I awoke with that frenzied urgency you get when you’re trying to shake off a nightmare. But instead of the relief of safety in wakefulness, there was only increased terror. Every inch of me froze as I took in the dark figure standing in the corner of my room. My already thundering heart threatened to beat out of my chest.

I blinked, hoping this was a residual image from my nightmare. Nightmares were the norm for me. I was used to the terror that came with them in sleep, that lingered after waking. But most of the images, the horror, pain—they disappeared to the depths of my mind, lurking, waiting for me to lapse into unconsciousness before they struck again. I waited for this to happen. But the figure remained.

I didn’t know what to do—screaming would’ve probably been the best idea, even if I did live alone without neighbors, but a vocalization of my terror might make it real. So I didn’t scream, outwardly at least. I had an idea that if I remained calm, convinced this was a nightmare within a nightmare, I would will it to be so. But then again, I knew better than anyone that hopes of such things were for children and fiction; in real life, the most terrible of realities, of monsters, they couldn’t be wished or hoped away.

Woodenly, I leaned over to my lamp beside my bed, switching it on and illuminating the room in a soft glow. The light only magnified the menace of the masked intruder. We stared at each other in silence, my whole body shaking. I was captured by terror and held hostage by the piercing blue eyes that were locked on me, emotionless, cold and menacing. They burned bright like a predator’s in the eerie light of the room.

The huge figure stepped forward slowly, almost casually, toward my bed. Toward me. I couldn’t escape from his eyes, from the peril that seeped out of them and blanketed my body.

Oh God. He’s going to kill me. Or rape me.

I gritted my teeth. Two years—a lifetime, if we wanted to get technical—of being the victim was enough for me. I was not going to be another statistic. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t survive more abuse—there were only broken pieces of me left as it was. A hollow shell with shards of my soul rattling around inside. It would take one strike from this predator to destroy me. Maybe that wasn’t the worst thing, anyway.

No. I wouldn’t give up. Couldn’t give up.

Life was my penance, my sentence. The price I was paying. And I deserved to live through every second of misery. I needed more of it to pay for my sins.

He didn’t speak, didn’t seem surprised at my paralysis, so when he made it to the edge of my bed, I was able to surprise him when I snatched my lamp and smashed it into his masked head. I took advantage of the muttered curse and his stumble at the impact, shooting out of bed and darting toward the door. Toward escape.

I didn’t think about the lack of escape that lay behind that door, the lack of destination to run to. In my terror, I forgot about the thing that was otherwise the rock sitting inside my lungs, making me unable to breathe without recognizing it.

No, this one moment, I forgot about the thing that had defined me and kept me in captivity for almost a year. I was all about survival.

My fingers closed around the door handle before a sharp pain at the back of my head stopped me. He had grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking me back into his granite chest.

I didn’t make a sound as the rough fabric of his mask tickled my face.

“Though I applaud your effort, I wouldn’t recommend pulling something like that again unless you want a bullet to the brain,” a raspy voice informed me, chilling me to the bone at the firm promise behind his words.

I didn’t know what to say. How to respond. Fear was like a gag, silencing and suffocating me.

We stayed like that a moment. The man, whoever he was, seemed content to stay in this position. He had the power, after all.

After the seconds that seemed to drag like years when time was saturated with unadulterated terror, he turned me. I faced him, his hand still grasping my long ponytail, his head cocked to the side as if he was inspecting me.

I met his gaze, refusing to cower in terror. Refusing to plead. The cold emptiness behind those blue eyes told me such efforts would be useless. I wouldn’t debase myself to that.

Not again.

“What do you want from me?” I asked in a clear voice, one that only shook a little.

I was proud. Years of living with the fear that curdled in my belly had obviously hardened me to its effect, my muteness only temporary.

He regarded me in silence, the stare making me uncomfortable. Well, more uncomfortable, if that word was even appropriate in this situation. But I didn’t have the energy to conjure up something more appropriate. It was disquieting, his gaze. It was the way a child looked at a butterfly before ripping its wings off.

“It’s not about what I want from you,” he said finally, his voice hard.

I blinked. “You’re the one who invaded my home. I’m assuming that violation comes with a purpose?”

My calm façade was just that, an act. A thinly veiled mask covering the mess underneath. I learned how to perfect it years ago. Men like these, with empty eyes, thrived off fear. The absence of it, or perceived absence of it, wouldn’t guarantee my survival, but it might prolong it. I could see I unnerved him. He was used to terror; the lack of it tilted his world, his power over the situation. His eyes, the only visible part of him, flared slightly at my question before the coldness came back.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “There is a purpose.”

My gaze flicked down to his hand. His gloved hand. The one holding a large gun.

My breathing quickened.

Don’t plead. Don’t reduce yourself to that again.

“That part of the purpose?” I asked, gesturing with my eyes as he still held a firm grip on my head.

He followed my gaze, and then his eyes captured mine once more. “That remains to be seen,” he uttered quietly.

My breathing slowed. He wasn’t going to kill me immediately. That meant I had time. Time to think. To fight.

“What do you want from me, then?” I asked. “I’m sure we can come to an… agreement that stops that from being necessary.” I gestured with my eyes to the gun again.

His eyes hardened and the grip on my hair tightened. He yanked me flush with his body.

“You’re using your body to guarantee your survival?” he whispered, disgust seeping into his tone.

“No,” I hissed. “I’d die before I offer to let a man rape me,” I spat, my anger giving me the strength or stupidity to actually hiss at him, glare at him. But the insinuation unleashed a demon that I didn’t even know I had within me. One birthed amongst pain and weakness, one to protect me from complete destruction of my soul when my body was defiled.

His grip loosened and his eyes flared again, this time in surprise.

It registered to me, delayed, his violent reaction to what he thought I was suggesting. A little part of me relaxed. A tiny part. A smidgeon. The man who broke into my house, manhandled me, threatened me with a deadly weapon was against rape. It offended him. For whatever it was worth. Not that that was cause for relief. Rape may have been off the table, but I wasn’t fooled at the dangerous situation. Murder was still hanging in the air.

It seeped off him. The taste of it, the promise of it. Death.

When I was seven, my mother took me to a meat factory to scare me off eating meat—or more accurately, fast food—forever, as I had been caught sneaking a Big Mac. There weren’t many punishments in my childhood. Not when it became apparent that I wasn’t the daughter my parents wanted me to be. I was ignored, treated like an unwanted houseguest, and that was punishment enough. But there were appearances to keep up, and I had puppy fat, like most kids my age. I was on a strict diet, but somehow I’d managed to escape to a fast food chain and treat myself. Somehow, my mother had been uncharacteristically paying attention to me.

Hence the visit to the slaughterhouse before I hit double digits.

To say my mother was beyond surprised at my seven-year-old self’s detached reaction was an understatement. Though why she was surprised, I had no guess. Death was a way of life in our household. I was young, but I knew that.

I’d witnessed the blood and horrors of the killing floor and was indeed disgusted at the treatment of those poor defenseless animals, and sometimes, in my nightmares, the screams would jerk me awake in the nights afterward.

But it wasn’t that, or the blood, that I’d focused on. No, it was the men who were in charge of ending the animals’ lives. More precisely, their eyes. They were unseeing to the horrors in front of them. Blank. Empty. This was a job. A way to put food on the table, a roof over their heads. In order to do that, they had to desensitize themselves, distance themselves from it all. Lives of the cattle were inconsequential, a paycheck if anything, but mostly meant nothing.

I stared at the same eyes now. Icy resolve that told me death was his business and life was something that got in the way of that. Something meaningless.

His hand left my hair and gripped my wrist tightly. “Remember what I said about your little stunt with the lamp. Bravery means death,” he promised, dragging me out of the room.

Cowardice also meant death. I’d died the figurative death for cowardice two years ago. I wouldn’t be dying a literal one. If I had to die, I’d die fighting.

I let myself be dragged, going for compliance until I could get my bearings. I had barely come back to myself before this night. I was finally able to function—albeit with a gigantic weakness, but I was functioning—and now this happened. I let him lead me through the hallway in a sort of trance.

This isn’t happening. I’m still dreaming. This doesn’t happen to me. It happens to other people. People on the news, on Dateline, as cautionary tales, a distant reminder of the brutality of humankind. A loud shout in my mind, more of a plea than anything else.

That’s what people think about monsters, a little voice told me. And look what happened there, you married one.

That’s what people think about their children’s death. And look what happened there.

Ice settled over me at that thought, true, bone-chilling sorrow chasing away the fear. Pain that deep, that visceral, would always trump fear. I learned that. Because when it settled into my core, I realized there was not much left in life to fear than what existed inside me.

He jerked me into my living room, switching the lights on to reveal the white suede sofa, the white fluffy throw on top, the white pillows. White coffee table. White everything, actually.

I had to make my cage as pretty as I could. Maybe all the white would blank out the bars that covered every entry and exit.

Not literally. Symbolically, if you will.

In the middle of my symbolic living room sat a chair. And rope.

My mouth went dry. He’d come prepared.

“Sit,” he commanded tightly.

I paused for a split second, everything in my body telling me to run. To fight. To do anything to avoid me getting tied to a chair like an animal. Defenseless. At a man’s mercy.

Cold steel pressed into my temple. “Don’t make me repeat myself,” he muttered in my ear.

I jerked and did as he commanded, watching while he methodically tied my hands behind my back so they were clasped together, then tied to the frame of the wooden chair.

He did the same with my feet, tying each one to the legs.

When he was done, he straightened, standing in front of me. I met his cold gaze, trying not to focus on the casual way he held that gun. The easy way he tied those knots. His calm demeanor.

My blood is going to stain all my beautiful white furniture when he shoots me.

“You’re not crying,” he stated flatly. “Or begging.” His voice was still flat, cold, but something else lay underneath it. Confusion. Respect?

Hah. Respect from a murderer.

I jutted my chin up, meeting the gaze that unnerved as well as terrified me.

“Will that make any difference to the end result?” I asked.

He kept staring at me for a long time, longer than was socially acceptable. Then again, it wasn’t exactly socially acceptable to break into someone’s house and tie them to a chair. “No,” he said finally.

I nodded. “Didn’t think so. Whatever the outcome of this, I’m not giving you that. Nor am I robbing myself of my dignity.”

Not that I have enough left to fill a cup.

His entire frame jolted at my words, and he stepped forward so his hips were level with my eyes.

He was big, as previously noted. But not as big as the shadow had made him seem. It was something about his presence that made him seem monstrous. In reality, he was a taller-than-average man in an excellent suit. The close cut of the black suit showed that he was buff, muscled.

One needed to be fit in order to break into people’s houses. Overwhelm their victims.

He bent down so he was level with me.

In some vague recess of my mind, I thought he was doing this in order to equalize us, as best he could. That, of course, was preposterous. But something told me it was true.

“Are you a serial killer?” I whispered into the masked face.

“Yes,” he answered simply, coldly. “Maybe not in your society’s depiction or dramatization of the word, but my body count speaks for itself.”

I tilted my head. “My society?” I repeated. “You speak as if you aren’t part of it.”

I watched his frame harden underneath the black fabric. “I’m not,” he clipped. “People like me don’t live in your society. We exist in the shadows. In the darkness. Coming out only in your nightmares,” he stated, straightening.

Without another word, he turned and walked out of the room.

And I pondered that.

I didn’t exist in society either. Not in the same violent way he did.

Or maybe it was exactly the same.

* * *

He came bursting back into the room minutes later.

At least it seemed like minutes. Maybe it had been hours. Maybe I’d been looking at that picture on the wall—the one of the white horse that I’d bought online at 2:00 a.m. thinking it might bring me some form of peace—tilted slightly to the left, for hours upon hours, in a terror-induced trance. In that place I went to before, when reality was cruel, harsh and unbearable.

But then again, reality was always cruel, harsh and unbearable.

And my solution for that was to go somewhere else when the worst of reality became too much to bear.

My soul did a walk around the block, so to speak.

When my husband beat me.

When he raped me.

When he—mustn’t think of that—it took a prolonged holiday.

But even with that distance, it tore, it broke. It shattered. My soul. Whatever made a human… human.

I don’t even know why I did that, in those weeks after my world turned into a wasteland. Why I retreated in a vain and idiotic hope to protect whatever was left to hurt.

My soul was gone.

My sanity.

My identity.

But still, I journeyed. Right till the end. And it seemed, maybe, it might’ve been what I was doing now.

“Reverting to old behavior in times of trauma, it’s textbook. Your body’s emotional muscle memory.”

One therapist said that. Once. I couldn’t remember her name. She didn’t last long enough to remember her name. None of them did. I gave up on therapy like I gave up on life.

So I didn’t trust myself to say it was minutes, but it sure seemed like it. But in my world, nothing was as it seemed. It never was.

My eyes went to those ice blue eyes here in the present, in the cruel, harsh and unbearable reality. Again, they were empty. This soul hadn’t just taken a holiday—this soul was dead. If it even existed in the first place.

I’d done research on evil. And on good. Because now I had the time. Books were my companions, as was the internet. My gateway to why. Why did this happen to me? Why did my family sell me to a psychopath without blinking? Why did he get off on hurting me? Why did he kill our daughter? Why didn’t he kill me after?

Things like that.

During my browsing and reading, I discovered all religions seemed to believe in souls. The theory was different, but the core idea was always the same. Every human was born with one. No one was born evil. That’s what the scripture said, at least. Then again, they needed numbers, and by telling everyone—even the most evil—that they could be saved, well, that was good for numbers. Because here’s a secret: evil populated and controlled the world.

So yes, according to the self-appointed experts on the matter, everyone had a soul.

But I disagreed. Because some types of evil can never be learned. Earned. Sometimes they just were. No person came into this world good—just neutral either way. The blank canvas. Their experiences wouldn’t make them good or evil either, they’d just practice one quality more than the other. They would practice one or the other, and their souls would either flourish or wither, depending on what they practiced and what was practiced on them.

Good or evil would be created.

But sometimes people just were. There was no soul to tarnish, or polish. They weren’t born with one. There was nothing but a big black hole that sucked up the humanity in their DNA and sucked up anything else lingering as an accident of evolution. And then they were empty.

Just like these eyes.

No soul.

I could be imagining this, of course. If you wanted to get down to brass tacks, I was crazy. Then again, crazy people usually had the best perception of the human race, because they didn’t have to worry about explaining things within the barriers of sanity. Of logic.

The man in front of me was not logic.

Not sane, either.

But like I said, I wasn’t one to be doling out diagnoses.

“Why aren’t you screaming? Crying?” he demanded.

I looked at him. “It would make no difference.” It wasn’t a question. I knew from those empty eyes. I’d experienced a variation of that. Been married to it. I’d screamed. Cried. Pleaded. It did nothing.

“But you’re a coward.” The tone of the cruel words was not unkind. Not a question either. It was a statement that came from knowledge.

My breathing quickened. “You’ve been watching me.” Again, this was not a question. A statement. Because a quick run-through of my actions tonight told me, for once in my life, I was not acting weak. I seemed almost strong. An ironic subversion, since a lot of ‘strong’ people showed their weakness in times such as these, and weak people usually just devolved even more.

I was somewhat of an exception.

And for once, it was a good thing.

But a strange man wearing a mask, with piercing beautifully cruel eyes, holding a gun and obviously meaning me harm shouldn’t technically know my actions were the exception to the norm.

He shouldn’t know this if he was a stranger happening upon my house with a hankering for murder.

Unless he’d been watching me.

Learning me.

With a hankering for… something that chilled my blood, but also didn’t increase the steady beats of my heat.

He’d tied me to the chair. He had the gun. My control over this situation was gone. And like it or not, I was at his mercy. I didn’t want to die. There were plenty of times in the not-so-distant past I would’ve said different, but I wanted to live. Not because I had a lot to live for, but because most human beings not in the throes of mental illness or despair, they had an intrinsic survival instinct.

And I had that once more.

Plus, I’d told myself I wasn’t allowed the solace of death. It was too easy. I didn’t deserve easy after what I’d done.

So I’d fight, look out for a chance to do that. But panicking until a chance presented itself would do me no good.

He continued watching me, the mask on his face still sinister and disturbing, but I wondered if seeing the entirety of his cruel detachment without the mask might’ve been terrifying beyond belief.

“Yes,” he said in response to my statement.

He had been watching me.

He’d therefore noticed that there wasn’t a lot to watch. He might see the lights go on at precisely 5:15 a.m. He might watch me do yoga in front of my fireplace, and then he’d see me drink tea. Not coffee. Stimulants of any kind weren’t good for me.

Then he’d see me make breakfast. Same thing every morning. Oatmeal. Milk, honey, whatever fruit was in season. I’d wash up immediately.

Have another tea.

Shower.

Then I’d sit in front of my computer for a number of hours—sometimes I’d stop to make lunch, or I’d work straight through—and then he’d see me shut it down. Stare at my closed french doors to the paddocks yawning into nothingness. He’d watch me stare for a long time. He might even see the longing, the agony, if he looked real close.

But maybe not.

Then he’d see me make dinner. I rotated on the menu but mostly had about six staple dinners.

It was easier that way.

Routine.

Then I’d read. All night. Until I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open and stumble to bed. Or I’d pass out on the sofa, a book in my face.

If he’d been watching for a really long time, he might notice delivery men. Bringing groceries. Medical supplies. House supplies. He might notice a lot of people coming.

But one particular person never going.

And that’s why I thought he’d been watching for a long time, in order to give me the appropriate label of coward.

The medical term was agoraphobia.

I was so terrified of the world that I couldn’t step a foot outside my own house without an overwhelming sense of doom settling over my shoulders, my throat closing up and my heart constricting.

I was working my way up to my letterbox.

I’d only gotten two steps down my porch so far.

But it was progress. For me at least. For a man with a gun and empty eyes, I’d think I would be a nice target. The girl who physically can’t run.

“Why?” I said, voice even.

But I didn’t feel even. In that moment, I had an all-encompassing hatred toward this cold and imposing masked man. Before, there had been terror, of course. But a kind of indifference toward him in particular. I’d been too focused on what might happen to me that I wasn’t focusing on who was doing it.

Now I did, and it hit me hard.

This man, this stranger who I’d never met and surely never wronged, had come into the one place on this earth that was left for me, my one last sanctuary. And he’d just torn it to shreds.

For no fucking reason that I could see.

He continued to watch me, unmoving. That in itself was unnerving. People moved. Paced. Fidgeted. In normal situations. In a situation where you’d broken into a woman’s house with murder on the brain, there should be some kind of tick.

But there was nothing. He was a statue. One that blinked.

“Because it’s my job,” he said.

I stared. “Your job to watch me?” I clarified.

He nodded once.

I thought about that statement. In order for it to be his job to watch me, it must’ve also been his job to come in here. Someone hired him. Presumably to murder me. Or at the very least shatter whatever I had left that resembled sanity. Peace.

The fact I didn’t have friends kind of meant I didn’t have enemies. I didn’t have the social capacity to interact with someone on a level that was classed as personal.

Well, before, I had. I might’ve even had friends.

It was hard to remember now. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

And even in that lifetime, I’d been shy, timid, barely allowed to leave the house, so the friends were few. And when the shy, timid girl, unremarkable in every way, somehow caught the eye of one of the most remarkably evil men in the underworld, the friends became fewer still.

Nonexistent.

Because friends were a lifeline. People to help keep a woman sane. Hold on to her self-worth. Make her feel like she wasn’t alone.

And of course, I needed to be alone. Insane. My self-worth needed to be filed down, shaved from the bone.

There was one person on this earth who could’ve done this.

“Christopher,” I said, the word tasting bitter on my tongue, bringing my once steady heartbeat up.

Merely saying his name had more of an effect on me than the obvious psychopath standing in front of me with a gun.

He was like Voldemort.

But worse.

Something moved in his eye: surprise, recognition. Maybe.

“Christopher hired you to kill me, didn’t he?” I asked, my anger and fear melting together, the cells of each emotion fighting each other for dominance.

Again, no answer.

“You’re a hit man,” I said. I went with a statement instead of a question; they seemed more likely to get an answer.

“I’m a freelancer,” he said.

I pursed my lips. “Freelance killer is still a hit man.”

He nodded.

I racked my brain as to why Christopher, after all this time, would want to kill me. He had plenty of chances.

Plenty.

But he hadn’t taken them.

Then again, he hadn’t needed to. He’d already killed me in all the most important ways.

So maybe it wasn’t Christopher.

My mind worked through my short personal contact list.

But it had to be him. There was no one else.

I met the eyes, those empty ones. It was hard, terrifying, but also somehow confronting. Confronting me with my own empty life. Because he was coming to drain whatever was left of it, which was precious little. He was the grim reaper, who took credit cards. That meant he brought death, but first he brought with him the accusation of life. Targets forced to relive it, dissect it.

Mine, when taken from its skin, was nothing but crumbling bones.

“Why would someone want to kill me?” I asked, whether to him or to myself I wasn’t sure. “I’m not interesting.”

“Don’t have to be interesting,” he answered, surprising both of us. “Just need to be inconvenient.”

I seethed at this, my anger blossoming from a place I thought was long gone. Anger was the first casualty of the destruction of a human being. Because anger was what saved most people. Anger was what fueled them to get up, get out, save themselves.

I obviously didn’t save myself.

Or my daughter.

And I was so weak I didn’t even have enough anger to muster up at the person who most deserved it.

Me.

But then it came, out of nowhere.

I glared at the masked man. “So because I, a human being, am inconvenient to another human—one with lots of money but no morals—my life is forfeit? It gives you the right to make it so?” I spat.

He regarded me for a long moment. “Yes,” he said simply.

As if it was that simple.

And the worst thing was it was that simple.

The silence in the room swung like a pendulum.

“So you’re going to kill me now?” I said flatly, my anger once more gone. Why was I fighting to live? Would dying really be so bad? I’d get the respite I’d been too cowardly to give myself. I’d find peace. Maybe see her again. Smell her head. Touch her curls.

My heart panged with a longing so painful, so visceral, that if I had his gun right then, I would’ve used it. On myself. All promises I’d made to myself disappearing into the darkness.

Because I’d done something I shouldn’t have. I thought about her.

And the pain was paralyzing.

“Yes,” he said again, unaware of the knives puncturing every inch of my skin.

I waited. Watched. Hoped for him to raise his gun and end it all. The pain. The suffering.

“Okay,” I whispered.

Funny, that would be the last word I said on earth. Should it have been more profound? No. Because there was no one there to hear it. Just a black hole shaped like a person who’d swallowed other profound goodbyes and silenced them like the people who uttered them.

Glaciers bored into me. “Da svidaniya.” He lifted his arm so I no longer stared into ice blue—I saw black, the abyss of the barrel of a gun.

The thunder of the bullet drowned out everything.

Even my pain.