The Truth Berries

XXXVII

       The darkness of her room plus the hand over her mouth gave her the feeling of drowning. Helen’s mind was silently panicking bit by bit. Is this it, she asked herself. Although the man intentionally avoided her nose for her to breathe, it seemed like she still couldn’t get enough air to her lungs. Then the man repeated his words to her ear and she found herself helplessly nodding to it.

       “There’s someone else inside this house aside from us. And I think he’s here to kill you. So I need you to trust me because I’m here to get you out of here. And then we can talk. Is that clear?”

       Helen was looking directly at the man’s steely brown eyes and something reminded her that she once saw that brown eyes sometime in the past. She just could not put it when at that dire moment. She was too terrorized and enthralled at the same time looking at him that she did not hear his words.

       “Did you understand me?” the man asked her again while snapping his fingers in front of her face.

       Helen did not know what to do so she just nodded again.

       “I’m gonna take this hand off and let you stand quietly but promise me that you won’t do anything foolish. Don’t make any sound or we will both die tonight. Do I have your word now?”

       Helen found herself nodding stupidly for the third time. Then as the man promised her, he gradually lifted his hand from her mouth. Helen held his eyes as he did so and although his hand was already half-withdrawn, she still found herself breathing heavily. After knowing that she was not going to scream like a witch, the man gently helped her to stand up and get out of her bed. She was in a pair of thin cotton pajamas and she wore no upper underwear so her tiny n*****s looked bulging against it. But the man paid no attention to it as his gaze was still locked on her eyes. Helen, for some strange reasons, could not also help herself from staring into his. When she has already gotten out of her bed, they both heard a noise coming from her dining room. Someone bumped himself into a wooden chair and its four legs created a loud scraping sound against the floor for a split second. The man accompanying Helen looked to the direction of the sound and she saw it as an opportunity.

       She was no expert in self-defense and she had no training of any kind on it. But she needed none of it to know where to hit a man that would send him writhing on the floor. She lifted her knee in full force to hit the stranger in his groin. As he expected, the man folded into two in no time. But he held his cry of agony despite of it. All Helen heard was a suppressed ‘ugghh’ as the man went down in one motion. Seeing herself finally free from the stranger, she put on her pair of furry slippers and ran for the door. She never ran faster in her entire life than that night and the speed and momentum that she had sent them crashing on the floor when she collided with another unwanted visitor in her house. Helen caught a quick glimpse of the man’s muzzled gun hitting the floor before he rapidly retrieved it. The new stranger was wearing a black bonnet all over his face, the kind that she always saw when special operatives enter a dangerous place. The picture of the same gun added quite significantly to the image she had in her mind. For her, the man was undeniably a law enforcer. Still, she asked him who he was and what in the world was he doing inside her own house.

       “Police operations.”

       The man flashed his wallet containing his ID to her. She did not see most of it for it was almost pitch dark inside, but she seemed satisfied by it. The man stood up, hid his muzzled gun and asked her to go with him.

       “But he’s still in there!”

       The masked stranger look puzzled.

      “Who’s still in there?”

       “The man you are after for. The same man that attacked me two nights before. He’s still in there and I think he still can’t help himself stand.”

       The man looked at her and then he looked to the direction she was pointing him. Helen was confused but not as much as the masked man

       “Why can’t he stand?”

       “I hit him in his jingler real hard.” Helen proudly said.

       The man paused for a while as if contemplating what to do. Then, like in the movies that she loved to watch, he took out his gun once again to close in for the kill. Her new savior looked at her once more.

       “Stay here. Hide yourself behind something solid. And don’t come out until I come back for you.”

       Helen replied with a relieved yes. The tall guy came at the right moment and he speaks English quite fluently too, she adored. She ran to the medium-sized, round, wooden dining table her mother had and then she knocked it down so that she could hide behind it. The tall masked man started to walk towards her dark room when he saw she was properly secured. Helen watched him disappear into the room while she was peering over the knocked round table.

       Inside the room, the man Helen hit a while ago had already stood up and he was hiding behind one of Helen’s small cabinets. He was totally hidden but he could see a tall masked man slowly entering the room. He was holding his gun in front of him and he saw that the man was still unaccustomed to the darkness inside. He knew he had the upper hand. He also knew that it would not last long until his eyes adjusted to the darkness so he had to move now. With a sudden burst of speed and strength, he rammed his shoulder to the man’s right side and they both hit the door with a loud crash. He was thrown to the direction of the door while the man in mask was thrown to the other direction. He quickly stood up and kicked the man’s gun away and then he sat on him, trying to take off his mask. The man, however, beat his hand’s strength and he caught one of his fingers. The man started bending it backwards, making him scream in great pain. Then the man used all his force to push him away with an upward thrust of his body, making him tumble forward. His heavy revolver fell on the floor in the process.

       He was still dazed after the unexpected turn of events and he was still trying to understand how he was overthrown in just one try when he felt a heavy kick to his stomach. Then, another one came and then a third one followed. He thought he heard one of his ribs c***k when the third one landed. The fourth kick was on his jaw and it made his teeth crashed so hard that he felt he lost a tooth. He spat some blood and for sure, one of his incisors came out with it. The man kicked him another time to his belly and he felt himself slowly losing his consciousness. With only one eye opened, he saw the man picked his heavy gun and prized it for a little while. Now, he was certain he was about to die. But he felt no pain or regret. The thought of death was strangely welcoming for him. When the man was done admiring his gun, he slowly pointed it to him, aiming between his two eyes. With all the remaining courage he had, closed his only open eye and waited bravely for the sound of the killing shot. Then, he smiled at a random thought. How ironical to die from his newly inherited gun.

       But the killing shot did now sounded. Instead, a different loud sound echoed inside the room. It was a woman’s shout.

       “NOOOO!!” Helen screamed.

       He opened his eye to see the masked man turn his head towards the screaming woman at the doorway. Experience was indeed the best teacher of all. With all his muscles throbbing painfully, he stood up as quickly as he could. Then, as the man was returning his attention to him, he faked a two-finger eye poke. The man parried his arm sideways. He then used his forward momentum to lift his own right knee and hit the tall man’s groin with all of his last strength. The man squeaked as he fell wrenching on the floor. His own revolver hit the floor near the writhing man’s head. He picked it up and tucked it in his black leather body holster.

       “That was your only mistake, my friend. Never covet a dead man’s gun.”

       Then, as a parting gesture, he kicked the fallen man in the face with his full force. He turned around to see Helen shaking at the front door. Terror was all over her face and he understood that for it was quite a sight for a woman to see two men trying to kill each other inside your own house. But he could not understand why she hit him in the first place. He thought she understood what he had said earlier. It turned out he was wrong, painfully wrong. He approached the trembling woman.

        “Don’t make this difficult for both of us. Now, I need you to come with me. And I’m telling you this because I will drag you out of here even if you say no. I won’t hurt you and I don’t want to but what you did almost made me think about that again. So, what do you say now?”

       Helen, for the fourth time that night, nodded his approval. He took her by her left arm and led her out of the house. Helen kept her eyes on her fallen savior as he was pulling her out of the house. She was silently crying now as they were nearing the man’s car hidden by the small trees near her lot. When they were almost there, they both heard a sound of something hitting a metal. Then, the singular sound was followed by three more in rapid successions. The man bowed his head low and she instinctively followed his example. It was then that it hit her. The man left inside the house was firing at them in cold-blooded fashion. Helen tried to get away from the man, to run away from the flying bullets, but the man held her tight. She started to feel numbness in her arm as he kept on pulling her towards the car. She kept on resisting as the bullets continued to whir passed them and hit the car’s exterior. Then suddenly, the man opened the trunk of the car and he lifted her only to throw her inside it. The man closed the door and she was engulfed in the darkness once more. Helen kept screaming at the top of her voice while hidden in the trunk.

       She was quivering with fear. Fear of being hit by a bullet penetrating the car. Fear of being kidn*pped by a stranger. Fear of the uncertain events that would follow should she survive the night. And as she felt the engines of the car starting up, she quivered with fear of a dying in a place where no one could find her.

       After fifteen minutes of crying inside a dark and cramped compartment, Helen lost the last of her consciousness.