Me & Her

Her

I don't look back.

I have a lot of work to do.

The silence is murky, swamping my muscles. But I find the will to move. Move faster than ever before, my eyes void of tears. Emma's last breath burnt them from my body. I hardly register raising my head or wiping Alice's tears from my face. I barely notice standing up, rising from the bloodstained carpet.

Karen Hill's expression betrays nothing, only stoic determination. The gun bears no silencer, so we probably have ten or twenty minutes before the local cops coming knocking. I'll only need a few seconds. Hill moves the gun to rest upon my shadow, but I'm moving. Rolling into another man's legs, sweeping them from under him. He topples onto me, shielding me from the bullets. I don't bother to see if he's dead. I just jump up again, the dead's man semi-automatic still warm in my hand. That guy had really sweaty palms.

"Alice!" Noah, Doc'. They're calling for me, but their voices are so faint, such a long way off. I pretend not to hear them. Doc' was right about me before: I am a monster. And I'm about to show him just much of a monster I can be. Hill fires again, emptying the first clip. She has a second, lodged in her belt. I only smile, throwing my newly acquired weapon into the woman on my left. The barrel hits her forehead and she drops like a stone to the carpet. Out cold. Hill inserts the second clip, but before she can fire, I'm running at full speed. Racing towards the multiple armed men behind her. My fist connects with a solar plexus, forcing one of them to double up. Their gun falls from their grasp. I almost have to claw the weapon from the other man's arm and although I see him trembling, although a sliver of guilt threatens to rise up inside of me, my eyes are soon drawn back to Emma's body. Crooked and graceless on the carpet of this dive of a safe house. No place to die. Not for her. But for him... I snatch the gun, put it to his head, and pull the trigger. Part of me knows I should have hesitated, given my shrivelled heart some time to reconsider. But I don't. I don't hesitate, and I know why: I am tired of compromise. I am tired of my family, my friends, being caught in the crossfire. The man practically fades in front of me, his eyes open in an expression of pure terror.

Brushing him to one side with my shoulder, I think I can hear Noah retching. Good. This is who I am. Who Emma failed to see. Who she should have seen.

Karen Hill points the gun at me, but this time I sense the slightest trembling in her fingers. Will she pull the trigger? Will she? Will I bleed out in this shabby living room, with the body of one of my only true friends for company? Maybe I want to. Maybe that's what I deserve. But she doesn't. Emma doesn't deserve this, and Karen Hill makes the mistake of failing to pull the trigger. Too late.

I drop onto my hands, slash her legs, and snatch the gun as she falls. She hits the carpet with an audible thud. I stand over her, gun trained on her heart. A few centimetres from where Emma was shot. She doesn't hold her hands up, then again, I don't expect her to. Bodies lie dead and dying around us, like melting statues. I scan the men and women, dotting the room as if they are ink blotches. They'll have money, wallets, IDs. I can get buy for a few weeks. Food, water. The essentials. Everything that Emma has now been denied. But Karen Hill. I lean closer, grabbing the ridges of her armoured clothes. My hands are strangely still, my breathing stable. I'm used to this now. Used to being the bad guy. The monster. Why bother to be above that oh so preserved image? My grip tightens, hands itching to close around her throat. Being close to her, to the woman who lied, who made my life worth living, then teared it apart, makes me want to vomit.

"If you kill me, it won't change anything," she's saying. Hissing at me. If she is expecting some perky quip or sarcastic remark, she is going to be sorely disappointed. My words have deserted me. It's not as if I need them after all. People never listen to the real me, so I doubt they'll start now.