Hushed Confessions | ✔

{33} Bite the Bullet

Sajdaa Taha

"No!" I screamed, pulling Malik's body to rest on my lap. "What's wrong with you? You say you love him and then you do this crap?"

"Get away from him!" Audrey shrieks, holding her knife. 

Glaring at her, I hold onto Malik's shoulder tighter. My eyes quickly scan him for any injuries. A constant pain dulled into my mind, my wounds momentarily forgotten. Covered in my own blood, I tried my best not to look at the gnashes and cuts decorating my once smooth skin like macabre ornaments. 

Wait, if Malik's here-

"Come along nicely and he won't get hurt," she threatened. "Your life for his."

I scoffed. "You're going to kill the man you claim to love so deeply? I'm not a moron."

"Sajdaa," she seethed, "come here. Now."

Malik's gun was right under him. If I could just manage to get it without her attention, then I would have a form of defense. My shot would probably suck since the world spun around me as a massive headache began to surface, but that wasn't stopping me. I wasn't throwing away my opportunity to live. 

"Why don't you just kill me here?" I questioned her, my hands slowly reaching under Malik's unconscious figure. He was just knocked out and would be fine. If my suspicions were correct, Malik brought reinforcements. "He's all yours if you just kill me, right? So, just do it. I won't stop you."

She looked perplexed, wondering why I was giving in so easily to her after all the restraint I showed her before. 

"You've taken so many lives all because of me, ruined so many people because of me, terrorized innocents because of me. Ending my life would end all that suffering that everyone else had to endure because of yours and William's hatred. Will you stop if my life were to end?" 

"Yes," she said, walking closer until she was a foot away, "their suffering ends with your life. I swear it."

Liar. 

The dark gleam in her eyes, the constant shaking, and her cruel smile were all I needed to know. She was a liar. Audrey relished the haunting screams and gruesome murders. Each death, as Officer Nathan had said before, was getting sloppier. Murdering would never stop because Audrey needed the bloodshed to survive. 

In the beginning her kills were to get closer to Malik, and William blindly followed after, wishing that her love would be directed to him. Audrey had slowly lost her mind, piece by piece, each falling from the portrait of a perfect fling, a girl with a broken heart, but with a pretty face to disguise it. She lost her sanity the day Malik sent her away. 

Audrey was driven to madness, and that would never cease. Even after she killed me, she was too used to the torture she inflicted on others and she reveled at their screams. My death would not end that pleasure. 

I gripped the gun underneath, slowly unsheathing it from its holster. "Killers don't make promises," I hissed, whipping the gun out. 

Audrey gasped, brown eyes widening from my trickery. "You... how..." she stammered.

"Drop your knife," I commanded. 

Recovering from her shock, she smirked, lowering her knife. Denim skinny jeans were splattered with my blood, her top matching the horror. Audrey tilted her head, red lips twisting upwards and to anyone else it would have seemed innocent or playful, but I knew what that smile meant. I knew what she was capable of. 

"Step away from Malik or else I'll shoot," I threatened, although my voice quivered. Come on, Sajdaa. Hold the gun just like Malik said. I have to do this.