Betrayed (4 page)
Authors: Francine Pascal
HOW LONG WAS I ASLEEP?
Tatiana pressed her hands to her face, grinding her palms against her barely open eyes, trying to stretch her body out of its contorted fetal position on the couch. Apparently the hours of trauma had finally caught up with her and she'd cried herself to sleep. Now everything just throbbed. Her limbs, her eyes, her brainâthey were all throbbing.
She slid her aching body slowly from the deep dent in the couch and stumbled back to the phone. Maybe her mother had called? Maybe she'd left a message and Tatiana had slept through the entire thing�
The red digital zero on the answering machine looked twice its usual size. She knew no one had called. She could have been in a full-fledged coma and she still would have jumped from that couch if the phone had rung. Awake or asleep, she was still praying every ten minutes for her motherâscreaming silent little prayers that were clearly falling on deaf ears. Any sign would do. An anonymous ring of the phone, a blank letter in the mail, just the slightest hint to indicate that her mother was alive, that she was still out there somewhere, that Loki was the goddamn liar Gaia swore he wasâ¦
But there was nothing. Nothing but stale dead air crawling through the much-too-spacious apartment. And that horribly depressing classical music station still cranking out tinny piano concertos that made the house feel like some dank eighteenth-century mausoleum.
“Shut up
,
” she moaned, clamping her hands over her ears. She lunged for the stereo and slammed her hand on the power button, slapping the entire stereo back against the wall as silence finally filled the room.
This is not a funeral,
she told herself.
Not yet
â¦
But now the silence was unbearable. Tatiana's eyes drifted around the empty living room as she realized just how alone she was in this house. Just her and the world's loudest ticking clock. And a pitch-black hallway across the room that led to nothing but more dark and empty rooms.
But then the miracle came.
A sound. A sound that Tatiana hadn't made herself. A sound that wasn't the ticking clock. This sound was coming from the
front door.
Her head snapped toward the door just in time to see the brass doorknob begin to twist from side to side. Only one thought consumed her brain.
Thank you. Thank you, God.
She leapt for the door and flipped the top bolt lock open. “Mama,” she called out. “Mama, is that you?” She placed her fingers on the bottom lock.
And then she froze.
Gaia's warning had come rushing back to her. “Lock all the doors,” she'd said. “Stay away from the windowsâ¦.”
“Tatiana, please⦔ A man's voice suddenly whispered through the door, causing her to jump slightly. He sounded utterly desperate. “Open the door,
please.
” She felt the doorknob twist again in her hand.
“Who is it?”she shouted back nervously. “Who's there?”
“Shhh. Keep your voice down,” the alien voice insisted. “Loki's people are out there. They're probably watching you right now. Please. I'm trying to help you. I know where your mother is. She's alive.” He shook the knob again.
“Where is she?” Tatiana demanded, her heart rate quadrupling. “Where is my mother?” She pressed her eye to the peephole, but the man seemed to be crouched out of range, shaking the knob with more and more force.
“I'll
tell
you,” he promised, “I'll tell you where she is. I'll tell you everything, but you've got to let me in. Please, just
open the freaking door.
Oh, Jesusâ¦Loki's people are comingâ¦. They're comingâ¦. They'reâ”
The bottom lock clicked open right before Tatiana's eyes.
Her brain hollered an instant warning:
Move. Move now orâ
But her body lagged too far behind. The door was brutally forced open right into her face, ramming her forehead with a hundred pounds of cold industrial metal and knocking her straight off her feet. Everything went completely black. Her head bounced off the hardwood floor like a volleyball that had just been spiked at eighty miles per hour, leaving her brain vibrating inside her skull.
She was stuck in a pitch-black tunnel, her eardrums cracking from the high-pitched ringing deep inside her head, the rest of her body paralyzed with shock.
She forced her stinging, dysfunctional eyes open just in time to see him. From her hazy perspective on the floor, he looked just as tall as the ceiling. He was towering over her like a cold black monolith, a black ski mask over his face and a lock pick in his black-gloved hand.
“They're
here,
” he announced, slamming the door behind him and dropping his pick to the floor.
Tatiana's heart froze. Her hands and feet went numb and her body locked completely as she lay helpless and bathed in debilitating pain on the floor. A thought swept across her mind like a quick gust of icy wind:
I'm going to die.
The intruder leaned down to her paralyzed body, the black mask zooming toward her face, and finally a hint of her adrenaline kicked in. She let out a deafening screech and flipped herself over, clawing her way desperately across the floor. But his massive hands took her arms from behind, raising her petite frame into the air and slamming her back against his chest, knocking every ounce of air out of her lungs.
“Just shut up for two seconds, all right?” he whispered into her ear. “All I need is two seconds here. Just two secondsâ¦and it'll be over.”
Tatiana flailed every limb to break free, but his tight grip was making it impossible to breathe. She opened her mouth for her loudest and most desperate scream yet, but she was suddenly unable to utter a sound.
He'd wrapped a cold strap around her neck. And he'd begun to pull on that strap with maximum force, yanking her head back against his shoulder, cutting off every ounce of her oxygen as he twisted tighter and tighter, strangling her without mercy.
“Don't fight it,” he said calmly, his fists tightening even further. “Just let go. Let goâ¦.”
She could feel all the blood vessels in her face constricting from the strain. She kept trying to dig her fingers under the strap, but it was too tight. Breath was impossible now. She needed to breathe in. Her body
needed
to breathe in, and she couldn't. Not even the beginning of a breath. Only the horrid, dizzying feeling of strangulation as her eyelids began to flutter from complete oxygen deprivation.
The room grew dimmer. She could still hear him in her ear, telling her to relax, telling her to stay quiet and let go, but his voice grew fainter and fainter, rumbling and buzzing with horrid echoes and distorted static. All she could hear now was her own voice in her head. Her own voice howling at her in a rage.
Is this how you want to die? Is this
where
you want to die? In this empty apartment in this filthy city? Alone? Fight, you pathetic little weakling. Wake up and fight!
And finally she did just as her attempted murderer suggested. She stopped struggling like a dog on a leash and “let go.” That way she could focus all her remaining energy into her right leg, which she raised slowly from the ground. With all the force she could muster, she kicked backward, slamming the heel of her shoe straight into his crotch.
“Ugh,”
he gurgled, doubling over to the ground as the strap fell to the floor.
No time to think or recover. No time to breathe. Tatiana whirled around and laid into his curled-up body with a series of wild vengeful kicks until she saw blood. She turned and stumbled quickly toward the kitchen, gasping for the massive amounts of oxygen she'd lost. She slid past the refrigerator and collided with the counter, reaching to the right of the sink and pulling the largest steel knife from a set of ten. She ran back to the living room, but before she'd even scanned the room, a sharp kick had knocked the knife from her hand and another had knocked her face forward to the ground.
“You stupid
bitch,
” he hollered. “I tried to make it easy for you! You want to make it ugly, fine.” He leaned to grab for her again, but this time, thank God, there was no paralysis.
Tatiana spun onto her back and kicked her feet out straight into this chest, knocking his six-foot frame back against the living-room wall with a thud. This left him disoriented long enough for her to grab the knife back up from the floor. He lunged for her again but stopped himself short just before her defensive thrust of the knife punctured his cheek.
“Whoa, there.” He laughed, holding up his arms. “Watch where you point that thing.”
“Get out!” she screamed, thrusting the knife at him again and again as he backpedaled slightly. Now that they were face-to-face, she was suddenly struck by the disturbing image of his bright blue eyes peeking out from behind that murderous black ski mask. “You get out of here or I swear to God, I'll drive this straight through your heart and pin you to that goddamn wall! Get out! I'm calling the police!” She moved back cautiously toward the phone, but she didn't want to leave him any opening to attack again. When she looked back at his face, she couldn't even fathom his response.
A
smile.
A big, fat, totally unaffected smile. “All
right,
all right,” he conceded with a disgusting giggle as he lowered his hands and shrugged. “You win, okay? Just relax.”
He turned around and began to saunter slowly back toward the door. He stopped short at the doorway.
“Get out!” she growled again, walking toward him with the knife.
“Now!”
“Okay,
okay,
”he said. “I'm just getting my tools. Jesus.”
He leaned down and swiped up the lock pick from the floor. The next thing she knew, it was flying from his hand. And flying at her face.
She ducked reflexively, but the moment she faltered, she felt his shoulder slam into her gut, knocking her entire body off the ground as the base of her spine landed with an agonizing thud against the floor. He'd tackled her so fast that she'd completely lost her orientation. There was nothing but a blur of pain and jabs to her hands and face, and suddenly he was on top of her. He was crushing her to the floor with all his weight, straddling his legs over her arms and waist, making it impossible to move. His left hand was wrapped around her neck, holding her head against the floor, and his right handâ¦was now holding the knife.
Tatiana had played it wrong, and she knew it. The fight for her life was over. And he had won.
“Stab me in the
heart?
” he spat. “You were going to stab me in the heart?” He reached back and smacked her face with the back of his hand. She could barely even feel the sting. Because she knew now. She knew that her mother was dead. And Tom was dead, too. Loki was killing them all one by one, and she was next in line. All she had left to hope for was that she'd see her mother on the other side.
“If that's how you like it, that's fine with me,” he said. He ran the knife along her throat and placed the point over her heart, smiling at her. “Good night.”
Tatiana closed her eyes as tightly as she could and tried to picture her mother. She heard him scream out one last time, and then there was silence.
Heather
No
one understands it. None of the doctors has a clue. They say there's “no visible retinal damage, no visible nerve damage.” They just keep asking me the same questions over and over, and I keep giving them the same answers even though things don't make so much sense in my head right now. I tell them that the police showed up at the apartment and Ed told them to call an ambulance. I tell them that everything just kept getting a little darker while Ed held me.
Ed held me. I love that Ed held me. While we were waiting for the ambulance. As they got me onto the stretcher. As we drove to the hospital.
Darker and darker. Until there was nothing. Just black. Pitch black.
At first I thought I had fainted. Maybe even died. They say that after you die, you can see your body lying there as your soul floats upward. You can still see all the doctors and EMS people working on you, trying to bring you back. I thought that would explain what was going on.
Only I
couldn't
see myself. And I couldn't see the men in the ambulance, either. I could only hear them. I kept asking them what was happening to me. I kept screaming out that question over and over like some horrific broken record. “What's happening to me?” And they just kept yelling at me, ordering me to follow their fingers with my eyes, ordering me to look wherever they were snapping. And I told them I couldn't. I told them a hundred times that I couldn't see.
I can't see anything. And they have no idea why.
Of course, I couldn't tell them everything. Then they would think I was blind
and
crazy. I couldn't tell them about the drug Josh gave me, about Gaia's uncle, about being fearless for a few days and then losing my freaking mind. So much of it is a blur, anyway. I mean, I've completely lost track of
what
happened
when.
I remember Josh being with me, trying to give me another drug, maybe? The antidote to the drug that ruined me? I'm not sure. And then he was gone, and thenâ¦I think he was there againâ¦or maybe that was the time before. Sometimes everything makes sense, and then it gets cloudy again. I don't knowâ¦.
I know that I'm getting sicker. My brain is getting sicker. That's why I don't know things. That's why I don't remember things. I know it. The doctors know it, too. My body is shutting down. I can feel it. I think maybe I'm dying. I meanâ¦I know I am. But no one knows why.
Except I know why. I do.
I'm being punished, that's why. My going blind is some kind of punishment from God.
It's just like that play we read in class.
Oedipus Rex.
Oedipus was this king who thought he could find some way to cheat his own destiny. He thought he could outsmart the gods. Like he was above the gods or something. Like he was above
everyone.
It's called
hubris.
And that's me. That's been me my whole life. Acting like some kind of queen, placing myself so far above everyone and everything. It's like, no matter who is in the room, I have to figure out why I'm above them in some way or elseâ¦or else I'm not me. Or else who am I? Like I'm no one if I'm not better than someone else. I wish I knew if I was making sense. It's not coming out right, but it's making so much sense now in my head.
That's what I tried to do to Gaia when I took that fearless drug. I wanted to beat her at her own game. I wanted toâ¦I don't knowâ¦
conquer
her, prove that I was above her. And I think maybe that was the last straw. God knew I was trying to cheat with that drug, and he decided that it was finally time to punish me for all my stupid pride once and for allâto punish me for my hubris.
When Oedipus realized all the awful things he had done, he got so disgusted and ashamed of himself that he actually gouged out his own eyes. The blindness was like a part of his punishment. And now it's mine. That's the whole irony of this thing. It took my going blind to finally see everything clearlyâto finally see how all my stupid pride has screwed me.
But I get it now. I finally get it. My life is not a goddamned contest. There's no “big winner” at the end. There's no prize. I'm no better than anyone else. And that includes Gaia Moore. I get it now. I get it just in time to die.
God, I'm scared. The drugâ¦It still does weird things to my head. I can feel it. I'm so scared for the rest of it to go blackâmy hearing and then my mind. I need to tell everyone what I've learned. I need to make up for what I've done. Maybe then the gods willâ¦you knowâ¦forgive me. Maybe. I need to tell Gaia. I need to tell Ed and Josh.
Josh. What happened to Josh? Where is he? Why hasn't he come to see me in the hospital? Unlessâ¦oh Godâ¦
Maybe the gods have punished him, too.