Tony pressed his gun into my side, his slimy voice instructing me, “We’re going to walk through the mall and to my truck. If you draw attention to us, I’ll kill anyone who tries to help. Then when I find you again, I will take my time torturing you. Understand?”
As the tears streamed down my face, I nodded silently, still looking at my best friend, who would probably bleed out and die because of me. Prodded by the gun, I reluctantly turned away from the bloody sight on the floor and took a step toward the door to leave the break room.
“Wait,” he said.
He smothered my mouth with his repulsive hand, pulling me in closer to him. Before I could even try to maneuver myself out of his hold, my eyes widened when I felt a hard sting on my outer thigh. I didn’t process what had happened until I looked down. When I saw the blood, I felt a heat like nothing I’d ever imagined, and a hot pain radiated through my leg from the spot where Tony had stabbed me with a pocketknife.
He yanked the knife out with a twist and I screamed against his hand.
“That’s to make sure you can’t run from me this time,” he whispered, his breath vile against my ear.
With his gun hand, the one not smothered against my mouth, he reached down to my wound and forcefully pushed his finger into it, making me squirm and cry in pain. I could feel the sting all the way up my spine.
“And that was for fun,” he told me with a gleeful smile.
My eyes widened when he brought his bloody finger up to his face and put it in his mouth, savoring the taste of my pain and misery. He smiled a warped smile, his dark eyes lighting up at my obvious fear and disgust.
“Just remember: do something wrong and people die. Let’s go.” He removed his hand from my mouth and forced me to walk, the gun pressed inconspicuously into my back.
I didn’t get a chance to look back at my best friend, who was bleeding out on the floor, or think of the pain in my leg. I just did what he said, stepping out of the back room and into my uncertain future.
The few people who had been in the store had left, leaving it empty, filled only with the pop music that was always on repeat. It was a good thing no one was in the store—I didn’t want to risk Tony hurting anyone else. The man had savored the taste of my blood for goodness’ sake! Who knew what else he would do?
We exited the store and walked toward the stairs. For some reason, the elevator music that filled the mall seemed blaringly loud—maybe because the mall wasn’t as busy as it usually was. My sluggish brain refused to come up with an escape plan. But I refused to give up that easily, to let him torture me, kill me. I needed to find a way to get away from him without getting anyone else hurt.
Before we got to the stairs, Frank, the regular security guard, saw us. He was the nicest man. He had two kids a bit older than I was, and was friendly to everyone. He had people who loved and cared for him, and even though he was the security guard, I couldn’t have him notice Tony and his gun. Frank would have tried to be a hero. Tony didn’t care who he hurt. I forced myself to look away, praying that Frank wouldn’t notice me or the bloody mess all over my jeans.
“Hey, Hailey!”
Tony’s grip tightened on my arm and his gun pushed harder into my back, both hard enough to bruise.
“Hey, Frank.”
We kept walking. Tony started to steer me in a different direction, away from Frank. We were almost at the stairs when Frank stopped us. “Hailey, there’s blood all over your pants.”
In a split second, Tony removed the gun from my back and shot Frank. Time slowed as my friend clutched his chest and fell down, blood spilling through the slits between his fingers.
Shaking off the shock, I acted quickly. Pulling the letter opener out of my combat boot, I plunged it into Tony’s stomach. The impact forced him to drop the gun, but then he landed a punch to my face that caused me to stumble back. Nothing I’d learned from jujitsu and self-defense classes came to my mind—it was all gone like a child’s balloon being ripped from their hands in a violent windstorm. I scrambled for the gun while Tony pulled the letter opener out of his gut. The cold steel was just in my grasp when Tony landed a kick to my ribs, and I toppled over onto the floor. He kicked me again and put his knee on top of me, letting his full weight pin my small frame.
“I’m going to enjoy making your death a slow one,” he growled, clutching the bloody opener in his hand.
In this position, on my back and his knee on my stomach, a memory from practicing jujitsu surfaced of how to escape this position.
Tony raised his arm to stab me, and using his momentum against him, I brought my knee under his butt and bridged my hips at the same time, driving up toward the sky and causing him to lose his balance. He fell toward me but I put my forearms in front of my face so he wouldn’t land on it. He was forced to put his hands down to stop himself from smashing his face on the concrete floor, and his bleeding stomach came to rest on my forearms.
Then, adrenaline pumping, I abandoned all proper form and technique, and before he could regain his balance, I drilled my fist into his wound, hearing him yell, and used my hips and legs to throw him off of me and roll him onto his side. I sat on my butt and kicked him with the heel of my foot, then stumbled to get up.
Before I could even think of reaching for the gun again, I was violently shoved, sending me tumbling, and knocking the air out of my lungs. My head banged against everything and my body was tossed around like it was a rag doll. The spinning stopped and I look around in a haze, barely registering anything I was seeing. Everything was sore and I started coughing, blood spilling out of my mouth and onto my hand.
I forced myself out of the haze and sat up, realizing that I was sitting at the bottom of the staircase. Tony had pushed me down the stairs.
I stood up, my adrenaline helping numb the pain my body should have been feeling. I looked at the top of the staircase and we made eye contact. I had a sudden flashback of the first time I escaped from his house. The two of us on opposite sides, staring each other down, separated by only a few steps. He was staring down at me with a rage and a hate so venomous you could ignite it.
He raised the gun and without a second thought, I sprinted through the mall, gunshots sounding off behind me.
I ran out of the mall where there was already a police presence, and they noticed me running toward them. With raised arms, I approached the ones tha
t hadn’t already stormed inside. I told them what had happened. I told them that Ashley was bleeding out in the back room of a store, that Frank was shot in the chest, and other people may have been shot as well.