room filled with deep fryers enveloped me like a loving hug. Dommo was reading the newspaper and looked annoyed at my intrusion. “Gabriella!” he called out, looking back at his paper and ignoring me completely.
She came bounding in from a side door, her face flushed and greasy. She smiled widely when she saw me, then frowned at what I was wearing.
“You do realise its ten degrees outside, right?” she laughed. I nodded and shoved my hands in my pockets, trying to pretend I wasn’t frozen solid.
“I left in a hurry. Forgot my jacket,” I mumbled with a shrug.
“In a hurry to see me?” Gabriella joked, her eyes twinkling mischievously. My stomach knotted at how much I liked her. But I could never ask her out. Never put her in danger of being so close to Mark. Not that a girl like Gabriella would ever have any interest in a guy like me anyway. My heart sunk.
Dommo sighed loudly. “You want food or not, son? We’re closing in a minute.”
Gabriella rolled her eyes.
“It’s ok,” I stammered, backing towards the door. “I came in to say hi. I’ll see you at school.” Gabriella nodded and I slipped outside, the bitter cold slapping me cruelly again.
But worse than the cold, Mark’s ute was parked across the street.
I gasped and froze, hoping he hadn’t seen me. But he had. The door creaked loudly as he stepped out, leaning against the cab and watching me with that evil smile. “Get in.”
My brain raced as I tossed up my options. Should I run? Or just succumb to my fate and get in with him? My heart thudded hard against my chest as I struggled to breathe. I didn’t have a plan. God how I wished I had a plan!
Mark took a step towards me and my survival instincts kicked in.
Without thinking I bolted away from him, hoping like hell Gabriella hadn’t seen me. My face burned with embarrassment at the thought.
That damn stitch screamed at me as I ran, but I heard the ute roar to life, the fan belt screeching in agony. I pushed through the pain as I heard the wheels squeal as Mark did a u-turn to come after me.
I sprinted up an alleyway and was engulfed in darkness.
It was a really bad idea.
Within seconds I had tripped over a stack of boxes and gone flying, smacking my head against the side of a large metal skip bin.
I gingerly touched where it hurt and felt the warm ooze of blood on my forehead. I winced as Mark’s ominous headlights appeared, burning my retinas. I held my arm up to shield my eyes as I scrambled to my feet, turning to run.
But only a metre from where I stood I now saw a brick wall. It was a dead end.
Panic ballooned in my chest. I was trapped.
I heard Mark’s door creak open as the ute continued to idle, the deep thrum of the engine reverberating inside me, only increasing my fear.
I was trapped and I was alone.
Backing against the brick wall I slid to the ground, wrapping my arms protectively around my legs. I closed my eyes and rested my throbbing forehead against my knees.
I was hurt, I was freezing cold and I wanted to go home. Fear gave away to acceptance as Mark’s boots crunched in the gravel towards me.
I scrunched my eyes shut tightly and tensed my body in anticipation. A matching pair of tears escaped from the corners of my eyes at the thought of pissing blood for another week of my life.
As I drew a sharp breath and held it, I heard a woman’s agonised cry and the reverberation of metal clanging against something hard.
A man groaned loudly.
I flung open my eyelids to see Mark’s lifeless body hit the ground hard at my feet.
I couldn’t breathe while I waited. But he didn’t move. He was out cold.
I stood up slowly, squinting against the glare of the headlights at the silhouette of a woman holding a shovel in her hands.
Was it my mum? Or worse, was it Gabriella? Did she somehow know my horrible secret about Mark?
“I’ve been waiting to do that for so fucking long. You have no idea.”
She turned to face the light.
It was Eve, staring down at Mark’s body in amazement.
I placed my hand on her shoulder to steady myself, but she jerked away from me.
“Sorry! Sorry!” she stammered, looking up at me dolefully. “I just... I just can’t believe that I did it.”
“You saved me,” I whispered in astonishment.
“I saved me,” she corrected, dropping the shovel to the ground with a loud clang.
She turned to walk away from us, but I grabbed her arm. “No! You don’t understand!” I pleaded, the truth gushing forth like a tidal wave of relief. “He beats me up. All the time. He was about to do it again, but you stopped him! Thank you...”
I shook my head in disbelief as Eve narrowed her eyes at me.
“Look,” she hissed, pulling a cigarette from her tiny bag and lighting it with trembling hands. “I don’t care what you tell the cops, but I’ve got video evidence of what he did to me. I was gonna have him arrested, but I saw him come up this alley and I...I just had to do that, you know? Before they locked him up.”
Eve sighed as she took a deep drag on her cigarette. My mind bulged. Video evidence. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I looked at Eve’s delicate features and saw no signs of bruising, only dark hollows of sleepless nights under her eyes. She wasn’t wearing much, despite the cold, and she had no visible marks anywhere else.
But then I remembered what Mark used to say about her, and I cringed.
He’d abused her too, but in a different way to me.
I let her walk away from us now, my guardian angel in the form of a town whore. Eve’s blonde hair swayed in the ice cold wind and a trail of white smoke hung on the air behind her as she went.
I watched until she was out of sight before I climbed into Mark’s ute, which was still idling loudly, and drove it home.
The police would arrive at our house eventually, and I needed to prepare my mum.
As I drove Mark’s monster of a ute through the dark quiet streets, I longed to ram it hard into a tree or a pole before I got home.
But I wanted to get home alive. I wanted to get home safely.
Because it was over now.
We were finally free.
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