By Lacy

God, I’m going to die tonight — I think. If I’m lucky, they might find my body somewhere. They won’t be able to identify it though, because I didn’t bother to bring my purse as I was fleeing from the house. I’ll probably end up a Jane Doe in the city morgue.

In a few days I’ll be reported missing. There’ll be a body matching my description in the morgue and someone will have to go in to identify it. Except that he’ll probably shoot me in the head. I won’t have much of a face left -- not with that kind of firepower.

It’ll have to be hi--Josh. He’s the only one who knows about my birthmark. God, he’ll have to identify my corpse. Josh will have to examine my naked, mutilated, dead body and decide that it’s me.

I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Least of all, him. I mean, hasn’t he suffered enough?

For hours on end, my captor directs me through the streets and I make the turns without really paying attention to where we’re going. I realize, taking in our surroundings, that I have no idea where we are. Clearly, whatever this place is it’s not visitor friendly. I hazard a guess that it doesn’t look much better in the daylight.

A morning mist settles on the windshield in the pre-dawn hours, and I wait until I can’t see anymore before activating the wipers. The mist becomes sprinkles which then transform into fat raindrops. The wipers are working at full speed to keep up with the pace of the rain. I remember another rainy early morning like this one. One that wasn't quite this gloomy.

Curled in bed with Josh spooned behind me. I listened to the rain pinging against the bedroom window, and the sound of him breathing peacefully behind me. He was so warm with my back against his chest, and his splayed hand on my abdomen. I was safe then. I had a future then.

I don’t want to remember that morning. I really don’t. I don’t want to try to fool myself into believing I can ever have that again. There is no peace there, only turmoil and heartbreak.

He was so tender as we made love in the mellow morning, watching my every expression as though seeing me for the first time. His hands soothed, while his mouth tortured me into unquiet pleading. He whispered that he loved me as I came, and even over the rushing of blood to my brain — even over the euphoria — I heard. I heard, and I believed.

The gun barrel jabbing into my ribs, bringing me violently back into the moment halts the drifting of my mind. My captor wants my undivided attention. Wherever we are, I notice that there are no more cops around. No more helicopters flying overhead. Which translates into no hope for a timely rescue. Did we leave the city? Did I cross over a bridge at some point?

I am so stupid! I should have been paying attention to where I was driving. Even if, by some miracle, I were able to escape this nightmare, I wouldn’t know to where I was escaping. I’d be completely lost.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask for my release -- to remind him that there are no more police officers around. That he has successfully evaded capture, and he doesn’t need me anymore. But, of course, reminding him that he doesn’t need me would not be the most intelligent strategy. Of course he needs me. I’m his hostage.

Better a live hostage, than a dead free person. That’s my new motto for life. However long that lasts.

He says nothing, but continues to train the gun upon me. He has absolutely no empathy for my situation. He knows what he's doing is wrong, but he just doesn't care. He thinks there can be no consequences for him.

He caresses the weapon's slide as though proud of it. This trophy stolen from a cop and then used against her. I wonder how long it will be before he decides to use it against me.

I know a lot about bullet wounds. More than I should, actually. I know how a bullet can tear into the human body, decimating bone and muscle tissue alike, and shredding vital organs as though they were made of so much tissue paper. I know that the body bleeds more than you think it will. More than they show on television, at any rate.

I know that it's hard, sometimes impossible to put the pieces back together again. It involves suturing and sometimes even grafting. Doctors must cannibalize from other parts of the body in order to ensure your survival. There are machines that pump your blood and usurp the job of your lungs. There are tools that poke, prod, clamp, and saw bone.

I know how excruciating it is to survive a gunshot wound. I've seen that firsthand. I know how it can take the strongest person you know and turn them into a frail creature you can hardly recognize. I've seen how survival can turn your mind inside out and play the worst sorts of tricks on you. I’ve seen how, a long time afterwards, you have to remind yourself that you’re still alive.

I know that it took all the king's horses and all the king's men to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

I don't know if I could survive that. I don't know that I'd want to. Wouldn't it just be easier to take a bullet in the head or in the heart? Wouldn't it hurt less than the weeks of physical recovery, or being haunted by nightmares, while both asleep and awake?

I mean it's not like I have a whole lot to live for. I was stripped of that just a few short hours ago. I have no place to go and nothing to go back to. No future and no past.

I'm not afraid to die, I realize. Sure, I'm a little afraid of the method, but not of actual death. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I just feel so empty inside and so disconnected from the world, that death would be almost like a respite. I am an empty vessel, and all that's left is to obliterate the body — to finish me off.

Realizing you don't fear death is a freedom most people will never be able to understand. It's like becoming a hot air balloon. It's a cutting of all ties, and allowing the every day fears to just float up, up and away. It's a heady empowerment.

"When you do it," I say, without a trace of fear in my voice. "When you do it…could you shoot me in the heart instead of the head?"

"I don't take requests," he replies. I turn my head and his eyes meet with mine. He can't believe that I'm actually requesting a method of murder.

"It's just that...I don't want to make it hard for the person who has to identify my body. You know what I mean? I don't want it to be hard for him…any harder than it has to be."

"What did I tell you about keeping your mouth shut?"

"What does it matter?" I ask. "I think you're going to kill me no matter what I do. Why should I spend my last few minutes of life being afraid? I won't be afraid anymore."

"You’ll be afraid," he says ominously. "They’re always afraid."

He likes it, I realize. Not the god-like rush of taking a human life, necessarily…but the fear. He feeds off the fear he instills, which comes to completion when he pulls the trigger. He’s told me that the police officer he killed dropped to her knees and begged for her life.

I will not beg. I have no reason to beg.

I will not debase myself before this bastard who steals lives away as though they were pennies from a wishing well. My death will not bring him the satisfaction he seeks.

I am stronger than he is. He kills because he fears his own death. He makes his victims beg because he’s afraid he will do the same when his time comes. He won’t die in a bed surrounded by loved ones at a ripe old age. I take a primal gratification in this knowledge…because neither will I. The difference between us is that I have accepted my fate, while he will fight it until the very last moment before darkness overtakes him.

"Pull over," he commands, as the night slips into morning. Using the gun, he points in the direction he wants me to go. "Park." I steer the car into an alley and he orders me to park in the shadow of an empty industrial building. When I shift the car into park, he reaches over and takes the keys from the ignition. "This is where I get off," he tells me. "Get out."

He’s letting me go? He’s taking the car and letting me go — I think. I unclip my seat belt and open the door. He follows me out making sure to keep me in his sights. The rain pours down upon us in sheets, but neither of us seems to care that our clothes are soaked in an instant. Water pours down my face in cold streams. I clamp my jaw shut to keep my teeth from chattering. My arms cross against my chest, my hands grasping my shoulders, in an attempt to subdue the chills that have begun to wrack my body from the inside out.

He walks around the car, the gun still pointing at me. My sight focuses upon the firearm, seeing it through tunnel vision. Again our eyes meet and he tilts his head to scrutinize me in the rain. The hand holding the gun pivots at the wrist, turning the weapon on its side as he takes aim.

I release my shoulders, allowing my arms to dangle loosely at my sides, and watch as he shifts his aim to the center of my chest. With the heavy rain, he can’t see the tears that fall silently on my cheeks. They are hot, and leave warm trails down my face.

I make eye contact with my captor — my killer — one last time, before closing my eyes. I wait for the sound...for the feel of the projectile as it shatters my sternum and shreds my heart. I hope that it doesn’t hurt too badly. I hope that death is as immediate as they say. I hope that I’ll be dead before I hit the ground. I can handle that. I can handle that for an instant. I stiffen my spine and present my target, and pray that his aim is true. I wait for him to pull the trigger.

But he never does.

He rockets towards me, his feet sloshing through the puddles on the concrete. I open my eyes as he reaches behind me to grab my hair, yanking my head back to look painfully up at him. He’s tall. I didn't notice that before.

"Get on your knees," he orders.

"No," I respond.

He yanks viciously on my hair and my knees buckle from pain. With his hand still fisted in my hair, he forces me down to the ground. Releasing me, he steps back and takes aim once again, this time pointing the gun at the top of my bowed head.

I will not submit to this bastard, I am stronger than that. With a burst of…something deep inside of me, I look up meeting the gun barrel with the center of my forehead. My eyes turn up to his.

"Do it," I command.

"You are one mouthy bitch." His voice is gravelly, and he’s spitting the rain from his mouth.

"You said that already," I point out, my voice rising to be heard over the sound of the pounding rain. "And you are a killer."

In a movement so fast I almost don’t see it coming, the butt of gun smashes across my temple. The explosion of pain is so intense that I must fight to keep from crumpling beneath the invading darkness. My skull is filled with grayness and grinding glass. The warmth I feel on my cheek now is blood, and even over the wet concrete I can smell its copper odor.

Before I can recover, his heavy boot connects with my shoulder, driving me painfully up against the driver’s side of the car. An involuntary grunt of pain comes from my chest as I collide with the unyielding bulk. I hear a crack as my head bounces off the door’s window and I wonder briefly if the sound came from the window or from my skull. Gray and glass again, and I hadn’t yet had a chance to recover from the first time. I cut my hand on a jagged bottle cap when my hands hit the ground to stop my descent. In a second, the sight of his boots fills my vision, and I’m being pulled from the ground by a hand on the back of my neck. My hair falls around me in wet, tangled sheets, and I can’t see beyond its curtain. He pulls my face close to his.

"Beg for your life and I might let you live," he toys with me.

"Like the cop?" I can taste the metallic flavor of blood on my tongue. I think I may have lost a tooth in the back of my mouth. "Is that what you promised her?"

"I’m going to kill you."

"Who are you trying to convince?"

The night becomes eerily quiet, and for a moment, as though sensing the gravity of the situation, the rain lets up. The air around us becomes still as the world holds its breath, and it suddenly occurs to me that I am afraid to die after all.

I remember too much. I recall the plans we made for our future and die inside because they will never come to be. I will never have the wedding I've always imagined. I will never be a wife or a mother, and know how it feels to carry a child inside of me and give birth to it. To hear the sound of laughing voices call me 'mommy'.

A splitting blow to the back of my skull steals my senses. My lungs refuse to work and all sound around me ceases. I have time for one last thought as the world around me is swallowed by a fathomless black void.

Into Thy hands...

The End.