Redemption

Friday #4

I knew that this was not the time to face the end – I had to disarm her.

When she approached me close enough, I pumped the few remaining muscles and aimed my fingers toward her contorted hands, trying to take control of the knife she was wielding. Yet the pain that blighted my knee for an everlasting eternity returned once again with a flame – instantaneously, I tottered and nearly collapsed, missing my golden opportunity. My body crashed against the wall as I fell to the left, and I struggled not to submit myself to the unnegotiable pulls of gravity. Her grip consolidated, solid enough to maintain her dominion over whatever she possessed. She triumphantly pushed the blade against my chest.

I had to take my knife out, and she was clearly against that idea. Her muscles constrained and expanded. I was not given a chance, for both my hands were occupied holding her knife away from my body.

I was more or less incapacitated – in any minute, the tip could reach the surface of my rib and dig deeper into my core. Her static gaze was fixed at the center of the knife and both of our fingers, palpitating fiercely as none was able to assert dominance over the other.

I began to understand better than anybody at that moment when I was standing at the tip of a razor-edged knife: I wasn't ready yet. Death still had to remain a stranger, for now was not the time. I clenched my teeth and clashed my forehead against hers.

I suppose the attempt was arbitrary enough to catch her off guard. She almost released her knife as the grip weakened for a minuscule second, and that was sufficient enough. I pushed the blade to the left, escaping the edge narrowly – it made a small cut on my skin and fell to the wall behind me.

Simultaneously, pain, once again, returned from the state of dormancy, no longer secluded and very conveniently substantiated. I grasped the joints and struggled to resist the urge to let everything go – the pain, the sanity, and the instincts. The beat of my heart pumped by signals of misery synchronized with the vigorous aching of the torment itself.

I heaved and quickly snatched the cutter, that once failed to protect the girl, out of my pocket before she recovered from the impact. I held the knife high, and its tip descended toward the murderer.

She advanced furiously to clutch my arm, which held the one key element capable of ending the final chapter of her story. She halted the movement of my arm, and with it the blade's; I struggled against the nails piercing deeper and deeper through my tender dermis, but her hands remained unsurprisingly unaffected. She refused to let me go, and the other hand was coming. The metal blade shined as it reflected a past interpretation of a forgotten illusion. The contact appeared imminent in my own eyes.

A large sound of fracture introduced an unprecedented phenomenon to the already unfavorable occasion. I was already on the verge of collapsing, and my knee was barely holding onto its structure and my weight. I could feel the bones being savagely torn apart upon itself. I leaked a candid, primordial cry of pain from the depth below the presence of my wounded rib, but she did not perceive the signal, and neither would she have cared.

I yanked myself forward – the agony, ironically enough, perpetuated my ill-determined obsession to survive and stretch out, just by a second more into the next moment of my life.

Even after twisting the blade to its maximum extent, it barely touched the back of her hand, pushing my wrist against the wall – but it still maintained a position in which the word 'opportunity' was manifestly evident.

I reached out to not miss the chance. A keen blade slid through her bones and her flesh like a raindrop hitting the surface of the ocean, piercing the waves with a winter-cold piece of iron – infinitely small slices of her veins were dug out, hanging at the tip of the knifepoint. Wine dark blood colored the metal, where streams of blood flowed through the contour of her dissolving hand. I tried to take steps away or forward, but I soon realized that I could not move a single inch from where I stood before having my knees thoroughly fixed; the best I could manage was standing still without helplessly dropping to the ground.