Page 33 of What’s Left of You (What Left #2)

I don’t stay to see what happens to Porscha. Until she screamed, I didn’t think she was real. I thought Fake Porscha was playing games with my head, and the person appearing from the rain was another figment of my imagination.

But she was real, and she bled. I could’ve finished her, but instead I let her stumble away bleeding.

The wound was a glancing blow at best. I swung the axe so she would stay back.

But it caught her neck, and instead of ending her I watched her gasp and hold her hand to the wound before stumbling away.

I don’t think she deserves to die so quickly.

Now I’m hiding in the trees, waiting for my freedom to end.

Porscha got caught. I heard the reports on the truck’s radio before I abandoned it.

Getting away from her as she bled seemed like the right choice, so I turned and left her on the road, hopping back into the stolen truck again.

I fought with the mud for a minute and eventually the tires found some traction in the damn mud, giving me enough umph to let the truck move so I could drive away.

Once it ran out of gas it was nothing more than a new prison cell, and staying in it meant I was waiting for my doom.

I pulled off the highway onto a side road, barely a sparse spot in the trees.

Either way, it’s not instantly obvious, so it should buy me some time.

I’m just not sure it’s worth it.

“Where do we go from here?” Fake Porscha asks, sitting with me in the tree. I didn’t climb high, the ache in my leg keeping me from doing so, but I don’t think anything is going to eat me right away.

Is that a fear I should have? I don’t see water around here so there shouldn’t be any gaters lurking, and we’re no longer tucked into the swamplands. Some other creature might find me, but I doubt there’s anything else as fearsome out here as Porscha.

When I look over at her, Fake Porscha looks different. She looks sickly, kind of pale. Her eyes are hollow, and she sneers when I meet her gaze. “This is how you look.”

“I don’t look that bad,” I say, closing my eyes. I don’t look great, but I don’t look like I’m dying yet like the apparition does. “Saw myself in the rearview mirror.”

What happens now? There’s no one coming to save me, and even if I thought there was, what am I going to do? Porscha made the decision to walk down the highway and I made the decision to run. I keep replaying the moments in my head over and over, trying to decide if I made the right choice.

“I gave you everything, twice, and you do this?” she yells, her voice carrying over to me through the rain as I climb out of the car. “You run from me?”

“Porscha, let’s be real. There’s no reason to lie anymore” I tell her, wondering if I’m having a very in-depth conversation with myself. “I realized you never gave me anything.”

The closer she gets the more I can make out, and I realize she has a knife. Choosing to bring a weapon is a risky move since she kept me subdued ever since the prison. She had a gun when we left, but I haven’t seen it since she was at the CGP. Where did it go?

“I gave you purpose,” she scoffs. “Without me you were just some foster kid struggling to belong. I showed you the light. I gave you purpose. You owe your life to me.”

Now I’m positive she’s real, because even in the darkest corners of my head I don’t believe I owe shit to Porscha.

I’m violently against that idea. “You gave me pot laced with LSD and moved to heroin to keep my compliant. I don’t owe you anything except credit for fucking up my life. Save your lies for someone else.”

“You don’t believe me?” she taunts, stopping outside of my reach.

Her knife is shorter than my axe, so I have the advantage for now.

As I study her, I realize she doesn’t look wounded.

That might work against me, but I have rage on my side to make up for my injured leg.

“I gave you the best high of your life! You think there’s a greater thrill than killing? ”

I shrug. To be quite honest, since I was arrested when I was eighteen, I can’t say I’ve had the chance to try something better. “I think the times I felt most alive was when I had two people who loved me for me. The drugs you gave me never came close to matching that.”

She snarls and steps closer, her eyes zeroing in when I lift the axe. It’ll be messy if I get my hands on her, but it’s going to give me an advantage over her knife. “I changed your life and this is how you repay me? Total betrayal?”

“You let me take the fall!” I seethe. “I always thought that body was a placeholder, but no one would care if I mentioned it, would they? You did a damn good job pretending to be dead.”

“Daphne did come in handy,” Porsche agrees.

Her nonsense quiets the rage in my head. That’s the second time she’s mentioned a name I don’t recognize that she thinks I should. “Who?”

If it’s a mistake bringing it up, she doesn’t let on. Instead she scoffs, narrowing her gaze. “I had the perfect escape plan, Alastair, if ever something went wrong. Then you had to go and fuck things up by being involved with my daughter.”

I narrow my eyes. “I met Jo before I ever met you. Had I listened to the Franks I would have gone out the day you showed up to work, or I would’ve picked an activity instead of hanging out in random neighborhoods to smoke.

I saw Jo for days before I met you. I thought you looked familiar, because you reminded me of her. ”

Porscha snorts, pushing away her dark hair from her eyes.

The bangs are all over the place, the rain making them too long for her to see through.

“You were too busy trying to protect my daughter, weren’t you?

You should’ve let me finish the job I started.

With her out of the way, none of this would have ever happened. ”

I shake my head, reminded why I took the blame to begin with. “Jo deserved better than you. She deserved to think her mother was a victim instead of a murderer. You couldn’t even let her have that.”

I’m jolted out of my thoughts when I feel myself slipping from the branch.

I can’t stay up here long, I just needed somewhere to sit and think for a while.

I’m running low on options, and short of looking for another house to break into and possibly attack someone to steal what I need, the options look dismal.

Falling asleep right now is the wrong move. I’m exhausted, but if I sleep I’ll be caught unaware.

Things are coming to a head. I’m going to either die out here trying to run, or the authorities will capture me and drag me back to prison. When I swung the blade I caught Porscha’s throat, and I made a fatal error not chopping her up right there.

What’s one more murder to add to the list? I could save us all the suffering. But when I looked into her cold green eyes, I saw a type of peace she doesn’t deserve. Once Porscha’s dead she no longer has to answer for what she’s done. I don’t need her reasons when I’ve seen her madness.

Jo deserves the right to know what’s real, and I can’t save her from the truth this time. It’ll come out, and the new victims deserve closure too.

“Isn’t prison supposed to make your heart hard?” Fake Porscha gripes as she appears again, and the apparition seems annoyed. “Letting her live is weak . She destroyed your life. You’re going to let her get away with that?”

“Now that she’s caught, they’ll eventually find me too. My time has run out. Death Row is waiting, and I’m tired of playing the game. Maybe I’ll be enough of a problem that they’ll move my execution date up to be done with me. Is that something that happens?”

She’s quiet, and when I look over, Fake Porscha is gone once more, alone with my thoughts. I listen but I can’t hear anything. No voices of agents, no barking of dogs, just the breeze blowing through the trees.

I’m tired, and I’m okay with the end I can see coming. I knew my freedom would be short-lived.

When there’s nothing left to do but rehash the scene with Porscha, I carefully climb down.

My leg protests, but I have to move. Sitting here won’t bode well no matter the outcome, and if Porscha supposedly walked down the highway and got caught why can’t I do the same?

Seems better than wandering aimlessly away with no sense of direction.

I don’t walk on the pavement; I choose to walk a few feet off the road and take my time.

When I slashed Porscha’s throat, fear took over, and I decided to make a break for it instead of waiting around to see what happened next.

Thankfully the rain let up some time ago so I’m not getting soaked as I wander off.

Vaguely, I recognize where I am. It might just be an illusion, but the mile marker ahead gives me some idea of where the road took me. I chuckle to myself, the sound echoing in the quiet around me.

Back when Jo and Vinny were my shelter amidst all the crimes I committed, they would occasionally drive out here.

I only went a handful of times, and it was always to use a cabin that belonged to Vinny’s family.

I remember he called it small but I thought it was the perfect size.

It ended up being close in size to the house he bought senior year, and we never went back.

But I grew up in foster care from age twelve, and it taught me one thing about new places: always have an exit plan.

So even though I loved and trusted Jo and Vinny, I knew I was the traitor amongst us three.

I made myself memorize the route just in case something happened and I needed to leave. Luckily, nothing ever did.

Without Fake Porscha lurking at my side, I really do start to talk to myself.

“I guess I can go half a mile further and head towards the cabin. I bet someone will find me. It’s a couple more miles in, and I barely remember what it looks like.

I suppose I could just pick any fucking cabin to die in front of. ”

I’m more worried about my leg. It’s a throb more than an ache now, and while I learned how to ignore pain in prison, this is bad.

I know I need a doctor to check the wound and see what the damage is, but that can wait until I’m arrested.

Might as well enjoy the perks like good healthcare if I have to go back inside.

Muttering to myself as I walk, I’m sure I look truly fucking crazed. At least with Fake Porscha I feel semi-normal when I talk to myself, but now there’s no one here to take away the burning loneliness. It’s just me and myself, walking down the side of the highway waiting for the inevitable.

If I had a way to, I’d contact Jo and Vinny.

I don’t think they ever opened my letters, given their initial responses to seeing me again after so many years, but that’s okay.

Maybe, if they kept them, they can read them when I’m gone.

I like to think that the weeks together in Florida again caused their curiosity with me to grow.

It could be enough to quiet the anger and betrayal they still feel to read the words I wrote.

It’ll never be enough compared to what I’ve done, but it’ll be better than trying to speak to them when bars and guards divide us again.

When I reach the mile marker, it feels like hours have passed.

I’m cold to the bone and I realize I’m shivering as I turn and start down the lonely road to the cabin.

Phantom sirens keep playing in my head now, and I glance around expecting to see flashing lights.

Would they ambush me? Take me out like Bonnie and Clyde?

Eventually, somewhere along the road, I hear a car. My mind can’t distinguish if it’s behind me or coming towards me, and as I blink and look around I realize I wandered out into the middle of a field. So much for hiding.

It’s a blue SUV, and I watch it slow down as it approaches me.

The game is over.

But when the passenger door flies open, it isn’t an agent who steps out. It’s a head of strawberry blond hair, the woman from my dreams and nightmares shooting out of the car rushing over to me.

Relief washes over me when I recognize Jo, and I can’t help but smile—just before my body gives out. She catches me quickly, steadying me as another set of footsteps rushes over. I try to lift my head, but I can’t. The last thing I see is her hair, soft and familiar, before my eyes slip shut.

Her voice is the final thing I hear, fading into the edges of my fading consciousness: “I knew we’d find you here.”