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My eyes scan the room, looking for something, anything, I can use as a weapon. By reflex, I snatch a steak knife and spin and throw it right at his head.
He ducks.
It hits the wall behind him and clatters uselessly to the floor. He laughs.
From the living room, I hear Dixon shouting. Angry, violent, wordless shouts. Further sounds of struggle follow, and I hear the chair fall over. The masked man aims again and I dive, the bullet tearing a hole through the cupboard door and shattering my coffee mugs to a thousand pieces.
I barely hit the ground before he takes aim again and on hands and knees, I leap out of the way, scrambling. Pain sears up my left arm as a friction burn from the cheap linoleum floor takes me from wrist to elbow. That pain disappears as another bullet zips by my head, missing me by inches and tearing another hole in the cupboard behind me. There’s a loud, ringing sound like a gong that echoes through the apartment as the bullet bites into my cast-iron skillet.
Fuck. I had finally gotten a good layer of seasoning on the damn thing. Now I’ll have to start all over.
Spinning again, I lash out with my foot and send a kitchen chair flying toward him. It hits him just below the knee and he stumbles. I leap to my feet and grab my coffee pot from the kitchen counter.
Whirling, I hurl it right at his head and it smacks him in the temple, shatters, and hot coffee and shards of glass turn his masked face into a bloody, steaming mess. He howls, drops the gun and clutches his head with both hands.
I grab another steak knife and run at him, screaming. With all my strength, I sink the steel into his shoulder, spilling fresh blood on my hand.
A grunt and a fist to the face are all I get in response.
I hit the linoleum floor like a lump, waves of pain cascading through my body.
A kick follows, hitting me in the ribs. Something shifts inside me, beyond painful, but I bite back the pained whimper I want to release and roll sideways, narrowly dodging his follow-up stomp that just misses where my head used to be.
I get to my knees, my eyes searching the kitchen for another weapon.
I see it through the dangling door of my cupboard: my now-fucked-up cast-iron skillet. Scrambling, I race to it, clench my hands in a baseball batter’s grip around the handle, and turn just in time to bring it to bear against the attacker. It hits him on the side of his head.
He hits his knees.
With the cast iron clutched in a double-fisted grip, I stand and raise it high, intent on bringing it down on the top of his head and crunching his skull. My swing dies in a shriek as he lashes out with his fist and hits me between the legs.
I crumple.
With a shove, he pushes me and I land on my back on the blood-soaked floor. He climbs atop me, dripping blood from the multitude of cuts on his face and the stab wound in his shoulder. There’s a faint outline of a wicked grin visible beneath the black fabric of his ski mask. Dimly, I’m aware of Dixon’s voice in my living room, screaming, shouting my name, and the distant sound of splintering wood. But only barely aware, because the man on top of me is now wrapping his hands around my throat, and the sound of my heartbeat grows louder with each near-impossible breath as he squeezes, his eyes popping wide against the bloody black of his ski mask, excited, gleeful.
A droplet of spit falls from his mouth and lands on my nose.
I squirm. Grab his hands by the wrist and pull with all the strength in my body.
He doesn’t budge.
My world grows darker.
Things move at the edge of the dark, squirmy impressions and squiggly shapes as the veins in my eyes pop and the oxygen supply to my brain goes as dry as Nevada in the summer.
Spittle foams in my mouth.
Tears brim in my eyes.
I try to cry out — something, anything, even just ‘please’ — but it does no good.
Then, in the shadows at the fringe of my vision, I see a large shape. It looks like Lucas.
This is it; I’m going to die.
He’s getting closer.
He’s here to take me away.
