When she woke, Angie could barely open her left eye, her vision a muddled streak of colors and light blurred like frosted glass. Her head throbbed, every heartbeat a sledgehammer against her temples. She could tell that the side of her face was swollen and bruised.
The ground was cold against her bare legs. The heavy iron door was open and she could see outside into the woods. A strip of sunlight crossed the dirt floor and warmed her feet. She heard footsteps and in a second there he was standing over her like a tombstone. His figure was a dark silhouette backlit by the open door and it took a second to see him in any sort of detail.
Dwayne Brewer wore a pair of dirtied blue jeans, the fronts heavily stained and the knees muddied with dirt. He was barefoot and shirtless, the burns stretching from his stomach to his chest, climbing his neck and wrapping over his jaw. A faded tattoo was inked on his left breast. She glanced down and saw that he was holding a butcher knife loosely in his right hand. Her reflection shone in the face of the steel.
“Please,” she whimpered. “Please, just let me go.”
Dwayne shuffled forward with his feet on either side of her body, and when he was standing directly over her, he dropped to his knees with his legs straddled over her thighs like a saddle. The two were face-to-face. He took the blade and poked the knifepoint straight into her forehead. Angie’s head rocked back until her crown was flush against whatever stood behind. He held the knife there like a needle prick and she felt a drop of blood run cold the length of her nose then fall to her chest.
“All I wanted was my brother,” Dwayne said. “That’s all I wanted.” He pulled the knife back and swiped its tip against his pants. “You couldn’t let me have that. You couldn’t let me have one thing.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Please, just let me go.”
“You’re exactly like the rest of them,” he said. “I didn’t think you were, but you are. You look at people like me, and think you’re better than I am. Well, I’ve got news for you. You’re no better. You, Calvin, and Darl, the whole lot of us. ‘A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech, winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his finger, with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord; therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.’ You know that verse?”
Angie shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said again. She kept repeating those two words with every breath she took.
“That’s Proverbs,” Dwayne said. He placed his hand flat on her thigh, ran his palm up her leg, and hooked one finger under the hip of her underwear. Angie flinched, disgusted he could touch her.
“Please, please,” she said. “I’m with child.”
Dwayne’s face shriveled with repulsion.
“I’m carrying a child,” Angie said. “Please, just let me go. I have a baby.”
“I don’t consider it any sort of blessing to bring a child into a world like this.”
Angie wept. “But I have a child. I have a child.” That one thing was all she knew now, the only truth she held. The child. There was nothing outside of that.
He rose and hovered over her. “I’ve got to run back to the house,” he said. “But I want you to think about what that verse means, what the last part of that verse is saying. ‘Broken beyond healing.’”
Dwayne didn’t say another word. He simply turned and walked into the light. In a moment, he was gone, and the only sounds were those of birds and of Angie whimpering softly on the floor.