Page 25 of Fractured
"I will forgive you, Noah, if you let me go, please," I beg, even though I know there's not a chance in hell of that happening. He's already past the point of no return, and the madness inside of him has turned him into what I see before me tonight. The Noah I knew never existed; it was all a facade. It was always what he wanted me to see, and I missed the signs of how insane, unhinged, and obsessive he truly was.
"Forgive me?Sweet baby girl, I don't need you to forgive me. You belong to me. What happened in the past will remain in the past, and we will start a new future together. You'll see I'll make you happy now." He crouches down before me, reaching forward and grasping my neck, and I'm powerless to stop him. I refuse to release my hold on the blade, and my other arm is useless at the moment. His eyes are pitch black as they meet mine, and I have to swallow the lump in my throat, and clear it a few times to get any words out. I can’t die at this monster’s hands. If he thinks he’s taking me out of this forest, he has another thing coming. I would rather end my life than live one as his prisoner.
"You'll make me happy, Noah? Promise?" I question, clearing my face of all my emotions. I lean closer to his face, and as if he's entranced, he allows it. He licks his lips, like he can't live without a taste of me. His eyes flick back and forth over my features, and I'm not sure what he sees, but it must reassure him that I'm done fighting him.
I can feel blood trickling down from the corner of my lip, as he reaches forward and swipes his thumb, wiping it up, before bringing it to his lips and licking it away, and groaning with satisfaction. "I promise, sweet baby girl. I'll make you so happy. You'll want for nothing."
A soft look crosses his features, and I get a quick glimpse of the Noah I knew from before. The one that I thought loved me like I loved him. Instead of breaking me, it strengthens my resolve, and I press my nose against his. "Then kiss me, Noah. Make me believe that you have always loved me, and that I will be happy at your side."
He doesn't hesitate to press his lips against my mouth, his tongue instantly breaching through my lips and tangling with mine. His hand rises gently to cradle my face, and the other tangles in my hair at the back of my head, angling me so he can kiss me deeper. Little growling sounds vibrate in his throat as he kisses me passionately with his eyes closed. I never bothered to close mine, and I stare at the man that was once my everything, all of the sunshine in my world, who has now become my darkest nightmare.
I allow my limp arm to be cradled between our bodies, as he tries to move impossibly closer. He's so lost in the kiss, and my surrender, that he doesn't see my hand move with the blade as I shift it out from below my other arm, or when I shift it in my grasp so that I’m holding the hilt tightly in my bloody, clenched fist. He moans sweetly into my mouth, as I tangle my tongue with his, and I thrust my arm forward with my last remaining strength, and the need to survive at all costs. I slam the blade into the side of his throat, and his lips stop moving against mine, a gasp ripping into my mouth. I keep pushing it through his vulnerable skin, even as I bite down as hard as I can on his tongue, as he tries to pull away. I keep kissing him, my lipstrembling as his eyes dart open, and he stares with pain and horror into mine.
He makes a ragged sound in his throat, his mouth falling open and his eyes wide, as a tear slides from the corner and makes its way down his high cheekbone, lost between us. I pull back, releasing my hold on the blade that's now firmly lodged in his throat, and I peck his lips once more, which now have blood tinging them. My hand rises, and I cradle the side of his face in my palm, as I stare deeply into his pained gaze as tears cascade down my face. "I'm sorry, Noah, but I choose me, and a life without you."
He gurgles, his hand reaching uselessly to pry the blade from his neck, but I swat it away, and I propel my body away from him, scrambling the last couple of feet to my cape, my body feeling numb with the shock of what I just did. I frantically tear out the pocket knife, engaging it and tightening my grasp around it. With a rage-filled scream, I shuffle back, my body swaying, and slam it into his eye, as he clutches uselessly at his bloody throat. "Josslyn was a bitch, but she deserved better! I deserved better! You hurt everyone you ever came into contact with! I hope you rot in fucking hell!"
His body falls sideways, as blood rushes out of his eye and from his neck, tainting the hard-packed dirt around him. I lean forward and remove my stupid shoes, with trembling fingers caked in his blood. Once I'm free of them, I cradle my injured arm against my body, as I force myself to my feet and limp back toward my car. It feels like it takes hours to reach it, and when I do, I realize I left the keys in the cape. I stare at a large rock, but I don't have the energy to try to lift it to shatter the window. I slide down the side of my car and press my naked body against the wheel, as I shake from exhaustion, pain, cold, and the fact that I just killed someone. In the distance, I can hear the faint sound of sirens blaring. Help is finally coming, but it's too late.
I already saved myself.
My eyes close as my breath wheezes out of my chest. I'm not pathetic or weak. I may be broken, but I'm also a survivor, and no one gets to hurt me without my permission.
I survived the big, bad wolf, and he's the one who got eaten. It's the last thought I have before darkness takes me, and for once, I allow its sweet oblivion to take hold of me, and don't fight against it.
I'm finally free.
EPILOGUE
Istare down at the large mound of fresh, dark dirt as the cold, wintry air blasts around me, yanking on my black coat. Dark clouds are filling the sky, and I know it's only a matter of time before they pour icy rain down on me. I shouldn't be here, yet I couldn't bring myself to stay away.
A painful tinge races up my arm, strapped in a sling, as I shift my body so that I can place the bouquet of colorful flowers down on the dirt in front of me, among all of the other arrangements. They remind me of all the anonymous ones that arrived before at my apartment, and how I still don't know for sure who sent them, but I have my suspicions.
Josslyn's family and friends are making their way toward their vehicles, filled with sadness, and mourning a life lost far too young and violently ended by a psychotic killer. I force myself to straighten as I acknowledge that I should be lying in a grave just like her, and yet here I am alive, with my whole future ahead of me.
Does that make me luckier than her? At the moment, I don't feel that way. I know I'm fortunate to be alive, to be relatively unscathed other than a few broken ribs, a dislocated arm, a sprained ankle, and lots of cuts and bruises. I survived, I'm stillbreathing, and Noah Tisdale is rotting in hell where he deserves to be. The problem is that I'm covered in brutal scars deep inside of me, the type no one but me can see, and every day they bleed with the haunting reminder of the choices I made. I'm a killer now too. I can never change that, and knowing that I did it in self-defence doesn't make it less brutal. Noah haunts my nightmares, calling me his sweet baby girl, and begging me not to leave him, and at the moment, I don't know if I'll ever be free of them.
When I finally awoke in the hospital a day after the attack, Faye clutching my hand, and my parents crying at my side, I was told that the police found me in the woods, naked, raped, and injured, and a dead Noah fifty feet away from me. At first, I tried to correct them, but everyone, including the police, just spoke over me, filling me in on what had been discovered, and eventually I stopped trying to tell them that I had gone to those woods willingly, and not because Noah had lured me. The reality is, I no longer know which is the truth, and at this point, it doesn't matter. There is no one alive but me to tell the tale.
The club rapist's body was found mutilated in the woods, ravaged by wild animals, after the police canvassed the area. Josslyn's body was discovered hanging, maimed, and desecrated in her bathroom. Forensic evidence, and Noah's sperm still inside of her, confirmed to the authorities who her killer was, and corroborated my story of what he told me.
Two more murders were eventually linked to Noah, one of which was a male barista who worked at the coffee shop we used to frequent when we were together. He was found with his throat slit, in one of the large dumpsters behind his work by a coworker. When they reviewed security tapes, they caught a glimpse of Noah's profile waiting for him. The other was poor Tyler, whom I tried to save at that party. Someone realized they caught Noah slipping something into Tyler's drink on theirphone, and came forward to the police with the information. No one but Noah knows why he killed them. Two more bodies lying dead in the ground because of a madman I once loved.
Sly also came forward while I was in the hospital, and confessed that Noah was the one who attacked and brutally beat him. He told me when he came by to see me that Noah had threatened him to stay away from me. He’s barely left my side since I was released from the hospital. The police suspect that Tyler and the barista's murders are also somehow linked to Noah's obsession with me, but so far, I've been unable to figure out the connection. I barely knew either of those men.
A large metal dog crate, a leather collar, a leash, sexual paraphernalia, and drugs were found back in Noah's apartment, along with the address to an abandoned farmhouse in the next state. He was really going to kidnap me, and keep me prisoner in a cage, so that he could breed and rape me. I don't ever want to imagine the horror my life would have been if he had succeeded.
Noah was labelled a serial killer by our local police, and the FBI confirmed it. They've labeled him the Anti-Valentine's Killer. I've been fielding daily calls from reporters wanting to hear my story since I was released from the hospital, and they're camped out in front of Faye's and my apartment, trying to catch a glimpse of me. They want to know how I survived a serial killer's attempt to kidnap me and keep me captive. Maybe one day I will sit down and tell my story, but that time is not now. I'm still trying to process everything that happened, and how I managed to survive.
Every day is a struggle, wondering if I missed the signs while we were together, or if I caused him to lose his mind when I left him, after I caught him with Josslyn. Faye says I need to let it go, that he was already damaged, and staying with him wouldn't have changed anything, except that I would have died when he eventually turned on me like he did Josslyn. I'm not so sureabout that. I think a part of Noah Tisdale did love me, more than he ever loved himself. Could I have saved him from himself? Probably not, but we will never know.
"Hey, girl, you ready to go?" Faye steps up and wraps her arm gently around my waist. She's been stuck to me like Velcro the last couple of weeks. When I wake screaming in the middle of the night, with images of Noah and the woods blaring through my mind, she's right there to cry with me and hold me tight. "I still don't get why you wanted to come here, Cordie? She was awful to you. I'm not saying she deserved to die the way she did, but I'm not sure you should be mourning her either."
I stare at the thick mound of dirt, a shiver racing down my spine at her words. She's right in a way, but Josslyn wasn't always like that. She used to be filled with sunshine, joy, and kindness. I think Noah damaged her, just as he did to me. We were both his victims, both of us in love with an unhinged psychopath. "I'm not only mourning her." I take a deep breath of the cool air, filling my lungs, and allowing the slight pain in my chest to remind me that I'm still alive despite the odds. "I'm mourning Cordelie Wynyard, the broken, pathetic version who also died in those woods. I'm not her anymore, Faye, I'm now irrevocably changed."
I turn away from the grave with a last glance, my mind filled with the possibilities for my future now that I'm free. They're endless now that I'm unburdened of Noah Tisdale, and the hold he had on me.
I survived, and lived to tell the tale of the big bad wolf and his Red Riding Hood, and one day I will tell it. I might even make my way back into the woods with a masked stranger one day, who knows, you only live once, and I plan to now live without regrets.
The End.
