From what I saw, Mr. Jane was truly in shock to see the scraggly brown hair of a small and weak looking woman leaning heavily against the frame of his front door. Tea and saucer in hand he took a short step backwards before the wind picked up. I knew what made him mindlessly drop his steaming tea and gently brush a strand of brown hair away from the face he begged it wasn't. He smelled the light hint cinnamon.
He knelt down and pulled the tape from her mouth as you would a band-aid from a child's knee before letting his eyes drift to her back where fresh blood flowed onto a perfectly crisp sheet of white paper. Finally the part I've been waiting for. The drama I was dreaming of.
I could hear his thoughts and read his movements like an open book. His brain couldn't process what he realized had happened. He knew she was beaten when he saw her at first, but refused to admit to himself what else went down until he read the note and found her newest cut on her pale stomach, the stain of a deep blade that only two minutes ago etched my smile into a wound that would never fully cure low enough to be seen clearly if her shirt was even slightly pulled up. She would carry my brand forever and never be able to forget this day.
He cried and she would have if she had any tears or voice left.
It's actually quite funny. She screamed…begged… but not until I threatened her team's lives. I managed (after a tiresome ordeal) to tie her to a table and do things to her she might not have been able to come up with in her nightmares, but she didn't beg me to stop until I said that once I killed her there would be nobody else to protect her colleagues. That's when she responded like victims are supposed to respond.
"Please, don't do this. Please!" she pleaded shaking her head.
I was happy she was so upset. "But I have to. I have to do this or else Patrick might get worried. I'm sure you know I haven't struck in a while. He must think I forgot about him…"
She only cried louder. She knew she couldn't change my mind, so she just cried louder.
"Shut up! You don't want the neighbors to hear, darling." She didn't, "I said be quiet."
If she wasn't going to be quite on her own I would make her. I took the weighted steel bar I kept handy and hit her knee. I no doubt shattered it the first time but I thought I would keep delivering blows until I could touch where the knee cap should be and only feel it squish. When I did I thought for sure she would be in so much pain she would cry louder again, but she remained quiet for that.
"Does this not hurt you?" I asked.
She nodded, "Yes. But I don't care what you do to me. If that makes you happy and keeps you away from my friends longer then…"she took a moment to struggle for air, "you go ahead and whack away."
"Do you know what might keep me away from them even longer?"
She said she didn't, "If you would surrender to the pain you're feeling and scream. Yell because it hurts until your voice doesn't work anymore."
I took the bar and hit her mashed up bone one last time and she screamed. I could tell she really was in unbelievable pain beyond anything any of my other victims have gone through. I smiled.
And now Jane his trying to find a way to pick her up and set her down on the couch without making those dreary, glossy eyes from wincing. He noticed her knee. There were pieces of bone falling out from the wide laceration the bar gave her and she was about to lose a little too much blood. He had already called 911 and the medics were on their way followed by Wayne, Kimball, and Grace, so he just settled for holding her- rocking her soothingly back and forth while trying to measure the damage. The knee was obviously the worst, the cut on the side of her stomach, concerning bruises overlapping scrapes all over, and her arm was bent the wrong way. She was wearing only a bra and underwear which made it easily to tell everything she went through including the red marks in the shape of large hands wrapped around her neck and teeth marks littered over her chest. He cried and I could tell she was trying to say something but couldn't through a throat that had been gagged more than four times within ten minutes and then shredded vocal chords from yelling. So she stroked his hand instead. Only she could find the strength to comfort others after what she had just gone through.
The team arrived before the ambulance. The beautifully angled red-head hasn't removed her hand from her mouth since she saw. The tall grizzly stiff held his hands at his side lost, so he shifted his eyes back and forth from Teresa to Jane until he was dizzy. And the cardboard Asian man talked to possible witnesses to keep busy.
I used an audio-magnifier sx60 to hear what the chief medic told a blonde man who was in a different world holding the hand and standing over his dying best friend.
"Her attacker didn't want her to die. I can tell by the tiny dots on her wrist he gave her several shots that probably had adrenaline in it or else she would be long gone by now. The attacker also gave her proper medical attention to stop the bleeding for several of the cuts before ripping them open again. Judging by the flow I would say he tore the wound open again about half an hour ago right before dropping her here."
Smart man- he is good at his job and he conveys all information precisely and accurately. I like this medic. Mr. Jane however didn't hear a word he said. He just stood there watching her eyes drift from aware of her surroundings to unaware but still open. He bent down and softly placed a kiss on her lips. He wanted her to know that he cared and that there were people in the world who still wanted her alive. Little did he know that she wasn't trying to die to numb the pain, she fighting to stay alive to keep him and the other three protected. Just like Teresa Lisbon. That maternal streak of hers is going to be the end of her.
