CHAPTER 13 — NOBODY GETS ME, WHY CAN’T THEY GET ME?

🦪 DALE LAZARUS 🦪

Dora drags herself up, her figure moving towards me with agonizing slowness; each step is a declaration of defiance against a body that desperately wishes to fail.

She is barely able to stand straight, leaning heavily into the air as if against an invisible wall. Her limbs seem to operate on borrowed strength, each joint protesting the demand of forward motion.

Her face is a mask of brutal damage. Her eyes are swollen shut, sealed by contusions so severe they deformed the contours of her skull. She navigates by instinct, her head tilted slightly, searching blindly for sound or sensation.

A network of dried, dark blood streaks her features, clotting her hair and caking around her mouth and nose. More of it stained the tattered fabric of her clothes, which hung like rags from her shoulders, offering no warmth or dignity.

The exposed skin of her arms and legs is a horrific sight, covered in a shocking, extensive pattern of deep, patchy, multi-colored bruises, shades of purple, green, and yellow overlapping in a terrible collage.

She is not walking; she is being dragged forward by an unrelenting will, a silent testament to the pain made visible.

“You love my father, right?” she blurts out, still struggling to reach me. “You keep choosing him over me. Doesn't that mean we are on the same side?”

I stand there mute, just watching her every movement.

“We both want The Reaper dead, right?” She adds. “He killed the person we love, he killed my father, your best friend. I won't remain sane if I don't kill him; I'll go crazy, die of self-blame and hatred. This is the least I can do for my father; I'm not going to go through this for nothing; I'm going to get him! The Reaper. You feel the same way, don’t you? Don’t you also want to get that animal? He killed your best friend, you are furious, right?”

“Dora,” I whisper sadly, “If the reaper walks up to you, tells you he killed your father, and asks for your forgiveness, what…”

“Never!” she snaps, weakly. “I will never forgive him! It’s not about killing my father in the Ring, it’s about taking away my source of breath…”

“I can’t breathe!” Dora says, and with a desperate, choking sound, she stumbles to a halt, the last trace of her iron control dissolving. She did not fall, but the sudden stop of movement seemed to unmoor her, leaving her trembling violently on the verge of collapse.

A noise tore from her throat, a sound that is less a cry and more of a guttural, raw scream of anguish and exhaustion. It is high-pitched and laced with tears, a keening lament that seemed to vibrate with both physical agony and profound grief.

Simultaneously, her fist balls up and she begins to hammer her own chest, not with the force to do further damage, but with a wild, rhythmic despair. Thud. Thud. Thud. Each strike is a desperate attempt to express the overwhelming pain raging within her ribcage, a display of a heart being ripped apart.

The sounds are a horrifying complex: the choked, tearing sobs; the desperate, sightless screaming; the dull, impacting thuds against her breastbone. It is brutally obvious that the wounds covering her body are only half the battle.

“It’s about ruining me,” she continues, “Traumatizing me, destroying my life. This fight is very personal for me, so I’ll never forgive him.”

“Dora…”

“You don’t get it!” she screams. “Nobody gets it, and I can’t explain how I feel. He’s my father, how can I just let this go? He is dead, my father is dead, and he didn’t die by sickness or an accident; he didn’t die naturally; he was killed, in cold blood, and I know he was killed. I get that I’m doing the same thing in the Ring, and I deserve to pay, so they can come at me too, avenge their loved ones whom I killed, because I will not let my father’s killer go.”

“When I got that call that evening, I… It’s… hard. I’m stuck in the dark, lost, suffocating, I don’t know how to keep living, to move on. Maybe when I finally have his head in my hands, I will find my way back to the light. I’m betting my life on that, so one of us has to die for the other one to live.”

I pause, gawking at her as I try to picture another scenario, hoping she’d understand the killer’s stand, understand me, and where I stand.

“What if…” I say, swallowing hard. “If peradventure, the killer turns out to be someone you know, would you go easy on him? Maybe kill him less painfully?

“No! I’ll be even more furious that the good-for-nothing bastard has been under my nose,” she growls.

Dora’s earlier, rhythmic self-assault morphed instantly into something far more chaotic and terrifying, a fall into pure, uncontrolled hysteria.

Her raw scream intensified, becoming a dramatic, ear-splitting shriek that cut through the silence like splintered glass. It is the sound of sanity tearing, a long, sustained note of utter mental collapse.

Her hands fly from her chest to her head. With the blindness imposed by the swelling, she fumbles desperately, finding purchase in the matted, blood-caked strands of her hair. Then, with a force that seemed impossible given her weak state, she begins to pull.

She yanks at her own hair in handfuls, wrenching her head back and forth as if trying to tear the agony physically out of her skull. Her body twisted out of shape with the effort; her knees locked, her back arched, and her torso shuddered under the strain. Dora looks utterly unhinged; a figure consumed entirely by the internal fire of her suffering.

She isn’t just crying or screaming anymore; she is thrashing, tearing at herself with the manic, terrifying intensity of an individual who has completely lost the grounding of reality, trapped in a private, agonizing hell. “Do you still not get it? Why don’t you get it? I’m not happy, Dad. He was my whole world. When he died, my whole world crumbled. It was burnt into ash alongside his body. I was so scared; I couldn’t even cry because I was scared crying would make it all real. Maybe if I didn’t cry, it would turn out to be a fucking dream, or an act, a prank? All I wanted for him was happiness, but what I saw was his corpse. Why? Why did I have to get his corpse? Why did I have to receive that call?”

“Why did it fucking have to be ME, my own father? It’s always me! Hurt, abandoned, never picked. Why me? Why did the freak have to kill my own father? Why? Why? Am I that unfortunate? Why is every single good thing never in my favor? Why do I have to be sad, traumatized, and tortured all my life? The Reaper… I owe him the same favor, don’t you think? An eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. If I don’t kill The Reaper, I will never forgive myself for letting him go.”

“Do you think I can get to him?” Dora asks in panic, dragging her feet forward.

“Do you think I can kill him?” she stumbles the final steps, her thrashing abruptly halting as her bruised, sightless face comes within inches of mine. Her hands, sticky with dried blood and trembling, lift weakly.

They find my chest, palms spread against the fabric, and begin to rub lightly, a desperate feather-light friction that is agonizingly tender. Through the choked gasps and lingering hysteria, a tiny, fragile whisper escaped her swollen lips:

“You asked what I would do if he were someone I know… do I know him? Do you know who the bastard is? I can just kill him right now! It doesn’t have to be in the Ring… right? Tell me, do you know him?”

“No, Do-ra,” I stammer. “I was just saying.”

“I want him dead,” she presses into my ears, still panicking, “I want him crushed beyond recognition; I want to pluck out his veins, one after the other, so he feels every pain I’ve felt, he has to die, he must die, he should…”

“I get it!” I yell, interrupting her, then lower my voice and head cowardly, unable to look her in the eyes, “Dora, let’s go home, you are soaking wet, and you need treatment.” I say, and she nods weakly, collapsing on my chest.