Not That Girl by Emmy Ellis

Author:Emmy Ellis [Ellis, Emmy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

* * * *

I stirred to the feel of hot wind on my face. Even with my eyes closed I could tell someone had turned the light off after I’d fallen asleep around nine, despite me asking all the nurses who had tended to me to leave it on. That it needed to be on. I was annoyed that they felt they knew best, that my needs were nothing more than a load of paranoid requests.

I stretched my arm across my face and reached over, patting behind me to the right, feeling for the light lead, the little switch on the cord. I fumbled, irritated at not being able to find it. A ghost of movement against my face had me pausing, holding my breath. It must have been my nightgown brushing my skin, the sleeve where I was stretching across for the switch. That hot wind came again, on my arm this time, and I paused, trying to work out what that heat was. Heard breathing that didn’t match my own. I rolled over quickly and laid flat on the bed, arms by my sides, hands pressed to the blankets, waiting to hear it again. It came, raspier, with a wheeze like a smoker’s laugh, and I snapped my eyes open.

A shadowy face loomed right over mine.

I sucked in a breath then shrieked. A hand clamped over my mouth, the side of the pointer finger pressed to my nostrils, blocking off my air supply. I drew back my lips ready to bite the palm, but a sharp pain jabbed in my side and sidetracked me. Something hard was there, a dull pressure. The time from outside the courthouse hurtled back, Benny’s gun, and I bucked to try to make the hand move. Drew my hands up to grasp at the wrist, pulling and pulling but getting nowhere. It remained rigid. My eyes bugged, my lungs burned. I drummed my heels on the mattress, smacking the underside of the table at the bottom each time my feet rose, thinking to make noise any way I could. I took one hand off the wrist and reached out to swipe my arm across the bedside cabinet. There was nothing on it, nothing to knock off and make a clatter on the floor. I stared at the face. The whites of the eyes were grey in the darkness, but the shape of them, I’d never forget them.

Benny.

‘I’m going to take my hand away, Rebecca Matthews,’ he whispered, his nasty breath registering with me now. ‘And when I do, you’re going to stay nice and quiet, unless you want a matching car on your other side.’

To reinforce his threat, he pressed my healing wound harder. Pain surged through me.

‘Do I have your agreement?’ he asked. ‘I should think I do, because you’re going to run out of air any minute.’ He laughed quietly.

I nodded. I’d do anything just so I could breathe again. He took his hand away slowly, and I removed mine from his wrist, pushing his arm.

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