Munachi

|Chapter 16|

Bloody barefoot, I burst through the front door. Car keys jingling in my bloody hand. I climb into the first car I see. Nate's. I try to put the key in the ignition but they are working against me as my bloody fingers fiddles relentlessly with them.

I shakily change gears to reverse onto the road, slamming the pedal and with the headlights on, I begin speeding down the road towards nowhere in particular. I don't know where I'm going, but I just have to get far away from the house. Anywhere but the house.

Is he following me-is someone following me? I thought as I whip my head behind me. I feel my hands quivering on the steering wheel as I continue to speed up. I stabbed him, I say inwardly, I actually stabbed him!

I pant heavily and loudly, whipping my head behind me every now and then. Just to make certain that I'm not being followed. As I turn in my seat to face the road again, I immediately step on the brake pedal as I almost slam into a vehicle in front of me. I hit my forehead against the wheel. And as I wince from the pain, I hear a long loud honk of another vehicle. I suddenly look to my left, and I see two bright headlights flashing at me. Before I know it, the trailer crashes into my car and I topple over, smashing my head against the window. Everything goes pitch black.

Rewind.
(Earlier before)

I'm standing on the last step of the staircase, eavesdropping on Nate's conversation on the phone with whom I believe is his mother.

"Yes, I understand," he says, his back directly facing me. "Look, Mom, I've told you that I don't really like her. Yes we've had sex few times but I don't think I can ever marry her, she's too young."

I silently gasp, putting a hand to my mouth.

"This is not about Muna," he continues. "I can fool around with her but I'm not going to marry her. I have a wife." He sighs before he continues again. "Mom stop calling her that." He pauses for a little while. "I'm not defending her I'm just, ugh, look Mom, let me call you back okay?" He hangs up, turning to see me standing in the room. He gives me a questioning look. "What're you doing standing there? Have you been eavesdropping on me?"

"So you've been cheating on me all these while, Nathaniel?" I say, tears in my voice.

He waves me off and flop down onto the sofa.

"And yet you accuse me of sleeping with another man? You broke our wedding vows, Nate."

"Look who's talking," he sneers. "If it isn't the vow violater herself. Why are you even surprised that I had sex with another woman? You broke the vows first."

"Why is it so hard for you to get it into that thick skull of yours that I was raped!" I blurt out, then immediately regretting my words.

He slowly rises from the sofa. "What did you say?" A deep frown on his face.

I stand on my ground, showing no means of fear.

"What did you just say to me?" he repeats.

For some reason I don't fear him. For the only thing he can do to me is to beat me up again as usual. And I've pretty much gotten used to it by now. And so I may as well say whatever it is on my mind since he won't refrain from punching me anyway.

"You heard me. You know, I've never really mentioned how sick and tired I am of you and that mother of yours. She's always bossing you around, telling you what and what not to do, meddling in people's home and business. Like seriously, what kind of a mother has no boundaries for her son's affairs or a little respect for her husband? Yet she comes into my house and throw all sort of words at me, calling me all sort of names. Barren, seriously? Like she wasn't one before she gave birth to you."

"One more word out of you and I'll-"

"What?" I cut him off mid-sentence. "Punch me?" I ask. "That is all you ever do, Nathaniel. Punch me, strangle me, nothing else! News flash. I'm not afraid of you, or your parents, or your mother! So do whatever you wish, I don't care. Mama's boy."

"What did you call me?"

Ignoring him, I turn and begin climbing up the stairs towards the bedroom.

"Don't you dare walk out on me!" He yells and follows behind me.

I feel his hand on my shoulder as I walk into the room. "Leave me alone, don't touch me," I scream, shaking his hand off violently.

"Who the hell do you think you are, telling me what to do?" He push me and I fall to the floor.

Something had snapped in Nate, and I can feel it, I can see it. Something deadly and dangerous. The monster clouding his face. The beast which has taken over his form. Those eyes, those death stare, the killing red. I was wrong. I was wrong to have said I wasn't afraid of him. Because frankly speaking, I'm afraid of him now. Afraid of this beast hovering above me. For a split second it seems as if the devil himself is standing right in front of me. And all of a sudden my legs go numb. Perhaps if I beg him this demon would go away.

"Please," I plead, crawling away from him. But he slowly follows behind me, reaches down, grabs hold of my legs and drags me across the floor. I resist, kicking him in his stomach. But his tight grip on my legs are impossible to escape from. "Get away from me!" I shout, kicking still.

The demon climb onto me, pinning my face down and begins to punch me.

"Help!" I yell, crying out desperately. "Somebody help!"
He punches, and punches, and punches. Nonstop. Until I taste my own blood before the world goes black.

♣♣♣

I wake up to the sound of Nate screaming . . .

I peer up from the floor, the room hazy, the taste of my blood still on my tongue . . . seeing Nate on the floor, bleeding everywhere.

I see him stretching and reaching for the knife lying between us.

The fear ripping through me . . . knowing if he reaches for the knife, he'd kill me. So I wobble to my feet, grabbing the knife and plunging it into his chest.

I hear a sharp sudden gasp and I look towards the threshold, Doris standing wide eyes with her hands to her mouth.

I stand up to my feet-almost collapsing in the process-and move towards the door. Doris dash off, and I couldn't care less as I grab the car keys and make my way out of the house.

(Seven nights after the car accident)

I slowly begin to swim out of the river of death and darkness. Slowly coming back from the land of the dead. I moan, but no one seems to notice. My eyes are shut, and my cries of pain are so faint that it is lost in the din of agony. Unheard and unheeded, it's like a whisper in a screaming match.
It took me almost half an hour or so, before I'm finally able to open my eyes. At first, I see nothing, and something inside of me yearns to see. But the welcoming darkness around me, had swallowed up everything.

I was thoughtless at first, not having a single clue about my environment. After a few stretched moments, hazy thoughts drifts about in my wounded head.
Moaning still, I can barely hear myself. The bustling noise from the ward drowns mine, and like wild wind driving smoke into oblivion, they chase these drifting thoughts away.

Even in my despair, I can feel the overpowering darkness in the ward. For a moment I see a flash of light, a moving light, faint and weak. It appears and disappears. It's a kerosene lamp, far at the end of the ward. Someone moved it away from the table and left the room with it. In my hazy thinking, I assume the lamp walked out of the room since I could barely see the figure of the person who took it. Darkness returns, painting the ward in one single brush stroke of undiluted darkness.