The Other Mrs.(104)

But as the blood rushes down, the world around me spins. My vision fades to black. I nearly collapse before the adrenaline rushes in and only then can I see.

I feel his hands on my ankle. He’s on the floor, trying to pull me down with him. He calls me names as he does, no longer worried about being quiet. “You bitch. You stupid, stupid bitch,” he says, this man I married, who vowed to love me till death do us part.

My knees buckle and I collapse to the floor beside him, falling fast. I land facedown, my nose hitting the floor so that it begins to bleed. The blood is profuse, turning my hands red.

I get quickly to my hands and knees. Will comes at me from behind, attempting to reach over me for my neck as I struggle to crawl away from him. I kick backward. I have to get away from him.

My hands reach desperately for the countertop. They latch on, trying to pull me upward, but just as soon lose their grip. My hands are sweaty, my hold weak. Everywhere there is blood. It comes from my nose, my mouth. I can’t hold on to the countertop. I slip away, falling back to the floor.

The wooden block of knives sits just out of reach, mocking me.

I try again. Will grapples again for my ankle. He takes me by the lower leg and pulls. I kick hard, but it isn’t enough. The blows only leave him momentarily dazed but I’m growing tired, my efforts weakening. I fall facedown again on the floor, biting my tongue. I can’t keep doing this. The adrenaline in my body has slowed, the wine, the lethargy taking over.

I don’t know that I have it in me to go on.

But then I think of Otto, of Tate, and I know that I must go on.

I’m on the floor facedown as Will mounts my back. All two hundred pounds of him bear down on me, forcing me face-first into the kitchen floor. I couldn’t scream if I wanted to. I can barely suck in a breath. My arms are pinned beneath me, getting crushed by Will’s weight and mine.

I feel his hands in my hair, massaging my scalp. It’s oddly gentle. Sensuous. I feel his satisfaction at having me in this position.

Time slows down. I try to press up against the weight of him, but go nowhere. I can’t find my arms.

Will runs his fingers through my hair. Breathlessly he says my name. “Oh, Sadie,” he exhales. He enjoys that I’m pinned to the ground as I am, in a powerless position, a slave to my master. “My lovely wife,” he says.

He leans in close enough that I feel his breath on my neck. He runs his lips the length of it. He bites gently on my earlobe. I let him. I can’t make him stop.

He whispers into my ear, “If only you would have left it alone.”

And then he clutches a handful of my hair in his tacky hand, hoists my face inches from the floor and smashes it back down to the tile.

I’ve never felt such pain in my life. If my nose wasn’t broken before, it is now.

He does it again.

Whether it’s enough to eventually kill me, I don’t know. But soon it will render me unconscious. And there’s no telling what he will do then.

This is it, I tell myself. This is where I will die.

But then something happens.

It’s Will, not me, who makes a sound, some strange, inarticulate scream of pain. I feel suddenly weightless, not knowing what’s happened.

A breath later I realize that the reason for the weightlessness is that he’s fallen from my body. He’s perched inches to my side, struggling to get to his feet, though his hands are at his head and he, like me, is bleeding. His blood comes from his head, where there is a sudden laceration that wasn’t there before.

I crane my aching neck to see. I follow the gaze of his eyes—now shrouded in fear—to see Imogen standing in the kitchen doorway. The fireplace poker is in her steady hands, and it’s raised over her head. She blurs in and out before me, until I’m not certain she’s real or a result of a head injury. Her face is deadpan. There is no emotion. No anger, no fear. She comes forward and I brace myself for the debilitating pain of the fireplace poker as it strikes me. I clench my eyes, my jaw, knowing the end is near. Imogen will kill me. She will kill the both of us. She never wanted us here.

I grind my teeth. But the pain doesn’t come.

I hear Will grunt instead. I open my eyes to see him stumble and fall to the ground, calling Imogen names. I look to her. Our eyes meet and I know.

Imogen is not here to kill me. She’s come to save me.

I see the determination in her eye as she raises the weapon for a third time.

But one death on Imogen’s conscience is enough. I can’t let her do this for me.

I spring to my unsteady feet. It’s not easy. Every part of me aches. The blood is abundant, in my eyes so that I can hardly see.

I lunge forward. I throw myself at the wooden knife block, getting in between Will and Imogen. I take the chef knife into my grasp; there’s no feeling, no awareness of the handle in my hand.

I barely register this man’s face, his eyes as he rises to standing and, at the same time, I turn to face him.

I see the movement of his mouth. His lips move. But there’s a ringing in my ears. I can’t stand it. I think that it will never stop.

But then it does stop. And I hear something.

I hear that heinous laugh as he says to me, “You’d never do it, you stupid cunt.”

He comes at me, attempts to grab the knife from my hands. He gets ahold of it for a minute, and I think, in my weakness, that I will lose the knife to him. That when I do he will use it to kill both Imogen and me.