Page 91 of Terror Tuesday

Fear overtakes me then. And instead of springing out, I shrink back for a moment…

Until he shoves the woman toward the sofas as she stumbles, clearly drunk. His big body falls on top of hers, and she struggles to fight him off.

I thought I would leap out. Maybe use force.

But I saunter forward, Reggie completely unaware.

I push out the thought that it should be Naomi that’s alive and not me. That if I fail this, it won’t matter because perhaps I was the one who should’ve died. If I’d gone ahead with my group, perhaps I could’ve saved them.

“But you can save yourself,”she’d say. “You can save the next girl.”

My eyes well up until the scene before me is a watercolor of events. Woman screaming, thrashing, hitting him as he attempts to force his way in.

Each step I take is quiet, lethal, calculated.

I embody the woman I was always meant to be.

With every roll of my heels to toes in my boots, I remember: the acrid smell of his coffee breath. His Rolex ticking next to my ear as he pounded into me from behind. Sweat dripping from his forehead onto my neck, slithering into my cleavage. Gritty sounds of his grunts as he came…

The memories wash away as I close the distance, clouds clearing before my vision until he’s in front of me, bent over thepoor woman who’s crying now. Sayingno. Like that matters to the monster.

With the utmost care, I sink the knife into the back of his skull. There’s no resistance. It slides in like butter as his body freezes, then seizes. He chokes on a breath, grasping his throat, unable to figure out what happened.

I lift a finger to my mouth as the woman beneath him opens hers to release a scream.

“You’re free now. It’s all over,” I say to her as much as to a younger Olivia Marie Cardell. I hear the words and accept them.

They transform me.

Clumsily, the blonde squirms out from under him and sobs softly. “Thank you.”

My voice is hollow and almost too chipper when I call back, “You’re welcome.”

She sprints off the boat, carrying her shoes in her hands.

It doesn’t take but a moment for Reggie to go still, and as the time ticks by, I stare at him. This creature that once infected my life. That stole my innocence and sense of worth.

But as the light fades from his eyes, mine grow brighter.

I tilt my head in wonderment… I thought I might feel angry or scared. Perhaps sad.

Instead, it’s almost as if it all happened to someone else and I just rescued her. The way I wished someone had done for me all those years ago.

Vanq appears like smoke behind me. His gloved hand wraps around mine, sliding the blade away. With its hint of familiarity, his deep voice soothes me as he says, “He didn’t ruin anything.”

For the first time, I know that to be the truth.

Instead of keeping my knife, he slides it into my pocket. Electricity sparks between us. This man gave me the courage to do what I had only fantasized about doing for so many nights…

He didn’tsave me; he gave me the tools I needed to save myself.

Despite his unconventional ways, he’s taught me how to feel likemeagain.

When I face him, he lifts my mask and pockets it. I want to kiss him. To fall inside of him. To beenmeshedwith him. Become one.

But when I attempt to raise my fingers to his face, he grabs them.

He catches me mid-motion and slings me into his arms like I weigh nothing. With a hypnotic swing to his step, he carries me below deck and toward the bedroom. The place where it all once happened.