Brianna POV:
I have finished dressing myself and stealed myself another moment or two before heading back to my room, I take the dagger I have stashed in my boot and clutch it in my hand. My mother was absent for much of my childhood, she was working and fighting for a place in a man's world, only now can I appreciate she did that for me as much as for herself.
She might not have always been home to read me a bedtime story or help with my homework but one thing she always took time to show me was self-defense. I don't know if anything horrible had happened to her in the past... I think I was always too afraid of the answer to ask but every week no matter how busy she was she would find time to take me to Ju-Jutsu and other self defense workshops around Boston.
While most mothers saw their daughter's to church and Sunday school every week in their pretty dresses with bows in their hair, I was in old smelly gyms or community centers dogging punches from hairy screaming women.
I had hid the knife blade up in my sleeve so I could quickly grab the handle if I needed to and opened the door to the cold night air.
Carefully keeping vigilant of my surroundings I made my way back to the inn, the pub downstairs was still full and rowdy, I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as I made my way through the drunken men, last thing I needed was someone noticing my tussled hair or god forbid the smell of sex on me, while I was capable against a single opponent I doubt I'd be able to stop a mob from coming at me.
As I passed a table playing cards I couldn't help but notice the ring on the pinky of the man at the far end. It was my mother's I would know it anywhere... was I too late? Had her belongings already been picked after.
I felt myself wobble and nearly collapse before I grabbed on to the back of a chair to steady myself.
It was foolish but I had to know.
Slowly I approached the man and inquired as to the owner of the ring.
He looked me up and down and I wanted to be sick right on his lecherous face.
Thankfully he confirmed when he left my mother she was still alive. I was choosing for now to believe him, it was all I had.
"May I buy it off you?" I asked trying to keep any trembling out of my voice.
He looked to the table of men and then back at me, "let us discuss this more privately, wouldn't want others to know my ways."
My skin crawled and I wanted to be far from this man as quickly as possible, I remember all the lessons coming back to me about trusting my instincts and no matter what never going to a second location, but I had to have it. It was my one tangible link that my mother was near and I would find her before it was all too late.
We entered a nearby room and as if I had grown eyes in the back of my head I knew what he was about to do even before he made the steps.
quickly I sidestepped him tripping his first attempt to grab me. Of corse that just made him angrier.
I thought about screaming, that was also part of the training, to scream as loud as you could, but I couldn't imagine anyone out there coming to my rescue and I needed to keep my breath about me and not get winded too fast.
He launched himself at me again and I thrust the heel of my hand up against his nose, satisfied I heard the crunch of his bone.
"Ye bitch!" He screamed and managed to back hand me hard.
I stumbled a bit but used his assault to curve my back to him and retrieve my dagger from my sleeve, thinking he had wounded me more than he did he came upon me from behind, his arms circled my waist and lifted me off the ground, he threw me on a nearby table and tried to climb a top me, thats when I did it.
I didn't think, I didn't make a conscious decision to kill him... it was just instinct. I lashed out my hand that held the knife and slit his throat.
His eyes nearly bulged out not seeing the attack coming.
His blood was spurting all over me and I quickly pushed him off.
As he fell to the floor the life draining out of him I became more calm then I ever had been in my life.
Slowly I approached him as if this was all a movie and any second he was jump up and attack again.
I kneeled down next to him and with my hand brushed his hair away from his face. For a second his eyes seemed to soften as if I was about to offer him aid. but then I brought forward the knife again and leaned down to whisper the last words he would ever hear.
"This is courtesy of the 20th century you mother fucker," I took the knife and carved RAPIST onto his head, when I was done I leaned back, "never underestimate a woman in plaid."
I left my now dead attacker, my mother's ring upon my finger, and entered the main room again hunched over, blood coming from my nose I looked like just another victim but soon they would discover what had really happened in that room and when they did I needed to be far far away.