Brutally Beautiful

Brutally Beautiful - Christine Zolendz


Author’s Note:

The words I’ve strung together on these few pages are a world to many readers. These words carry so many different messages to every one of us. In fact, the world I saw in my head will be greatly different from the one you read in yours. That’s the magic of the imagination. The story you read will be judged by your experiences, drenched with your history, your past, and your own pains. I began writing this story because the character of Samantha (which I strangely named after my dog, don’t f*cking ask) popped into my head as an image of a woman covered in blood sitting behind a steering wheel. It played in violent loops in my brain. Then Kade entered with his violent flashbacks and visions. I fell hard for both of them. They both have a brutality to their lives that not many people, thank God, have been touched with. Not every story is pretty, not every story is perfect, but this is their story; one that the characters dictated and I just sat back and typed. Their story is quite brutally beautiful. The situations that these two people are in are quite real. These are stories that are on the news. I hear them in my subconscious and I research them until I understand the psyche and reasons behind the actions and emotions. I have spent numerous hours, obsessing and reading victims’ accounts, memoirs, police reports; you name it, I researched it. In real life, you can’t control the story. You can’t make your wishes appear and give everybody a happily-ever-after. Yet, as I was in Kade’s mind, experiencing the chaos and pain, I couldn’t think of anything I could give him other than hope and love.

So here is to victims and underdogs, may you find peace and calmness in your life. We are strong. Just because we’ve been under the hand of violence, it does not make us weak. It makes us see life clearer than others, and it makes us breathe harder.


All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.



Aristotle





Chapter 1



There was blood all over my hands and I knew I was losing control, because I was more desperate to find a drink, than a napkin to clean off the mess. A few really strong drinks to block out everything that happened. I needed something strong to jumpstart my terrified ass into breathing normally again. My fingers slid across my blood soaked steering wheel, while my body ached and pounded. Shaking with harsh violent tremors, I tried to catch my breath and focus on driving as fast as I could.

Icy chills from the cold night wracked through my shoulders, even though I had the heater turned up high and the windows closed. Maybe the bitter coldness was coming from somewhere deep inside me. The thought sent a quake of chills surging across my throbbing collarbone.

“Can you still drive? Lemme drive. Samantha, pull over and let me take the wheel!” Jennifer yelled in the passenger seat beside me. I turned my head to look at her. Oh hell. Oh, no…she had blood all over her too.

Her long, pale blonde hair was pulled back in a messy bun and a few wild loose strands stuck to the sweat soaked skin of her neck. Twisting in her seatbelt, she gripped one hand on the dashboard, leaving a smudge of dark fingerprints just beneath. Big, brown, unblinking eyes pleaded with me to stop the car and let her take over driving.

No way, no one drives as fast as I do.

And we had to get away.

Gunning the engine, I accelerated, trying to find the next rest stop, exit, or somewhere I could wash the drying blood from my skin. Jen was absolutely right. We needed to stop somewhere and assess our damage. “How bad do we look, Jen?” My eyes peeked a glance at her again, as I tried to focus on the dark empty road laid out in front of us.