Killing Sarai

31

Covertly, I glimpse the rigid curve of his upper pelvic bone muscle and then get to work.

Hesitantly, I bring the knife up to his skin and glance up at him, hoping he’ll change his mind and do it himself, after all. Because I really don’t think I can do this.

“Go on,” he urges me. “You’re not going to hurt me anymore than it already does.”

I kneel down so my eyes are level with the wound and I feel my face flush red hot when I notice the outline of his manhood through the tight-fitting boxer briefs. But even still, I don’t let his obvious good genes distract me from the matter at hand.

Carefully, I insert the tip of the blade into the wound, my face tightening and twisting into something horrible. Nervous at first, it takes me way too long to push it in farther and I don’t until he gets tired of waiting.

“It’s like pulling a Band-Aid off a sore, Sarai,” he says irritably. “Just do it and get it over with. The longer you drag it out the worse it feels.”

I bite down on my bottom lip, press the fingers of my free hand around the back of this hard thigh to get a better grip around the area and then I sink the knife in deeper. I feel his muscles constrict beneath my hand, but I’m too nervous to look up and see the pain that I know is on his face.

“Why did you come back for me?” I ask, partly to take my mind off what I’m doing, the rest of me just really wanting to know.

“I never left,” he says and I glance up to see his eyes. He looks away and then adds, “I thought you were being followed. I planned to stay back and wait until Javier or whoever he sent for you, showed up where you were.”

Taken aback by his admission, I pull the knife out of his flesh and c*ck my head backward to glare up at him.

“You were using me as bait?” I don’t know if that pain I suddenly feel is because he risked my life to catch Javier, or if it’s because he doesn’t care about my well-being as much as I had started to believe he might.

Victor sighs faintly, though still irritably, but it seems more-so because of what I said than me taking my time about pulling the damn Band-Aid off.

“No,” he says. “Shortly after I pulled onto the main road, I saw another car drive past. A brand new Cadillac. Black with a nice price tag. I thought it didn’t quite fit with the neighborhood.”

I feel foolish before he even finishes explaining.

“So I turned around and parked on the road and watched it to make sure.”

I remember that car now, the only one that drove past me and made me immensely nervous.

I get back to work on finding the bullet, trying to be extra careful.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“For what?”

Finally, I see the bullet amid the blood and work it out with the end of the blade.

“For accusing you.”

The bullet drops on the floor and a gush of blood pours from the wound.

“Get the gauze,” he says casually, pointing at it on the table.

I do as he says while he pours more alcohol on the bloody wound, gritting his teeth even more than before.

I grab the gauze from the table and break it apart from the wrapping, unrolling it all the way, which isn’t nearly enough to wrap around his waist twice much less as many times as it will take to help keep the blood from draining.

“Don’t I have to sew it up or something?” I ask.

“Not right now,” he says. “I don’t have anything to sew it up with. You’ll have to pack it with the gauze.”

“But won’t that—”

“It’ll be fine,” he assures me, nodding toward the gauze dangling from my hand.

“I guess Izel got you back for those flesh wounds you gave her,” I say as I kneel back down level with the wound.

“I suppose she did,” he says. “Just use your finger to pack it inside. Put a lot of pressure on it.”

Not even thinking about my hands getting bloody, I start to pack the hole with the gauze until I can’t fit anymore. But I see now that it really isn’t that deep, maybe an inch at most, and it really does look worse than it is.

After cutting the excess gauze away, he pulls his underwear back up where it rests just below his hip. “I’m going to shower,” he says walking to the bathroom. “Don’t open the door for anyone. And stay away from the window. Thank you for your help.”

“Sure. Anytime,” I say flatly.

I wish he was a little more conversational. I’m going to have to remedy that.

He slips inside the bathroom and seconds later I hear the water running.

I plop down on the end of my bed and turn the television on, searching for the local news. When I find it, I can’t do anything but stare at the black-haired woman as she stands outside the area where ‘ten bodies were found shot to death earlier this morning’, and the rest of what she says fades into the back of my mind. It hurts to think about Lydia, the horrible way that she died. It hurts knowing that I couldn’t help her like I promised and that her grandparents will soon know about her death and that they will be heartbroken.

The only good that I get out of this newscast is knowing that Lydia’s body was found, that it wasn’t left out there to decay and turn to dust never to be identified.