The Butcher's Other Daughter by Peter Caffrey

Author:Peter Caffrey [Caffrey, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blue Ape Publications
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20: Aurélie Dupont

I was slipping into darkness, unable to stay focused as the mad woman intensified her attack. Her thumbs dug into my throat, pushing my trachea closed. I was gulping air, trying to suck it in, but nothing was reaching my lungs. Unable to draw breath, pain welled up in my chest as if my insides were parched and withering. For a moment, the pressure subsided. She hesitated, her attention drifting, and I seized the opportunity, using my last reserves of energy to fight back.

Driving my knee up with all the force I could muster, it connected, and her grip loosened, her thick strong fingers releasing enough for me to jerk free. I had no time to think, no plan of escape. Using my nails, fingers and elbows, I swung and scratched in a frenzy, a whirlwind of defence. I couldn’t see her, my vision blurring as I dredged up every last bit of energy to sustain my assault on this unknown beast. My ears were ringing with exertion. I knew I was hitting the target because I could feel contact with her. Then she moved away.

There was a moment of calm, but before I had a chance to assess the situation an explosion of pain radiated from my throat. Something hit me hard, a devastating impact constricting my windpipe. Gagging, struggling to breathe, I crumpled, unable to fight any more. I had lost the battle: it was finished.

She dragged me across the floor by my hair, but there was no pain. I was suffocating, smothered by the finality of the situation. Numbness kissed my limbs, a crushing and crippling loss of feeling. My body was dead; my mind struggled to catch up with my lifeless flesh. Resistance was not an option.

The woman raised me up and dropped me on the cutting block, the impact driving out what little air remained in my lungs. She was strangling me, but I couldn’t feel her fingers around my neck, only an inability to function, to move, to breathe. I forced my eyes open, watching her face contort with rage, with hatred for me.

I was going to die. She’d killed Father Chenevert. Why I did not understand, but she had killed him. His head was hanging in the fridge. She’d killed Madame Arnette. There was nothing to indicate she had, but I knew it. She’d killed Elodie. Again, there was no evidence, but I knew it to be true. Now she would kill me, her frenzied attack verging on the animalistic. Brutality radiated from her. She would kill me and I would let her. There was nothing else I could do.

The realisation brought an unwavering feeling of calm. The pain, the confusion, the misery was at an end. Things couldn’t get any worse; they could only get better. As we looked at each other, my eyes pleaded with her to finish it. I wanted it over and done with, a clean ending. I no longer cared about surviving.

In her eyes, I saw hesitation once more.

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