Pacifier

🥀Van🌼

"Theyre going to try it tonight..."

I looked the boy - for thats all he really was - up and down, looked between him and Issabelles teacher, Smith, trying to read him. Work out whose side he was really on.

But he looked clueless to me, looked innocent enough.

"How do I know that this isn't part of it?" i asked, looking more to my ally than the little year 7 lad who stood beside him.

But that wasn't a question I really needed to ask and I knew I shouldn't torture the poor kid. I knew he was telling the truth, you could see it in the way his eyes wavered, in the way he did his best to hold mine when he spoke. In the way he tried to keep his chin up. I didn't need to torture him because he was terrified of me, the way he'd been raised to fear my family.

"Do they know that you know?" i asked letting out half a sigh, feeling older than i used to because Id never have considered his safety before. "We can offer you protection if you..."

"I don't want to be one of you," the boy was quick to speak and his words took him by surprise.

I smirked and raised my brow arms crossed over my chest. I wanted to shrug my shoulders and laugh at him, tell him he didn't need to state the obvious to me.

" Sorry... "he stuttered out, eyes suddenly wide when he realised what he'd said, "I didnt mean it like that..." he started about to stumble on the defensive so I put him out of his misery a moment early, merciful me.

"Yes you did," i smirked, "but that doesn't matter to me, I don't care," i shrugged my shoulders, "youve saved a young lasses life though today lad and if there's anything you ever need you can come to me for it.."

"I don't want..."

"I didnt say the bottlemen, I said me... I owe you alright,"

He didn't say anything but he held my gaze, swallowed a lump in his throat as he nodded, not quite realising the severity of the situation and the scene his moment of truth would see in.

And now I stood shaking. Teeth gritted. Jaw clenched. Breaths ragged. My heart pulsed in my ears but I couldn't feel the rain on my skin.

When i dropped the gun the collision, the scratch and scrape of metal on concrete, ricocheted around the warehouse.

My fingers remained curled around the knife in my hand. Blood dripped, slow trickle along the blades edge. Blood dripped from the point to the floor and my feet.

I stood there, shaking. Pale white.
My chest rose and fell. Theirs didn't.

I was suspended in the quiet, the stillness of that moment. The moment which followed the last thrust of my knife, the last shove my palm digging into the shoulders of a man not dead yet.

And that was the moment where I rememained. Suspended.

Eyes wide, paralysed. Playing and replaying the same scene.

The scene she entered. The moment she stopped shaking and saw me. Understood me.

Looked down at her shoes soaking up a dying man's blood. Looked up and saw me. The villain who had killed five men in all of several minutes.

The villain who couldn't control the adrenaline of his despair when he set eyes on her.

Isabelle, edging her way through the shadows. Scared. About to look up and see me.

I remained suspended in a moment.

That moment. Desperate and dragging my breaths out.

Even when I was dragging her home behind me in a panic, unable to come to terms with the reality of our situation, I remained suspended in the moment. Trapped there. Terrified of the man I'd been forced to become tonight.