Thomas Hewitt: End Of The Line

Ain't No Grave

He wore the same arrogantly placed grin that haunted the nightmares she'd never shared with Thomas, but it sat crooked now and curved wickedly, exposing the barren slots where teeth used to hang. His face was different, rearranged by her husband's hands in ways that couldn't be mended. His nose had been mangled beyond repair and canted to the right, littered with roseate scars that had stained his features underneath his wrinkled skin, permanently discoloring him. They wove their way upwards to encircle his bloodshot blue eyes, accentuating their irreverent gleam from within their cavernous, crimson sockets. Sockets that had suffered the same fate as his nose, they had been rendered uneven, misshapen. Physically, he had been reimagined as the monster he'd always been, but she recognized him all the same. Hoyt Hewitt had come to claim his own depraved version of redemption. He'd come for Ronnie.

"I didn't come here to do this quick. No," he said with a shake of his head and unmoving eyes, "I came here to enjoy it. I wouldn't mind sharin' a few last words, while you can still talk."

"There ain't nothin' I have to say to you," Ronnie replied matter of factly as she held that stone cold gaze.

Hoyt huffed, "We both know that ain't true, girl," he took a step forward to test her patience with amusement in his expression that was quickly shot down when she stood her ground.

"What do you want me to say, Hoyt? You want me to beg, plead for mercy I know damn well you didn't come here to give me? Maybe you forgot, so lemme remind you," Ronnie said with her head held high and her fists clenched at her sides to hide the tremble that had inevitably struck them, "I didn't beg then and I ain't gonna now."

"You'll beg," he said confidently as he shot an admiring glance to the chainsaw he held firm in his grip, "this things pretty damn good at makin' folks, even one's like yourself, do that."

"Then start it up, you son of a bitch," Ronnie spat, "we'll see if that's true or not."

He tutted in response and her jaw clenched at the condescending infliction, "Now, what did mama ever do to deserve such disrespect? If my memory serves me right, wadn't her who sent you on your way that night?"

Ronnie didn't gratify him with an answer, instead she tried to focus on keeping her breath controlled as it whistled through her nose. He knew better than to expect a response, so he continued.

"There ain't nothin' you could say that I don't already know and nothin' she hadn't already paid for," he said, licking his teeth as he took note of the way she stiffened, "you ain't the first one I'll be usin' this on, had to make sure I got some practice in for you."

Before her eyes closed and she drew in an uneasy breath, he caught a glimmer of that emotion he'd come there to stir within her. She was afraid, and though she was doing everything in her power to hide it from him, it was bound to slip out into the open. His words had forced the reality of the situation upon her like a tidal wave of blood. It had filled the room and crept up the walls of the house where this terror she felt had been forbidden. He had come there to destroy, to fulfill a purpose who's design had been forged the moment they met. She knew it then and she knew it now as she sunk unwillingly into the indigo abyss of his unforgiving eyes, he was her death. Handcrafted from the moment she was born to mark her with an expiration date and she was well past due. She'd escaped the scythe many a time before, and even then as she stood there with fate looming over her, she searched desperately for a way to dodge it just one last time. However, in the ache of her bones and deep in the pit of her pericardium, she knew there was no way to deny the reaper this time. If she ran, Penny would pay the price. He demanded a sacrifice and it had to be Ronnie, she wouldn't allow her daughter to suffer the fate she had been destined to. She had no choice but to stand before judgement and to allow tears to fall. It wasn't her own death she was mourning, she had been faced with it so many times she refused to fear it, it was the life she would lose that brought her to tears. Within his dark, cruel gaze she saw them, the family he'd come to take her from. It was too short a time, she thought to herself as she held onto the image her mind had created of their sweet faces. She wasn't ready to leave them. How harsh it was of death to demand such a thing from her, to force her to lie down and die when she wasn't finished. She wasn't finished living, she wasn't done loving Thomas and she wasn't done teaching Penny to stand before men like Hoyt with her head held high, even when they held a knife to her throat.