Monster

When Bucky was gone I turned toward Oscar and checked to make sure he was still breathing. He was unconscious and I could hear some of the other men groaning. I hoped none of them were dead. I stood up and went to check the man who was sprawled across my rug. He was breathing but his spine was bent. I knew I shouldn’t feel so terrible for someone who wanted to kill me, but I never wanted anyone to get hurt.

The only problem is that I had taken my eyes off of Oscar for too long. I stared down at the unfamiliar man who was bleeding on my floor, and then I felt a boot meet the back of my leg. I toppled over and then Oscar’s hand wrapped around my ankle and yanked me toward him. He pinned me to the floor beneath him. His face was seething with rage. I yelped involuntarily.

“Bitch!” he growled as his fingers went for my throat. I scrambled for the knife I’d dropped in my fall. My hand wrapped around the sparkly pink handle and he didn’t try to stop me. He smiled down, pressing his thumb against the hollow of my throat. “You can’t do it. You’ve never been able to do it. You’re too much of a …”

I swung forward and imbedded the knife into his chest. So I couldn’t pull a trigger, and I didn’t like killing anyone, but that didn’t mean I lacked any talents. I was a medic. I knew where to slide the blade so that it wouldn’t kill. That’s why Special Forces had wanted me in the first place. I was good with knives.

But the shock on his face was sudden. The expression immediately changed from rage to disbelief. He rolled off of me, gasping and groaning about the stupid pink sparkly handle sticking out of his chest. I crawled away from him, nearly stumbling over the man with the broken spine.

“You goddamn bitch,” he was saying with a tone of astonishment. “You fucking little bitch. I’m gonna kill you.”

Since my knife was gone I reached for the gun that had landed by the couch. I jumped to my feet and raced for the door. I knew Steve was on his way and if he got there in time I would never have to pull the trigger. But I didn’t have enough time to dig my other knives out of the closet. I needed something, even if I couldn’t bring myself to shoot.

I toppled out the front door and out onto the lawn when I heard him crashing through the house behind me. I reached my car and spun around to face him. He had taken another fallen gun and waved it around as he stepped onto the porch. My knife was still sticking out of his chest, but the rage had returned to his face.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” he was saying as he held the gun aloft with one hand. The other clutched at his bleeding chest. My blade protruded from the space between his fingers, right above his Kevlar vest and right below his collarbone. “I’ve been waiting for this moment since the day I left you. I knew what I wanted to do the second you pulled this stupid glittery knife on me. I said to myself, 'I can’t wait to fucking kill this bitch.”

He lifted the gun and my mind went blank. I felt my finger stroke the trigger and the pounding of my heart told me I was going to freeze. But then the gun shook in my hand and reverberated through my body. The shot was so loud I could hear it echo through the otherwise quiet neighborhood. The alarm in Tony’s car began to wail. I heard my neighbors screaming in their houses.

His eyes went blank. Blood poured from his neck. He slumped forward and dropped to the grass like sack of flour. Right onto the blade I’d stuck in his chest.

I stood for a moment in complete shock. My mouth hung open and my brain was empty of thoughts. I dropped my hand to the side and the gun slipped from my sweating fingers and landed with a clank against the sidewalk. Then I limped forward and dropped to the grass at his side. I rolled his body back over. The knife had bent from his landing. A chunk of his neck was gone and I pressed my palm against the wound. It couldn’t have been me. I couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have killed him.

“C’mon,” I begged as I lifted his head back and began doing compressions on his chest. I knew it was too late. I couldn’t save him, but I felt like I had to at least try. Before I began to see the darkness in him I used to fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat the same way I had done with Bucky the night before. I couldn’t forgive myself if that heartbeat stopped because of me. “Please, don’t die? Please?” I repeated as I pressed down against his chest. I tilted his head back, pinched his nose, and breathed into his mouth. But his airway was blocked by blood. I kept trying anyway.

I heard footsteps pounding against the pavement as someone rushed out to me. She appeared on the other side of Oscar and sat down beside me. She pressed her fingers against his neck to check for a pulse even though it was so obvious he was dead. It was the girl who worked for Talbot at the diner. I couldn’t remember her name.

“Are you okay?” she asked me as she leaned over his body and put her hand on mine while I pressed against his chest.

“I killed him,” I said. “I killed him. I didn’t mean to.” She wrapped her hands around my wrists and pushed them away from him.

“He’s dead, Jo. He’s gone.”

“No. No, no. I didn’t. I can’t. I couldn’t.”

“I’ve already contacted Colonel Talbot. He’s sending someone out. Are there any more of them?”

I slid my wrists from her hands and clamored away from the both of them. I staggered to my feet and headed toward the sidewalk. I didn’t know where I was going. I couldn’t go anywhere. I would never be able to escape it. I knew I couldn’t. My hands were shaking and covered in blood. His death was on my hands. He tried to kill me first, but I pulled the trigger and took his life. I could have shot him in the shoulder. I could have shot him in the hand. I didn’t think. I aimed for his head and hit him in the throat.

Then I thought of his mom. The woman who had invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner. I thought of the call she was going to get. That despite all of the wrong her son had committed, I was the one who ended his life. The girl who used to fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.

But then I thought of the last man whose heartbeat had filled my ear. I hadn’t done it for me. I didn’t shoot Oscar to save my life. I did it for Bucky. “Bucky?” I shouted. “BUCKY!” I screamed.

I heard my voice echo through the street, but it was drowned by the sirens and the rumble of a motorcycle engine. He wouldn’t be able to hear me. Even if he was close by. And he couldn’t come back. He couldn’t see me like this. I wasn’t strong enough for this life. So I dropped to the ground and pressed my head against my knees. Then I began to rock, trying to keep back the rising heat in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t lose focus. We had talked about it. We knew it would happen. I just didn’t want it to end so soon. I had barely got him and now I had lost him again. I was going to lose everything.

“One, two, three, four,” I counted. Over and over. “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.” I didn’t stop until the motorcycle shut off and I felt arms around me. Steve lifted me to my feet and I stared up into his concerned blue eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked. I looked back down at my trembling fingers. The blood was sticking to the creases of my palms and caught in my fingernails.

“I killed him,” I told him. “I didn’t freeze this time. I killed him.”

“Where’s Bucky?”

“He’s gone. He took off. He didn’t kill anyone. I did.”

“Which way did he go?”

“Backyard.”

“I’m going after him.”

“It’s too late.”

He left me standing there anyway, with bloodied hands. An ambulance screeched to a halt beside Tony’s temporary car. I watched as Steve ran around the back of the house with his shield and disappeared behind the fence.

Notes

Sorry for not updating last night. I was angry. Really really crying upset angry. BECAUSE, I was going to work on the sequel and I noticed the second chapter was missing. Just like "poof" no chapter two. But I know for a fact I saved it because I ALWAYS save my work. Well, Microsoft Word did have an issue recently where it crashed and auto-recovery brought back my files. For some reason I didn't check to be sure that chapter was on the auto-recovery file, but I usually don't have to because I save the recovered file anyway. But of course, it wasn't there. So I did a sweep of my computer and located all of the auto recovery files. I found every single file that had been recovered within at least the past month. But, you guessed it, that second chapter wasn't in any of them.

So I was really really angry. And I know it's stupid to be so angry over one chapter. But I LIKED that chapter. And I've been STRUGGLING to write for over a year. So anything I have to re-write just KILLS me. But I can handle rewrites if I have a copy of that file. But I don't. So now I have to go back and rewrite that entire chapter from the top of my head. Which means it's not going to be nearly as good. Ugh...

I cried. And then I decided not to update because I didn't even want to touch my computer. But I'm back now. And I'm going to try to work on the sequel some more. I didn't want anyone to have to wait for it. But I want it to be finished before I start putting it up so that there are no breaks, like with my Loki fic that gets updated every few months. Ugh... So angry.