck with no super-efficient way to get the job done. I try to hold in my huff of indignation.

I sneak up behind him until I’m standing so close I’m surprised he can’t feel the heat from my body on his back. I click my tongue to get his attention, and when he starts to turn around, I grab him by the hair and twist his neck around as I stab downward with the knife as hard as I can, sinking it into his neck. He attempts to stand, and I push him forward on his front, crawling onto his back and twisting the knife with as much strength as I can muster. He thrashes beneath me, and I yank the knife out, then stab him again, this time in the throat, and the vibrations from the knife hitting bone reverberates up my arm.

Tightening my grip on the knife, I yank it back and slam it into him repeatedly until he stops moving, and I’m leaning over him, fighting to breathe. I roll off him onto my back, the bloody knife still gripped in my hand as I pant, and I have to coach myself not to vomit again.

More footsteps sound. I sit up, glancing around to see if there’s a quick escape. Or clothes. Seeing neither, I decide playing dead again likely won’t work, so I hurry across the room to stand against the wall by the open door. I force myself to breathe normally as I wait, the footsteps coming closer, and I try to make out how many people are about to enter this room.

Once I’m outnumbered, things will escalate more quickly, likely with me being disarmed and punished and then either killed or shipped off to the skin trade. I try to push that thought from my brain; instead, I center on my objective of survival at all costs.

There are three of them, and they don’t notice me as they walk into the room, having a conversation with each other, but they quickly stop talking and stare at the scene in front of them in horror. Two of them hurry over to the dead men on the floor while the third stands there looking around while I sneak up behind him. I switch the knife to my other hand, wanting to stab him and grab the gun in the waistband of his jeans simultaneously, but he spots me in his peripheral vision and turns toward me.

The knife grazes his arm, but I manage to hold onto it, and step into him, swing up and over, and drive it into his neck where it meets his shoulder. He screams, drawing the attention of the other men with him, and I scramble, yanking him closer by the knife stuck in his body and reaching for the gun.

I pull the gun out of the waistband of his jeans, then kick out with my foot, catching him in the chest and knocking him down. Raising the gun toward the two men rushing at me, I point and shoot, center, repeat.

Boom. Boom.

The noise echoes off the walls of the room, the old windows rattling as both men drop down to their knees, and I quickly turn the gun toward the man on the floor near me. He looks up at me, raising his hands in surrender, but I don’t even blink; I shoot him in the face.

Walking over to where the other two men are bleeding on the floor, without hesitation, I aim and shoot them both in the head. I don’t see any point in having a conversation with any of them, and we all know that’s the best way to get yourself killed.

I’m not even sure how much longer I can keep myself awake now that the adrenaline is starting to wear off. I take another look around the room, and this time, I find a coat hanging on the back of the door, so I slip it on and zip it up over my naked body.

Scanning the area one more time, I spot my purse on the cluttered table on the other side of the door, and I grab it, a rush of relief flooding through me as I find my phone inside. I push the power button, almost sobbing as it starts to power up, and I have to grip it tighter as my hands start to shake.

I’m so focused on my phone that I don’t realize someone else is in the room until they’re practically on top of me. I’m too slow to bring the gun around to defend myself, and it’s knocked out of my hands, skittering across the floor.

Jackoff grabs onto my arms, squeezing painfully as he shakes me, screaming in my face, “What the fuck have you done?”

I smirk at him, then bring my knee up as hard as I can, right into his balls, and he shouts in pain, his hands releasing me to cup himself. I don’t wait around for him to recover. I spin around and run out the door, turning right down the long hallway and sprinting to the double doors at the end, only to find it chained.

Fuck, I should’ve grabbed the gun.

I whirl around, sprinting back the way I came, and turning into a stairwell that leads upward. I take the stairs two at a time, my bare feet slapping on the cold concrete, and when I bust through the doors at the top of the stairs, I come onto a roof with an ominous sky with no stars overhead. It’s dark, rainy, and cold, and I almost consider going back inside and finding a better path, but the pounding of feet behind me pushes me further out onto the rooftop as jackoff and some of his men burst out of the door in pursuit of me.

I race across the rough asphalt, hearing them closing in on me until I run out of room, and I have no choice but to climb onto the ledge and contemplate my limited choices. I’m definitely too high up to survive a jump, and even with adequate momentum, there’s no way I can make the jump to the next building.

“You have nowhere to go, Toni,” jackoff yells behind me, so I whirl around to face him, straightening my spine and lifting my chin in my last bit of defiance. He has a gun in his hand, but it’s pointed downward as he walks toward me. He steps up onto the ledge and is now standing a few feet from me.

I raise my brows at him and say, “And I think if you had the option of killing me, you already would have.”

He glowers at me, and I know I’m right. For some reason, he needs me alive, so I test this theory by taking a step back. “I won’t let you take me.”

He laughs humorlessly with a seedy look in his eyes as he takes a step toward me, saying, “You don’t have to let me; I’ll just take you anyway. Just like we all did.”

I glare at him, my hands fisting at my sides as fury ignites inside me again. “I don’t see what you have to gain from any of this.”

It’s not really a question, but he can’t stop himself from answering. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. When you get to your end, you’ll be too fucked up to care. Because that’s what hell does to you.”

I can’t even imagine what the fuck he’s talking about, and I’m entirely fucking sick of listening to the sound of his voice. So, I steel my spine again and take a small step closer to him so he’ll move to close the distance between us.

Then he’s directly in front of me, his arrogant hateful face smirking at me, still. So, I laugh in his face, screaming and spitting laughter that has him staring at me like the lunatic I am.

As quickly as it started, I sober, my face becoming cold as stone as I spit out, “Then you’re coming to hell with me.”

I grab onto him as tightly as I can as I jump backward, using the leverage of the drop to pull him over the ledge with me.

And then we’re falling.

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