There is no way I can fight him. I am completely helpless. Kane is massive and I am only a petit woman. His hands feel light hot weights around my neck and it is already hard to breathe.
I shake my head. How can he do this to me? He loves me, or maybe he used to love me.
“Kane, please. I’m sorry. Please…don’t.” I beg and Kane squeezes my neck tight. I instantly claw at his hands wildly.
“I told you to shut up.” He grunts and I continue to struggle. He has me pined so my attempts are useless. “I loved you, I would have done anything for you. But I have no choice. You were going to leave me,” Kane squeezes even tighter and I scream again for help. There is a small foot bridge near here, not many people use it but maybe today I could be blessed with just a little bit of luck.
“Help! Somebody help me!” I cry as loud as I can. “Please!” I whimper the last because Kane tightens his grip again, cutting off my windpipe. I scream again, one last time. I use up all the breath I have left.
“We could have been happy.” Kane roars and shakes me by the neck. With every time my head hits the ground I bite my tongue and taste blood in my mouth. I whimper and continue to tear at his hands, tying to remove them from my neck. Black spots start to block out my vision until I can’t see Kane’s twisted face anymore.
I can’t draw in any air, I feel like I am under water again. Then suddenly I am, I am pulled back to when I am nine and we have just crashed the car. I can’t breathe, and the car door won’t open. The window won’t smash under the weight of my feet because I can’t get enough force behind it. I give up trying to break the window and look over at my mum. Her blonde hair is floating around her face and she is motionless. I reach out for her and shake her shoulder. Mum moves with each slow shake but doesn’t wake. I start to panic even more now because the water around her head is turning red with her blood. Slowly more and more of the water turns red.
Suddenly my door is ripped open. I look to my right and see my dad reaching to pull me out of the car. I am being dragged out but I can’t focus on much because the burning in my chest is unbearable. I need to breathe but I know I can’t otherwise I will breathe in water. The water starts to feel like Kane’s hands around my neck.
I can slowly start to feel myself fade, everything around me gets blurry. I can’t see my dad anymore, though I know he is still there because I can feel him pulling me to the surface. Through the murky water above me I see something. It is a light. The light. Am I dying? No, it is the moonlight. Everything suddenly turns black again.
I am floating in nothingness, I feel nothing either. I don’t have the need to breathe anymore because there is no burning in my chest of hands around my neck. I have either died or Kane has stopped strangling me. I have doubts about the later, even in my dead state. The look on his face was horrific. His eyes cold, and his lips paused in a tight line.
Unexpectedly there is pressure on my chest. It isn’t crushing me but it is sending tingles through my lungs.
Boom, boom, boom, boom…
The there is blissful air filling my lungs. I am breathing. This pattern repeats over and over and in those moments I don’t think I have experienced anything like it. The all-embracing feeling of liberation. The feeling is even better than when I emerge from holding my breath under water. I know that I have yet again been given another chance at life.
Slowly I start to hear voices. Just one voice actually, but two words over and over, ‘come on’. At first the voice is unfocused and distant, easy to ignore.
“Come on, wake up.” The deep voice tells me. “Wake up, sweetheart.” The voice is frantic now. I realise that this person is really worried about me. It isn’t Kane, his voice is far too harsh to be this unknown person. At first I thought it might be my dad, but I would have recognised it in an instant. No, this voice is unfamiliar to me but they are extremely worried about me, so I do as they say. I grasp onto the steady, ‘boom, boom’ on my chest and pull myself up and out of the dark abyss.
