Chapter 6 Dead End
Sarah's gut feeling told her he wasn't going to kill her. He'd intended to, she was pretty sure of that, but something was off.
She looked up at his inscrutable face as she opened the heavy wooden door to her apartment, and wondered for the zillionth time what she had gotten herself into.
As she let Vincent inside, she realized this was the last stop. Whatever was to happen between them, it would take place here. If she was wrong, and he did intend to kill her, then she had just given him the best of opportunities.
Sarah tried to look at her apartment, or rather, small studio, through Vincent's eyes. It wasn't spacious, but it was hers. They stood in the living room that also contained the kitchen over to the right, separated from it only by a bench. Her bedroom and unmade bed could be seen through the open door on the other side of the room. Finally to the left of them there were two doors, one to a little bathroom and one to the only closet. The only window in the apartment was on the far side of the bedroom. The walls in this room were painted dimly yellow, and the walls in her bedroom had a warm red tone. A few photos in black and white of old Hollywood stars hung on the wall behind the sofa. She had decorated everything herself when she had moved in four years ago, painting, finding some old furniture at a secondhand market, and overall fixing the place up. It had marked a new era in her life. She wasn't going to be owned any more, wasn't going to be pushed around.
My place! My life!
Suddenly aware that her mind had drifted, Sarah looked up at Vincent and tried to imagine what he was thinking, but it was impossible. He seemed to evaluate the apartment, maybe counting places to hide, looking for escape routes... She shuddered and realized she didn't want to know.
"Can I get you anything?" she asked.
Vincent seemed to snap out of his scanning mode and looked at her. Suddenly a relaxed smile lightened his features, and he pulled his fingers through his hair. "What've you got?"
"Ehm, water… tea." She went over to the fridge. "Orange juice, if you're not afraid of food poisoning." She laughed and shook the half empty juice bottle, which looked like it was about to explode from the obviously too old content. Sarah threw it in the sink and opened a cupboard. "Whiskey, gin, vodka…" She grinned sheepishly. "Nothing to mix with, though…"
Vincent shook his head and walked over to her. He leaned casually against the bench, raised one eyebrow and snickered. "You do like strong alcohol…" He gave her a meaningful sideways glance. Sarah began to protest. "Whiskey will be fine," he interrupted, and his grin widened into a more genuine smile, making her heart skip a beat.
I like him. I'm insane! I wish he was a nice person… I wish he was here on a date…
Sarah shook her head inwardly. Where did that come from?
They settled in her green, L-shaped sofa, that had seen its better days a couple of decades earlier. Each with one glass of the amber colored drink. Vincent had removed his jacket and thrown it over the bar's counter. Sarah shuddered as she caught a glimpse of his holster by the back of his belt as he sat down.
An uneasy silence settled between them. Vincent swirled the contents of his glass, drank the scotch in one swallow, and reached for the bottle to refill.
Sarah watched in fascination as he gulped down his second glass and refilled.
"Vincent-"
He looked up from wherever he'd had his focus. His eyes were unreadable, but they had an intensity that never seemed to dull. She swallowed.
"Why couldn't you let me go?"
He nodded, like he'd been expecting the question to come up. Sarah watched him intensely while her heartbeat sped up and felt like it must have been audible in the small room.
Vincent frowned and stared forward, seeing nothing. He seemed to consider the question. "I – hesitate…"
Iwasright!OhGodIwasright!
"I never hesitate. Up until the alley, it was pretty clear to me. Then…" He finished his third glass.
Sarah's head was spinning. She needed more to drink! This was too much for her. She had a chance, she was right, she actually had a chance!
"What happened in the alley, Vincent?" Pushing on, she needed desperately to break this deadlock, to get some reassurance, to breathe. She had no idea whether it would be dangerous to push him, or if she could benefit from it; she just did what came naturally.
"Why do you have that scar on your face, Sarah?" Suddenly he looked back up at her.
Sarah flinched. "I don't wanna talk about it."
"Well, I do."
"Well, fuck you!" she spat. Her heart pounded alarmingly hard as the memories pushed their way to the surface, like worms of decay from a corpse, long since buried but never forgotten.
-
Mark had been her first real boyfriend. Sarah had been nineteen and very shy. Two years had passed since her brother had died, and Sarah had still been very vulnerable and had trust issues. Mark had been a real charmer, and a real psychopath – but she didn't learn that until later. He'd taken her out, showed her places, taught her to drink and smoke. They'd danced and laughed, and he'd stolen her heart away completely.
After some time, maybe a few weeks or a couple of months, the memory was rather blurred; he'd introduced her to some new friends of his. She'd thought they were a little creepy, but wanting to please Mark, she'd hung out with them. The guys had used to pinch her, and grope her a little here and there, 'just for fun'. Sarah hadn't found it that much fun and had tried to get them off of her the best she could. Nervously, she would look to Mark for reassurance, but he would just smile and tell her "It's all right, baby". That had been all he ever said, "It's all right, baby".
GOD, how I hated those words!
One late night, after hours of heavy drinking, they'd been back at Mark's apartment. One of the guys, she thought his name was Steve, had hauled up some white powder in a small plastic bag. Sarah had watched with fascination as he handled the powder as if it was pure gold, placing some in a spoon, melting it into fluid and sucked it into a syringe. She'd known what they were doing; Heroin, she'd heard about it. She'd never encountered it before though.
They'd all injected it; Mark's four friends had gone first. Then, before Mark had taken his shot, he'd helped her to her virgin dance with the white devil.
She didn't remember much of how it started; she'd sunk down onto the sofa in a haze. When she'd come to her senses, she was being raped. At first she hadn't gotten it, thinking it was Mark on top of her. Then, as she'd realized it was one of the other guys, she'd panicked and started to yell and beat at him, trying to get him off of her. The guy had laughed and Mark had suddenly appeared, holding her arms down as he'd caressed her face and
told her "It's all right, baby". They'd all taken turns with her that night. Sarah had fallen in and out of consciousness as the effects of her first heroin shot had lasted for hours.
Afterwards, Mark had been so sorry and had said it was the drugs, it hadn't been him. He would never hurt her, she knew he loved her.
Blah, blah...
She knew now he'd been just full of shit. He'd never loved her; she'd simply been an easy girl to have some fun with. But back then… He'd thrown out the other guys and comforted her, promising her that he'd make it up to her. Sarah had wanted so desperately to believe him, to belong somewhere, to have her own family.
It hadn't ended there, though. Sarah and Mark had begun shooting heroin together. She'd loved the calm it brought her speeding mind, the blissful haze; it had been a way to forget about her past, and to stop thinking about her brother. Soon enough she'd become addicted. Mark, who'd already been an addict even when they met, had begun to get mean. He'd started saying she'd have to pay for it, that the stuff was expensive, and that he couldn't keep buying her rations unless she did something to help him pay for it.
It hadn't been that far-fetched anyway, she'd never owned her own body; she'd been reminded of that throughout her whole existence. So she had done it. Reluctantly at first, but after her first customer it had become easier and easier.
Sarah had lived, or existed, as a junkie and a prostitute – a whore – for seven years after that. Even way after Mark had been out of the picture. It had been a miserable, meaningless, throw-away-your-life existence.
So close to take my life, so many times…
The scar had been the forever 'sweet' memory of a violent customer. There had been so many of them, and she had long since stopped caring about who did what to her and why, just as long as she could get her next spike. She had been a very skinny thing who ate almost nothing, and had coughed constantly from a poorly treated asthma. This particular customer had a fit when he saw her bony body and her ugly arms, scarred from numerous needles.
So he'd beaten her. It had seemed to last forever. In the end he had produced a knife, saying she was the 'ugliest motherfucking whore' he'd ever seen and that she deserved to die. She remembered the knife, but she didn't really remember the cut. Obviously someone had finally heard her screams and called the cops.
That had saved her life. But what life?!
Sarah had spent a couple of weeks in hospital; healing from the cut, a few broken ribs, and a liver laceration. Those wounds were the easy ones to heal... During the stay, she'd had an awful withdrawal experience, going 'cold turkey' after the first night. They'd done what they could to relieve her of her agony, but they hadn't given her what she wanted. When the stay ended she was, for the first time in years, free from drugs, and could think clearly…
She'd been sentenced to two months in prison and had ended up in a low-security ward. There she'd attended the group therapy sessions led by a young and very enthusiastic psychologist. The break from the heroin had been her chance of a clean start. And she'd taken it; she'd needed it if she was ever going to have a life. Her twenty-eighth birthday had been only a few weeks away; that had been four years ago, but still she wore the scars. They were for life, some visible and some not…
Yeah, she surely had spat in the face of her maker. How could she ever tell this man?
-
"No fucking way I'm telling you, Vincent."
He didn't look angry. He simply looked like there was no option; like he knew he would win this battle no matter what. That made her furious. Who the fuck was he? Forcing himself into her life, and now wanting her to tell him the fucking story of it!
Fuck him! This is MY place, MY life. NO ONE pushes me around any more!
She stood to get off the sofa, to get some breathing space, and he was on her in an instant, slamming his glass down on the table so hard that the contents spilled all over his hand. At the same time his other hand flew out and gripped her forearm, forcing her to sit back down so it wouldn't hurt.
"You don't get to call the shots here, Sarah. I do!" he hissed.
Sarah didn't become afraid this time, just angrier. Her cheeks flushed as she tried to pry his fingers off of her arm. "Get the fuck off me!" she yelled.
She swung her free arm to try to hit him in the head, but Vincent was faster and wrestled her down on the couch. As he battled her flailing arm, he sank down on top of her. Sarah twisted and screamed as she fought him. Vincent had straddled her hips and lay heavily on her, using merely his weight to hold her still. Pressing his forearm against her throat, he forced her to calm down to gulp for air. Sarah, however, took one deep breath and slammed her head into his face, hit his nose and made it bleed a little. Vincent immediately caught her hair in a painful grip and bent her neck backwards.
Sarah's eyes flew wide open as she saw the madness, almost on the verge of insanity, in his eyes as he shook her. He spat as he yelled, his face bare inches away from hers:
"DO YOU WANT TO DIE?!"
"I DON'T KNOW!" she screamed back at him.
-
