. I took my time looking into each of the upstairs rooms, but she was nowhere to be found. I knew then that somethin’ wasn’t right. I came back downstairs and opened the kitchen door, and I immediately fell to my knees.
There on the kitchen floor, I found her; lying there with her arms out in front of her and her face turned to the side. Both eyes were blackened, nearly purple; there were blotches of blood on her cheek. Her face was swollen so much that I couldn’t believe I was looking at my wife. There was so much blood, and there were bullet wounds in her back: one just below her left shoulder blade, another a little below it, and two near her lower back.
This time would be different.
I went upstairs and started down darkened the hallway. As I got closer, I could see that there was somebody standing by the bedroom door. “Ms. West? What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. This is your dream,” she said and dropped that giggle that always makes me wanna strip her down and fuck her brains out. But that wasn’t what I was there for. Or maybe it was. Just the fact that she was there made the whole thing different.
“I don’t know either, but you better stay close to me.”
Ms. West smiled. “I plan to.”
I opened the door and stepped inside slowly. There he was, Kip Bartowski; the man who killed Cassandra. He was sitting on the bed with his gun on his lap. I looked around the room for Cassandra, but she wasn’t there. Bart stood up when he saw me. Then he smiled and looked at the gun in his hand. He put the gun on the bed and motioned for me to come toward him. I handed my gun to Ms. West. “You want me to shoot him for you, Mr. Black?”
“No. Just hold it for me,” I said and moved toward Bart. Ms. West sat on the bed, and in her usual ladylike manner, crossed her legs.
I hit Bart in the face with everything I had, left and right, left, and right again, but it didn’t faze him. Then he hit me so hard that I fell to the floor. “Sure you don’t want me to shoot him for you, Mr. Black?”
“No!” I shouted and got up. “I can take him!”
I rushed at Bart and he hit me again, and I went down again. This time he didn’t wait for me to get up. He dove on top of me and wrapped his hands around my throat. I tried to pry his hands away, but his grip was too strong. I jammed my thumbs in his eyes and pressed as hard as I could until he let go. I pushed him off of me and got to my feet.
Bart was still on his knees, so I grabbed his head and rammed my knee into it over and over again. I looked around for a weapon to use against him. There was a fireplace in the room where there never was one before, and a poker sitting in the rack. I grabbed the poker and wrapped it around Bart’s neck. I put my knee in his back and pulled as hard as I could. Bart struggled to get away, but he couldn’t. His body went limp and fell to the floor. And just to make sure he was dead, I jammed the poker in the back of his head.