Twenty minutes later the glass of water shatters at my feet.
The clear and cold rubble spikes my toes and streaks my
glossy wet skin with blood.

I back pedal feeling sick and dizzy. My legs shiver as weakness increases and my knees buckle under the weight of my body. I hit the floor and realize in a panic that I’ve been drugged and I’m in danger.

Doug looms into view, stretching a terrifying smile over me.
Success glimmers in his perverted eyes.

My thought process is muddy like I reside in the murky blur at the bottom of a lake. I try to fight back to the surface but manage only to sink further into the muck of my fleeting consciousness.

Darkness creeps into my vision like the condemning
embrace of the devil—draping over my last moments with
the incapacitating hell of not being able to defend myself.

So I pray, and I scream, and just before I fade completely beneath the lake, and into the thick murk of the devil’s embrace, I see a gun shove into the back of Doug’s head.