‘You son-of-a-bitch, if you ever show you’self around here again I’ll kill yeh.’

‘Boss let’s just finish him right here?’

‘Get him into the creek over there, we’ll hold his head down ‘til he stops breathin’ – betcha regrettin’ it now aren’t yeh?” Morvick’s breath smells like onions and bourbon, an acrid, vomit-eating smell that I will never forget. As he holds my head over the rushing water of the two-foot-deep creek, I struggle to find freedom now; to get release, to untangle myself from him for one last and final time, to buy time until the authorities can make their way through the forest and save my life. They already know we’re here. They already know that Morvick’s trying to kill me. What they don’t know is why – Why is Morvick trying to kill me? – ‘Why’ is an answer that I have. And I am the only one who knows. That’s why. That’s why Movrick’s threatening to drown me. Off in the distance you can hear the basset hounds baying – they’ve found our tracks.

“If you’re going to do it…do it already.” I say in gritty, breathless whimpers. I hurt, I hurt all over. Morvick has beaten the shit out of me and so has his cronies; I’ve survived the knifing, the pummeling of several pairs of sausage-fingered fists, the rape, the torture in just this day…by all means, please, drown me.

Morvick’s meaty fist squeezes on my neck as he pushes me down and I wonder for a split second if he’s telepathic and finally, for once, sympathizing with me – me being the devil. Though I do think the man is deluded. I have been fighting him but in actuality it is nothing but a final show of strength and valor that he’ll never be able to tame me, that he’ll never be able to mould me into his expectations. The reasons are hard to describe but that is quite alright, in less than three minutes it won’t make a difference what has happened here, or in the past, all that matters is now. Right now. This – this right here.

It is 11:44AM in the morning and I taste fresh water. He plugs my nose and pushes his palm into my mouth. I taste blood and freshwater as my teeth grind unfavorably against the back of my lips. Hard against soft. Metaphorical almost. Morvick is the stone sitting atop a small piece of paper trying to fly away in the wind. That piece of paper is me…as the water consumes my body I feel like I am wilting, becoming transparent, eventually coming apart - unraveling- dissolving…falling…failing…

Failing.

There are words for what death feels like. There are only a few. Death is not an indescribable feeling. Death is the felt stillness of the night when you jilt bright-eyed still high from your nightmares…It’s the feel of your breath against the sound of absolutely nothing and it is dark but you’re still bright. It’s that fear of abandonment finally telling you ‘Why’. And this is how I feel, right now.

There is no heart beat.

I can’t go on.

It is dark, and cold, and I am alone. Finally. Morvick is gone.




It is now 11:46AM in the place I was two minutes ago. Am I dead? I doubt it. I really doubted it because right away my eyes are open again. I am gasping for air again; I am flailing again; I am frantic and hysterical and drowning…again. It only takes another two minutes (no one is counting by now – watches don’t exist here and neither does their timeframe allowance) for it to happen but this time I’m still alive when I hit the rocks, wheezing as the wave crushes me chest first into the stone I’m clinging onto. This knocks the air out of me entirely, my eyes widening as my lungs hiccup once, twice, three times. Something at the corner of my vision catches my eye but it fades quickly and I let go just in time.

Time for what?

Well, you know…

A better ending than this.