Harrowing Read Free Page A

elbows. Bruno made no move to stop me and haltingly, gawkily, as if I were a wooden marionette being handled by a novice puppeteer, I dragged myself away from him.
    Thankfully, for whatever reason, he continued to ignore me. I slid my panties up and grappled my way towards the table, some tiny, survival-oriented portion of my brain still alert enough to remind me to grab my handbag before making my escape. I reached the door, wrestled with the lock with fumbling fingers, managed to stagger out into the corridor. There was no sound from inside the conference room.
    I tried to run, but my ankles kept twisting in my moderately high heels. Somehow I made it to the office door and managed to wrench the lock open. Blood coursed down my legs, sluiced over my shoes and dribbled into patterned footprints on the floor. A vague part of me wondered inanely how Bruno Jarvas would explain those marks on the ground later on, or if he planned to mop them up.
    I pounded against the elevator buttons, but terror and panic spurred me to flee down the stairway. I crumpled down a few flights, then realized I couldn’t keep going like this. There was no way I would make it down fifty floors on foot in the state I was in.
    I struggled with the safety bar on the nearest fire escape door and collapsed into a corridor. I had no idea which floor I was on. My legs gave way and I smashed against the ground, grinding my cheekbone painfully against the hard porcelain tiles. Blood continued to stream down my legs. I wondered what Bruno had done to me. Obviously I was no virgin, and I currently enjoyed a happy and active sex life with Calvin. So I couldn’t understand how Bruno could have hurt me so badly.
    I heard footsteps on the stairway behind me. Bruno’s voice, sneaky and prideful.
    “Come out, come out, wherever you are. Papa Bruno’s coming for you,” I thought I made out. Although, of course, I could also have been delirious.
    I decided not to hang around to find out. I had to search for someplace to hide. That was hard, because I was leaving a trail of blood on the floor. I reasoned, in the dazed-out, rather irrational state I was in, that the first thing I had to do was to somehow wash myself clean.
    I began to crawl along the hallway. I felt lightheaded. I passed a row of shiny elevator doors, gleaming silver beckoning enticingly at me. I pulled myself towards them. The safety bar on the fire escape door rattled. There was no time to wait for an elevator.
    Casting about in desperation for anything, anyplace at all I could curl myself into, I caught a glimpse of a restroom. I didn’t stop to decipher whether it was a ladies’ or a gents’. I barrelled through the door like a lump of clay, slammed it shut, barred it from within with a broom handle. Thankfully, there was a lock as well, and I turned it. I prayed I hadn’t left any tell-tale traces of blood outside the door.
    I leaned back against the door, panting, still on all fours, and glanced about me. It was a standard public bathroom, sterile white linoleum and rows of bleach containers against the back wall of a nearby closet. I felt blood seep through my skirt and spread out in a puddle around my legs. Before I could react, someone began to bang at the door and rattle the door handle. I almost leapt backwards as if struck by an electric shock, would have leapt backwards for real if I’d been standing up. As it was, all I could do was slide myself away from the door, whimpering. My hands splashed into the blood on the ground and I left crimson handprints on the floor as I moved.
    Whoever it was continued to bang insistently on the door. I prayed it was only some lady with an urgent need to use the toilet. But the banging was too loud, too violent. No one pounded so aggressively when all they wanted was to have a pee. Besides which, there were restrooms on every floor. Whoever it was shook the door handle without respite, slammed himself against the door over and over again, plastered