Queen of Nothing

I must have fallen asleep watching the show because when I opened my eyes Fletcher was already gone from the kennels, and Chiyo was fast asleep on the other side of the cage. I didn’t even know what time it was, but I was itching to get out of here and hoping the guys would be home soon. At least when they were around, I had something to focus all of my anger into. Keep telling yourself that. Idiota.

I heard a loud crash far off and the sound of multiple guys yelling on the walkie-talkies in another room coming through their radio feeds. The ever-familiar rat-a-tat-tat sound of guns shooting jarred me into the present moment and I rushed over to Chiyo. I’d learned to stay calm through these moments with practice.

Being able to handle complete chaos had become my own personal superpower.

I heard shouting from a distance, and my brain ran a million miles an hour when I couldn’t discern the words from the two languages in my brain. I shook her awake and before she could yell from surprise, I clamped my hand over her mouth and pressed my fingers to my lips in signal. She nodded her head in understanding, so I let go, and grabbed her and pointed under the bed. “Get in, ok?” I asked her, hopeful that maybe she comprehended the message I was trying to send.

Her eyes were full of fear and darting towards the kennel door. Guns were going off like crazy and getting louder and louder and I knew we were running out of time because there was absolutely nowhere to hide.

“Don’t say a fucking word.” I told her again trying to get the point across as I gave her a pleading look pressing my index finger to my lips again as she laid on the ground under the bed. I grabbed the blanket on her bed and draped it over the edges so that it fell to the floor, covering the gap and hiding her from plain sight.

But we couldn’t both hide, not for both of us to make it.

An empty cage would get searched, but maybe if I was in the open, she had a chance. If I could give her that chance, then it didn’t matter what would happen to me. The reaper had finally come for me and probably the only thing that would save my soul from damnation was maybe this one act of humanity I could provide this innocent girl.

I couldn’t allow Ignácio to take her as well.

I accepted my fate and sat on the bed patiently until the guns were getting so loud it was obnoxious. Fletcher appeared and my heart leaped with a relief that was just as quickly doused by a wave of fear as a gun came into view, pressed to the back of his head.

The gunman stayed silent, he was a tank of a guy and towered over Fletcher with a face that resembled a bulldog. There was an automatic rifle strapped to his back on top of the pistol he held in his hands, finger boldly on the trigger. He grunted and pushed Fletcher with one hand and he stumbled forward as he hit the kennel door.

He looked wrecked, his face purple and already swelling from some sort of savage beating, and the way he clutched his side let me know he already received a courtesy bullet. His eyes widened in alarm, and I could see he was frantically searching the room for Chiyo as he fumbled with the keys. His blue eyes found mine and I did the slightest of tilts with my head in the direction of the empty bed.

His shoulders dropped with a sigh of relief. He looked at the burly guy behind him and I could see the defeat as it washed through him before he underhand tossed the keys inside of the kennel towards my bed. He sealed his fate, and I couldn’t hide my shock with the move and his words took me by surprise even more.

“If I let her out, my boss will kill me. You might as well kill me because I won’t betray him.” Fletcher said looking back at the kennel hopelessly, and before I had a chance to even appreciate his sacrifice the bulldog’s laughter rang out followed by a single gunshot.

“NO!” I screamed out from shock but also to silence some of Chiyo’s whimpering from underneath the bed. Fletcher’s body fell to the ground with a sickening thud, and the burly man kicked his body to the side as he stood in front of the cage’s door. He pointed his gun at me with one hand and held up five fingers with the other as he started folding one finger down at a time. Before he got to three, I stood and grabbed the keys, dropping them once before I got to the door.

With shaking hands, I tried to focus on the one person I might be able to save tonight from my Tio’s savagery. I remembered the door locked without the keys and if I could do this well, I could keep Chiyo alive a little longer. I turned the key in the lock and pulled it out quickly, throwing it back into the room as I pushed my way through the cage door and threw my knee into the bulldog’s balls.

He barely grunted in pain, but it was just the second I needed to close the door behind me hearing the lock as I tried to make a futile attempt to run for it. Before I could take three steps, he was yanking me by the hair. I felt the intense burning of my hair pulling through my scalp and it made me scream as he used it to throw me against the wall. The force of the impact against my back knocked the breath out of me. Panic and the pain from colliding against the wall had me stuttering my breathing as I struggled with tiny sips of inhales.

I was fighting to take a single full breath when he knelt down in front of me and knocked the gun against the side of my head, darkening my vision. His pale blue eyes were the last thing I saw before I succumbed to the dreadful pitch black nothing.