Lost (47 page)

  Thinking quickly about my escape, I realized I didn't really want to.  I knew it was insanity, but I didn't want to leave him alone to fight.  My fight or flight had kicked in, and for the very first time in my life, I didn’t want to flee.  I wasn't going to leave the man who loved me alone, and I wasn't going to choose my needs over his. 

  For the very first time in my life, I was going to fight for the love I wanted instead of abandoning it.
  So taking Peter’s hand again, while listening to the sounds beyond our corner washroom, I whispered, “I love you,” as I nodded at the door.
  “Sophie.  They might be cops sent by my partner.  You can't, baby.”
  But I just nodded harder toward the door, and whispered again, “I love you,” as Peter paused to stare at me before slowly nodding his head.  Peter nodded and somehow I knew he had just agreed to our death sentences.  He agreed to the end of us, and in a weird way I was resigned to our end.
  I had one fleeting thought of my mom which quickly morphed into thinking of my beloved brother Steven, but somehow I hoped they would understand.  I wasn't committing suicide, though agreeing to fight by Peter's side was an act of suicide nonetheless.
  I was going to fight I decided, but I was suddenly out of time.
  With a dramatic push, everything exploded around us again. 
  Peter was fighting before I even knew what was happening, and I was jumping through the doorway at one of the men before I could even reason our surroundings. 

  Fighting every fear I had, I tried to land a punch but was knocked right on my ass within seconds.  Landing hard, the breath left my chest as I gasped, and my head spun with the pain of the assault.  But I could hear Peter still.
  Hearing Peter fight and yell and swear gave me a little strength.  Trying to see what was happening, I managed to flip over to my stomach as I forced my legs beneath me to stand.  Crouching on the floor, I had one more burst of energy to run or fight, so screaming I tried to engage in the fight for Peter and my life.
  Like a warrior cry, I screamed into the brightness of the loft, even as a gunshot rang out around me, which signaled the end of us.
  The gunshot effectively stopped my fight and Peter's agonized yell announced my end.
  Dropping onto my butt, I lowered my head, placed my hands on the floor beside me, and I waited for the bullet in the head Peter had described.
  Waiting, I never made eye contact and I didn't acknowledge my end in the slightest.  Peter was dead, and I was next.  I knew I was next, and other than maybe being raped again beforehand, I could think of nothing worse than knowing I was sitting feet from my dead forever.

  But nothing happened.
  I heard talking and noises, and more noises and more talking but I understood nothing.  I felt like those sad victims who know they're about to be executed, but they sit up on their knees with their hands raised behind their heads waiting, because they know nothing is going to change the outcome.  They just kneel knowing they're about to be killed and with a last moment of pride and defiance, they lower their head, whisper a quick prayer, and wait for the bullet to claim them.
  I could think of nothing but Peter, and I could hear nothing but Peter's last agonized scream before he died.  Over and over, I heard his last scream and then the deafening silence that surrounded us.  I heard his scream and his silence as I waited.
  But the bullet never came.
  Eventually, sounds and voices permeated my brain, until I was roughly picked up and pushed against a wall.  Moving as I was pushed, I didn't fight, or even try.  There was nothing left to do.
  When I was moved to the stairs, I finally lifted my head and was stunned still.  Even as the arms holding my hands behind my back shoved me a little harder, I simply couldn't move.  I was just too stunned to move.
  Looking down the opened staircase of the loft I took in the scene before me.  Looking, I tried to understand what I was seeing.  Looking, I tried to grasp reality from delusion, but I was too lost to see it.  I was surrounded by me, and I was shocked into a living nightmare.
  Looking, every single inch of wall space were paintings of me, sketches, drawings, or my name splattered with paint.  There were hundreds of me everywhere you looked.  I was living in a freak show funhouse of myself, gasping and turning, as the arms behind me held me from falling down the stairs.
  “Oh my god...” I moaned as I shook my head to clear it.  I shook my head but nothing cleared.  I was overwhelmed by the view in front of me.  I was overwhelmed as I looked at everything Sophie Morley all around me.
  From the colorful mess on the walls, to my name spelled with paint on the carpets, every surface was a mosaic of Sophie Morley.  Even the wall beside the very stairs I stood still on had my name written upon its ascent in dark purple paint.
  “What is this...?” I begged, but no one answered me as the world started spinning around me. 

  My chest began beating very hard and fast in my chest as my breathing turned ragged and labored.  I could feel the irregular beats in my chest squeezing tighter and tighter until gasping, I moaned, “I can't breathe,” to no one and everyone around me.
  Suddenly leaning forward, I was sat hard and fast on the step I was stuck on as my hands were loosened.  I was still held with a hard hand on my shoulder, but I felt nothing greater than the shaking my whole body suffered.
  Words were spoken, and directions were given. But I heard and saw nothing.
  When a man was suddenly kneeling in front of me, removing bloody gloves, my devastation was complete. 
  Gasping quickly, my body arched backward, smashing into someone else as I tried to reach for my own chest.  Gasping for breath as each silent sob assaulted me, I could do nothing.  There was nothing left in me.  I was going to die I knew, and it was painful and terrifying.  It was not a quick peaceful death in the night, and it was not an easy end with the man I loved.
  It was hard and painful and so shocking in its intensity, I begged anyone to kill me.  I begged them all to kill me.  I begged the man before me and the man behind me.  I begged as I tried to reach for my own chest.  I begged to die as my eyes closed to my inevitable death.
  The breaths in my body came too infrequently for any strength left and the pain was too unbearable to continue.  I couldn't continue, so I closed my eyes and begged them all to kill me.
  I didn't pass out for long though- just long enough to be moved down the stairs by someone until I opened my eyes again to me everywhere, which was so disorienting, I felt all the anxiety rise again inside me.  And it was weird and nauseating, and simply overwhelming to see so much me all around me.
  But I managed to ask anyone and no one specific, “Did they get Peter?”
  “Who?” A woman asked but I couldn't answer.  I didn't know if she meant who-Peter? Or who were they?  I didn't know what I could say, and I didn't know what to do.  I didn't even know if these were the very bad people who killed Peter.
  And then it hit me.  Peter was dead.

  Crying out, I screamed his name as I gasped with the pain.  I was lost in it.  I was nothing more than a pain so intense, I couldn't see or feel or hear beyond it.  The pain struck hard and fast and ripped the life from my soul.
  Peter was dead.
  And I was lost.
 

CHAPTER 39

   I can't even describe the series of events that took place after Peter was killed.
  I remember being in shock and screaming and crying forever until my fate was simply taken from my own hands.  I was manhandled and fought, and taken, and eventually even sedated. 
  I was wrapped in my misery, fading in and out of life unsure of my own existence and unaware of my physical mortality.  I was neither living nor dead.  I was in a deranged purgatory with people all around me.
  But I was no longer aware of anyone or anything other than my loss.
  My love was lost, never to be mine.
  Eventually some speech permeated my fog when I found myself in a hospital once again.  I was in another hospital, months after my rape and I was starting to listen to all the people.
  I was waking from my sleeping fog and starting to try to hear the people around me.  Finally one person stepped completely through the fog and I recognized her immediately.
  Detective Dent walked to me and actually leaned down with a hip against my bed and slowly spoke my name.  Reintroducing herself strangely, like I could possibly forget her, she spoke until certain words and broken sentences started to make a little sense.
 Dent spoke to me until I finally decided to trust her.  She spoke to me until the pain of my loss was just that- pain.  It was no longer an acute agony distorting my reality.  

  Leaning forward in my bed, motioning with my head for her to come closer, Dent leaned in to me even as I felt the eyes around us watching, and then I whispered my reality to her.
  “Peter was killed by police officers I think.  He said his partner betrayed him, and he had to reach someone who handled him or something, and I was so scared, but Peter said he loved me forever, and then he fought them and was shot.  And I'm not sure why I was left alive, and I don't know who to trust, and,” I gulped hard, “I think I'm going to be killed, too. But I didn't see anyone or anything so I don't need to be killed,” I begged with my eyes.  “Do you think you could try to find out who his boss is so you can tell him about Peter's partner?”
  And as I placed every hope I held left in her hands, Dent pulled away from me and gave such a twisted fake trying to be reassuring nod, I knew I had screwed up.  I could see it all over her face.  I could see she was involved, and I knew I was dead.  The little smile she wore on her face filled me with the dread of my inevitability.  She was in on it all, and I had fucked up.
  Knowing my reality I stopped talking, until frustrated by my lack of answers to all subsequent questions, Dent and the 2 other police officers finally left me alone in my room to mourn.
  I was then spoken to by a doctor and told I was free to leave as soon as the Police released me.  My knees were cut and scrapped and I had a bruise on my cheek, but otherwise, because the obvious anxiety attack was over he said, the doctor felt no need to keep me.
  I was free to leave, and so I left.  And it was exactly that easy.
  In a strange, calm world, unlike the TV shows I hated, I was not chased, and I wasn't forced to hide out and wait, watching around corners for the people to come get me.  There was NO drama anywhere.  I simply walked out of my semi-curtained room, opposite to a nurses' station, then down the hall to a group of hallways clearly laid out with diagrams and pictures to show me to the multiple exits, parking lots, and the city transit system entrance. 
  I chose an exit that wasn't on a main street, but more the side street of basically a hospital block, and then I walked out the door.  And once outside there was nothing to see and no one to hurt me.  There was however a cab dropping off a horribly limping man. 

  So walking over as casually as I could, quickly, but without looking rushed, I hopped in the backseat, closed the door behind me and told him my address while I thought of a plan.
  I thought about a plan until I really had no plan at all.  The best I could come up with was grab clothes quickly, and take another cab across town until I could get some money from a bank machine while cabbing it somewhere else- probably to my brother’s place to wait for him to help me get away from everything and everyone.
  So on autopilot, I waited for the cab to drop me off, scrounged up enough loose money from my pockets to pay him, and thought about my lost purse at Peter's safe-house.  I simply blocked out the pain of Peter from my mind while I thought of my temporary escape.
  Running around my apartment frantically, I let the adrenaline sweep me away.  I allowed my body to push me forward through the fear and the haze of what I was doing and where I was going.
  In my room, I grabbed clothes and tugged the suitcase from under my bed as quickly as possible.  Filling it with everything I could, I needed to hurry.
  Before I ran for my toiletries, I grabbed and stuffed the emergency Visa from my top drawer and the little bit of cash I always kept in the drawer in case I felt like Chinese delivery into a purse from my closet.
  I rushed and hurried, and dumped all my makeup and hair crap in a little carry-on case, and then I emptied my medicine cabinet and left tugging the suitcase with the purse and carry-on over my shoulder.
  I was ready, and I don't think I was more than 15 minutes in my apartment before the first knock sounded. 
  With a panic that crushed my chest, I heard the knock and gasped in the hallway unsure of what to do, or even how to move.  I was struck stupid as the shaking took over my whole body.
  “Sophie!  Soph, it's me!  Open up, girlie!”  And as his voice swept over me, I almost threw up from the quick shift from panic to relief.
  Ripping the door open, I screamed, “Steven!” as I grabbed him and pulled him awkwardly into my home.  Falling into the wall with Steven, my body was acting strangely.  It was like my body was drunk but my mind was clear.
  “What the fuck, Soph?” Steven pushed at me as he tried to straighten against the wall.
  “I can't tell you everything, but we have to go.  Like
now. 
I'm in a lot of trouble, and I think it's dangerous here.  We have to go.  Grab my suitcase,” I yelled turning for my dropped purse and carry-on, but he didn't move.