“I’m not dead,” I observed in the seconds that followed the roar of the gunshot.

He slipped the weapon into the back of his slacks. “You are not,” he agreed.

Dust flickered peacefully from the ceiling, evidence of the chaotic bullet that had torn through it.

“Why?” I asked.

I couldn’t decide whether I was disappointed or relieved. I was empty. Feeling utterly hollow at my lack of emotion, of any kind of joy to be alive. Whatever this whole experience was, or was going to be, I was quickly learning what a cardboard cutout of a person I had become.

Or was I always like this?

No. Before, when I had her, my little angel to focus on in the middle of hell, I’d been something more than cardboard. I gave her the last of my life, my joy. It had died with her too.

“Because,” he said, tasting his words, choosing them slowly, as if he wasn’t sure of the actions behind them. “Because it would be pathetic,” he continued finally, his face blank and as empty as his voice—and, as it happened, my soul.

He strode over to me in quick, purposeful steps. No hesitation. He reached into his jacket and unearthed a knife.

I didn’t flinch.

I knew I should’ve. That’s what people did when masked men tied them up, talked about killing them and then came at them with a knife. That might’ve been what people did. Not what I did.

I might’ve imagined his pause at my lack of reaction, the flickering of emotion that crossed his eyes, the curiosity. But then he leaned over me and cut my bonds, and I decided I most certainly did imagine it.

I must’ve been imagining things, because that was the only explanation for his clean linen and ocean scent floating through the air, for his proximity becoming pleasing to me. I knew I had psychological issues, but I wasn’t certifiably insane. Which was characterized by finding the smell of your would-be murderer pleasing. Or his eyes magnetic.

“Pathetic,” he repeated, standing in front of me, perusing me. “You’re already pathetic enough on your own. Killing you would be more so. I don’t do pathetic,” he continued, voice cold and unkind. He turned, as if to walk out. I watched him cross the room, reach my doorway, haunt it with his shadow, and then turn. “You should consider the fact that it is not going to remain a secret, your continued survival.” He glanced around. “If that’s what you call it.” Then his eyes focused on me. “Then consider the fact that if you want to continue surviving, existing, you might have to take steps to become invisible to people like me.”

And then he was gone.

Only his scent and stare remained.

* * *

Him

“Is it done?” the disembodied voice on the phone asked.

He slammed the door to his house, surprising himself with the violence behind it. He was a violent man by profession, by necessity. Not by nature.

“It’s done,” he lied. Another necessity in his profession, lies. They, like blood and bullets, were his bread and butter. Though he only lied to targets. Or people he had to go through to get to targets. It was as easy as killing at this point. And killing was as easy as breathing.

But not to the people who paid him. There was no need to lie to them. It would not be fiscally responsible. It was unnecessary. And dangerous. Especially considering this particular client.

A life of lies was easier to unravel than a life of truth.

That’s why he lived invisible. No truth. As few lies as possible.

But here he was, breaking whatever passed for rules in his life.

For her.

“Good,” the voice said.

He poured himself a vodka.

“The money will be in your account. It’s been a pleasure working with you, Brat.”

He took this as goodbye and then hung up. He didn’t do pleasantries.

Especially not with this particular client.

He had majorly fucked up.

He’d never done that before.

Never.

And now it was because of her. The pathetic, broken and weak woman who was devoid of terror, of self-preservation, of dignity.

He sipped his vodka.

No, not quite devoid of dignity, he thought as he wandered to the black oak door off his personal library. The one hidden away at the end of the house, not the one boasting grandeur and wealth, something the original owners of the estate had been overtly preoccupied with.

There had been a quiet dignity about her. In her acceptance of her death.

He walked through the room, opening the door hidden in the bookcases. The light went on, dimly illuminating the frames that cluttered the intimate space.

He made his way to his favorite specimen, running his fingers over the glass thoughtfully.

She wasn’t beautiful. No, something stopped her from being simply beautiful. Her dull hair, sallow skin, dry lips. The lingering scent of death and sorrow that followed her. That was attached to her. That had whittled her down to the nerve, making her almost painful to look at. But her eyes, violent against her gray skin. They kept him from finishing her.

Was that what stopped him from completing it? That painful gaze?

He inspected the creature beyond the glass.

Or was it because he’d found something to add to his collection? Something rare? Something that likely didn’t exist in high numbers in this world?

He didn’t quite know what she was, but she was somehow unique.

He might yet kill her. It would be the sensible thing to do, before word got around to the right ears.

It would be smart to do so.

He sauntered to the leather chair in the middle of the room.

“Yes, it would be smart,” he muttered to himself, glancing at the dead things on his wall, imagining her completing the room with her frozen and trapped beauty.

He wasn’t done with her, that was for sure. He couldn’t be, even if he wanted to be. She was a complication. A loose end. He didn’t do loose ends. Or complications.

Her death would be simpler.

* * *

Elizabeth

After he untied me, I didn’t move. For hours, I didn’t move. The sun came up. Set again. And I stayed frozen in my spot, swallowed by the weight of my terror, of the reality that he left in his absence.

I twitched at some point after darkness blanketed the room. My muscles locked up, screamed in protest. As did my full bladder and empty stomach. My body screamed at me for my lack of care, for my neglect. But I had to neglect my body; otherwise, on the inside, I might’ve fallen apart. Someone had come into my home, my space, the one thing left on this planet that was safe. That was mine.

And in reality, I was never safe.

In that time, I thought about a lot of things.

About those eyes, and how many people saw them right before the end. Wondered if they were as empty as they seemed. A lot of people thought things were more than they seemed, that there were reasons for things that seemed senseless, evil.

But that was what we all clung to because the option that someone could be evil, remorseless, empty—well, that just wouldn’t work. Because that would mean monsters weren’t what we created to scare ourselves, reassure ourselves that humans would save us from the monsters.

No, we were monsters.

I knew this because I knew monsters.

I had yet to meet many humans.

And while my stomach cried and my bladder almost burst, I thought of the one, my monster, who had made me like this.

No, you made you like this, a voice said. You are in control of how you respond to other people’s actions.

But who I had to blame for who I was now wasn’t important. I was who I was now because of that experience.

My marriage.

It wasn’t happy, even at the start. Not like the stories of abused women who were treated like princesses at the start and then battered like trash after.

No, it was always trash.

From the beginning.

And I had no choice.

“You know what he’ll do if you don’t go through with this,” Mom said, straightening my veil with a businesslike efficiency that curdled my stomach. She’d never shown me real affection, never betrayed that she cared about her youngest daughter, but I thought now, just before she shooed me off to hell in a white dress, maybe she would show something.

But her face betrayed nothing.

She stood back, her silver-flecked gown trailing around her.

It was expensive. Flashy.

Fitting for a wedding of this magnitude.

This status.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to, Mom,” I said, my voice meek, unused. It was the first time I’d spoken all day.

My entire wedding day.

I’d been woken up by my sister, grim-faced, and trying to smile with dread. Though I wasn’t even sure if that dread was for me. She was one of the only people in my family who betrayed some sense of humanity, and it was only a sliver, fleeting. And not enough to do anything about this. Like help me escape, or at least hand me a razor blade.

No, instead she woke me, waited for me to get out of bed, watched over me the whole day. Not out of love, I was sure; most likely to make sure I didn’t find or use any razor blades. My stomach had been roiling as various people fluffed, yanked and pinned my hair. Others painted beauty on my face. Piled me into a dress full of lace, constricted my ribs with the fabric. I’d been silent, compliant through the whole thing. I hadn’t cried. Screamed. Run. Pleaded.

No, I’d been a participant. A silent one, perhaps. But I didn’t betray any kind of spine.

I didn’t have one.

The dress was the thing holding me up, not a backbone.

“Your eyes did,” my mother said, narrowing her own at me.

“Well I can’t control what my eyes say,” I snapped, surprising myself with the anger in my tone.

My mother flinched slightly, obviously surprised too. Then she composed herself, fluffing at her own hairsprayed updo. “You can control everything,” she corrected. “Your life depends on it.” She turned. “Your family’s lives depend on this. Remember that.”

The family that had never shown me anything but barely concealed contempt now relied on me for their continued survival. “How could I forget?” I said, my voice back to little more than a whisper.

And I didn’t. As I walked down that aisle, watched by the crowds of people who were the most dignified of our society. The most depraved. Ones who stressed over which napkins would be used at a dinner party while on the phone organizing the death of someone without hesitation.

And then to the worst of them all, the man who watched me with a predator’s intensity as I stood next to him.

My husband.

He didn’t let me forget what I was doing. Why I was doing it. Because my family were selfish, power-hungry and utterly brutal.

Blood meant nothing.

Least of all mine. Especially when it was spilled on the expensive marble floors of my marriage home.

Or the Egyptian cotton sheets of my marriage bed.

Blood—my blood—that was their currency.

And they paid in full.

My body didn’t let me remember the rest.

Wouldn’t.

Maybe because of the pain it was in at present, or the past pain. I didn’t know which.

But instead of going through past pain, my body commanded my mind’s attention, forced me off the chair and to crawl to my shaky feet. To grit my teeth against the pain of my muscles, my bones.

I went to the bathroom.

I ate.

Then I slunk into my bed and slept.

For a long time.

But eventually, I woke up.

* * *

I didn’t call the police. Maybe I should’ve. Most people would’ve. But something told me not to. My upbringing, for one. I was a sheep raised in a wolf’s den. And my weakness was highlighted early on. It wasn’t nurtured, or protected. It was ignored.

The family shame.

I was left to my devices—my books, my computer—as long as I kept out of sight.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t see.

Didn’t learn some things.

I knew what a killer looked like. I’d woken up to one standing in my bedroom one week ago. He was hired. And he did not do his job. Going to the police would be the same as sending his employers—Christopher—a big flashing letter telling him that I was still alive.

Still inconvenient.

I didn’t do that.

Instead, I didn’t get out of my bed for five days. Lapsed back into the behavior when I first got out, when I was finally freed.

Freed.

Such a stupid word for what I was.

Yes, I was free after my daughter died in my stomach because of a beating from my husband. Free after I carried her two more weeks, knowing she was dead inside me. Free after I battled in hours of labor, just to have a silent and unblinking infant cut out of me.

Free once the doctors told my blank-faced and emotionless husband—it had only been a girl, after all—that I was no longer able to have babies.

Which was, after being somewhat of a plaything and punching bag, a woman’s only job. I outgrew my usefulness, me and my barren womb. And I thought he’d kill me. Prayed for it, actually.

But he was cruel.

And cruel men do not give their victims what they pray for, even if it’s death.

Instead, he gave me freedom.

Freedom to run into the yawning and open chasm of a world where I didn’t belong. The open air of the real world stifling and too big after years inside mansions and cars and airplanes. It was like a prisoner being let out after the world has passed by, and the one that they get put into, freed into, is nothing like the one they left behind. And they long for their bars, even though they knew they might kill them.

Especially because they knew it would kill them.

But I didn’t run back. To him at least. It was certain death, and not a quick one.

I rustled up whatever strength was left in me, got on a bus—five of them, actually—utilized the things I’d organized when I’d found out I was pregnant. The secret bank account, new identities, though I was only using one. I took them and my pain and got myself a little farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. An escape.

Or just another prison.

Where I’d been rambling around for over a year.

And where I’d been almost killed by a hit man.

The sixth day, I got up.

The covers were lead as I wrenched them off my body and settled my sock-covered feet on the floor. The air smelled foul and close—but not the stale scent that came from never opening a window. No, I was used to that. It came from foreign invaders tearing through the thin film I had stupidly thought was my iron shield.

I lumbered over to my windows that faced the front porch and the driveway beyond. The cold seeped out of them, creeping into the bones of my feet despite wearing two pairs of socks. In my bed and on quick trips to the bathroom, the air wasn’t that crisp, wasn’t that invading. But now I was reminded, by pulling back my curtains to reveal the white of the world outside, that I hadn’t turned on the radiator, nor lit the fire.

And it was January in Washington.

I rubbed at my arms, glancing back at the pile of blankets on my bed. I’d thought I’d used them to stave off the demons, the outside world. Of course, that didn’t work. They did help me from getting hypothermia though.

My bones protested as I squeaked over my wooden floors, legs jelly, stomach painfully empty. I needed to eat or I’d faint, I knew that. And if I fainted, I most likely wouldn’t wake up, because despite my layers, the cold would creep in through the bottom of the house and swallow me.

I paused, my hand on the radiator.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Better?

Just drift off to sleep and never come back to this cruel and ugly world?

Christopher would eventually realize I was alive. If it took weeks. Months. Less likely to be years. But he’d find out. And I’d die then.

Better now, with whatever peace I had left, whatever power.

My shaking hand hovered over the dial.

“Pathetic.”

The cold, flat and deeply masculine voice was so clear I jumped, certain he was behind me. Of course, all I got was a thin and visible puff of air from my mouth, courtesy of my gasp.

The hall was empty and lonely.

Like always.

But it wasn’t like always.

Not now.

He’d walked down there. While I slept. His shoes tracking in all the pain and suffering and ugliness of the outside, yanking it in here.

He watched me sleep.

For how long?

He brought death to this house. If it wasn’t here already. Because maybe that’s what I was: a ghost haunting the farmhouse she’d come to end her days in. Jumping at shadows and memories, confined not by the four walls but what was inside her head.

I turned the dial, the low thump of the machine coming to life a clattering sound of my decision to survive. Exist. If that’s what this was.

And then I lit the fire.

Made myself a hot and sugary tea, dry toast on the side.

Then a bath. Which I refilled three times. I was a prune when I got out.

But I was alive.

If that’s what this was.