Stockholm Syndrome

Chapter 5

While we waited at door number one, Bastard kept his left arm wrapped around my neck in just under a chokehold, like a scarf itching to strangle me.

He also rammed his gun muzzle into my temple again. I supposed I should be grateful it was no longer attacking my eyeball, but the metal really hurt. Before this attack, I’d never thought about how just the brute force of a circle of steel, pressed into my skin, can bruise, even before the bullet performs a craniotomy at 1700 miles per hour.

So I didn’t tell him Casey wasn’t home.

I kept mum.

The approaching footsteps had stopped, but I thought someone hovered inside the front door. If I could’ve moved my head, I would have glanced downward to look for foot shadows moving, but I couldn’t move. I could only listen to the abnormally loud sound of my own breathing and wonder if this was it. My last few seconds on earth, cradled by a murderer.

The door handle clicked. My heart jerked in terror, in anticipation, I didn’t even know what anymore.

The door cracked open a centimetre. The inside was darker than the hallway, so I couldn’t see anything except a dark shape, but June’s clipped voice drifted out toward us. “Don’t shoot anyone.”

I wanted to say, Please. I wanted to say, Don’t hurt her. She’s just trying to protect her patient.

Her patient. Her patients, really, since the baby was almost making its way into the world.

What a way to be born.

Bastard’s body tensed. He didn’t want her giving orders. But instead of yelling at her, he launched forward, using me as a battering ram to slam open the door.

Instinctively, I threw up my hands to protect my face. I guess Bastard was having trouble juggling me, the gun, and propelling both our bodies forward, because even as he yelled, “No!” to me, he dropped me.

I ended up plowing against the door with both hands, and very nearly my teeth.

I bashed into it with my forehead instead. Like a hammerhead shark without the right equipment.

A dull pain encircled the rest of my skull like a burning headband, but I fought through it, trying to figure out what was going on.

The door was giving way.

June had braced her body against the door, but when my body weight thumped against it, she only withstood it for a second, especially when Bastard hurled his body, too, using his arm to shove inward.

I remembered that June was actually a tiny woman, shorter than I was. She had no chance against our double onslaught.

She screamed.

Bastard had banged the door away from me, so I stumbled and smacked into the cool vinyl floor on my palms. The impact jarred me up to the shoulders, even before my knees banged down for extra impact. Greens don’t provide much padding.

“Get up, bitch,” said Bastard, grabbing my shoulder.

“No!” shouted June, trying to smash the door closed on both of us, and Bastard fired.