Eli Aaron’s grip on her throat was tight, con­strict­ing her wind­pipe as she fought back, kick­ing and thrash­ing in des­per­a­tion. Behind her, her gun lay aban­doned by the door, a dis­tant thought amid the chaos. Eli whis­pered the word “Poet­ry” as if recit­ing a line from a poem, a chill­ing­ly calm con­trast to the vio­lence unfold­ing.

She per­ceived glimpses of his ordi­nary face, unset­tling­ly detached as if he was mere­ly squeez­ing the juice from an orange, his fore­arms rigid like the ten­sion in his voice. In a moment of defi­ance, Saint brought her knee up hard into him, caus­ing his grip to slack­en slight­ly, though it was only tem­po­rary. Around them, the room was adorned with pho­tographs of more girls, hang­ing like a haunt­ing mem­o­ry rem­i­nis­cent of a barn from years past—their qui­et des­per­a­tion vis­i­ble in every image.

Eli leaned heav­i­ly against her, reveal­ing no signs of strug­gle or loss of con­trol; instead, he seemed to feed off the moment, the ten­sion swelling like liv­ing beings writhing under the weight of his pres­ence. She not­ed the veins in his neck puls­ing with a vis­cer­al inten­si­ty, and every low grunt from him sound­ed pri­mal, as if he was a caged ani­mal, des­per­ate to break free.

Refus­ing to sub­mit, Saint kicked out again, lash­ing at him with all her remain­ing strength, claws bit­ing at his face. Her eyes were blood­shot and bulging, the pres­sure of the moment build­ing to a cli­max, yet there was no time for con­tem­pla­tion. Thoughts of Char­lotte, her grand­moth­er, Jim­my, and Patch flit­ted through her mind like fleet­ing shad­ows, each a reminder of both her strug­gles and her rea­sons for resis­tance.

Then, in a swift and bru­tal turn of events, there was the deaf­en­ing sound of a gun­shot, and Eli Aaron lost a por­tion of his skull, the vio­lence abrupt­ly alter­ing the strug­gle and the room’s dynam­ic, plung­ing it fur­ther into chaos and blood­shed.