J. Redmerski - Behind The Hands That Kill

I look at the floor. Then at my hands. Then at the floor again. I am at a loss, about what to say or do next. So I just stand here in discomfort.

“Victor,” she says softly, and I raise my head. “I need to know if there’s anything else you’re hiding from me. We need to clear the air now before it becomes so polluted with lies that we can’t see each other for them.”

“There is nothing else, Izabel,” I say with truth. “You now know the real me; I have done unforgivable things to others for which I am sure I will answer for in death; I have lied to you, and manipulated you, and even used you for my own selfish needs—but what you now know is where it ends.”

She nods. I can only wonder if she believes me.

Then she looks at the floor.

“Do you still love her? Artemis?” Her eyes meet mine slowly.

“No,” I answer right away. “I did love her, but that was a long time ago.”

“What about the baby?” she asks, and I wish that she had not. “Is what you said true? Would you have killed her if she was pregnant with your baby? I just…Victor, I don’t believe you; I don’t care what you’ve done, or the secrets you’ve kept; I don’t care how savage your actions have been in the past—I don’t believe you would’ve killed your baby…I just can’t—”

“I was angry, Izabel,” I speak up. I want to crawl in a hole and be lost to the world.

I start to pace the kitchen now, my arms crossed. I cannot look at her, too focused on the truth to see anything but Artemis’s face, the face that betrayed me, no matter how much she claimed to love me—she murdered my child.

“Victor?”

“I said I was angry,” I repeat, staring at the wall. “She killed my child…and…” I sigh, clench my fists against my midsection. “And I can never forgive her for that.”

“So then you lied to her,” Izabel says, hopeful.

I turn and look at her. “Yes,” I answer. “I wanted to hurt her. But no, I would not have killed her if she was carrying my child.”

She lets out a breath, relieved.

What would she have said, or done, if I had answered any other way?

If Victor would’ve answered any other way, despite how much I love him, I would’ve walked away and never looked back. When it comes to him, I can forgive a lot of things—even his plan with Niklas—but I could never overlook a man so cold that he could murder a woman carrying his child, no matter how young or confused or brainwashed he was—I just couldn’t. But I didn’t believe it in my heart that he could be so vicious.

“Artemis will be looking for you, Izabel,” he says. I feel like it’s something he’s wanted to say since he walked through the doorway. “When she finds out that you are still alive—”

“I’ll be waiting for her,” I cut in.

“You need protection.”

“No,” I say quickly, “I don’t. And I meant what I said about babysitters in my driveway, Victor. If I find out that anyone is watching me…”

He stands there, waiting for the rest, but I decide to leave it at that, let him draw his own conclusions, because any one of them are possible. And I think he knows it.

Finally he nods, accepting my decision, and fighting against it inside his heart. I see it in his eyes, the fight.

I step up closer to him, push up on my toes and kiss the edge of his mouth. “I know this will be hard for you to hear,” I say, “but I want you to know that…I’m glad things turned out the way they did. Everything, from all the secrets you kept from me, to the moment Artemis slid that blade across my throat”—I touch my wound with my fingertips—“I’m grateful for it.”

Victor’s eyebrows draw inward; he shakes his head with disbelief, refusal, but I place my hand on his chest again to stop him from saying what he’s thinking.

“It’s usually unimaginable pain and hardship,” I go on, “that ultimately makes us see who we really are, who we were meant to be, who we’ve always been deep inside...” My hand falls away from his chest. I want to tell him more, about the person awake inside of me, but I can’t. I take a step back and say instead, “Artemis can’t kill me, Victor. I’m convinced of this fact. If I was supposed to die by her hands, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

“Sarai?” I hear Dina call from her bedroom down the hall.

I look toward the hall briefly, and then back at Victor, who seems anxious underneath that quiet exterior—he knows our conversation is going to end long before it’s finished.

And that’s how I want it.

“I need to help Dina,” I say.

He nods, though with disappointment.

“How has she been?” he asks.

“Not well. She’s getting worse. I think the diagnosis, just knowing what’s going to happen to her, is accelerating the disease.”

He nods again.

“It always happens like that,” I add. “You’re fine, maybe a few minor symptoms, but nothing debilitating, and then six months after the diagnosis, you’re dead.” I tap the side of my head with my finger. “Most of it is in the head—maybe all of it—I just wish I could convince Dina of that.”

Yet again, Victor simply nods. It’s something else I think he needs to work on: developing his casual side, so maybe one day he and I can have a meaningful conversation about the many flavors of ice cream, or why music moves souls, or how nothing can escape a black hole. We’ve talked about many things in the short time we’ve been together, but never, that I can recall, about the seemingly insignificant things in life, things that have no bearing on his profession—things that, to me, are anything but insignificant, and matter a great deal.

“I’ll be right there,” I call out to my mother.

Then I push up on my toes again, and kiss Victor on the mouth.

“I love you, Victor.”

“And I love you…”

I sense that he wants to say so much more, but he forces it down.

“Sarai, honey…” Dina calls.

“I have to go,” I tell Victor.

Reluctantly, he steps outside; the light from the porch touches his shoulder, leaving one side of his face in shadow.

“Victor,” I say, before he moves down the last step.

He stops, turns to look at me.

“There’s something that I’d like to know,” I say.

“Anything,” he tells me.

I pause. “How did you get me out of that cage? How did you save me? I don’t remember much after—”

“I did not save you,” he admits, regretfully. “I spared you, but I did not save you. It was out of my hands.”

That surprises me; I stare at him, blank-faced, trying to remember that night, any details at all, but I can’t.

“Then who did?”

Victor’s gaze strays, and he glances at the steps momentarily.

“Someone from The Order,” he says.

My breath catches. “Ours?” I ask, hesitantly. “Or Vonnegut’s?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment; he doesn’t even seem fully there.

“Victor?” I turn my head at an angle, looking down at him from the top step in a sidelong manner. “Ours or Vonnegut’s?” I repeat. In my heart, I already know the answer—I just need to understand it—and if it’s true, then there is a shit-storm of new problems that lay ahead.

Still, he doesn’t answer, and I know now that he doesn’t need to.

“Are you safe?” I ask him. “Don’t lie to me, Victor—do they know where you are?”

“They have always known, Izabel.” His voice is calm, his words feel almost…apocalyptic in nature. “It is only a matter of time that all of this”—he waves a hand in the air—“all of this freedom, this life, will come to an end. I have told you, since the beginning, that until Vonnegut is dead and I am in control of his Order, none of us are free; we are but a breath away from the end of everything. And no walls or secrets or disguises can hide us forever. Vonnegut must be identified, and eliminated, before he eliminates us .”