Falling With Grace

I could give him Andrés’s location and sacrifice more lives for my own sake.

I could tell them everything they wanted to know about him.

But it wouldn’t matter if I died in this barrel. The moment those words spewed from my lips in desperation, I’d die inside.

Andrés had spies around every corner.

He’d know before leaving this warehouse that they were on their way.

Then, Andrés would know I was the one to tell his location, and he’d torture me worse than this man when he found me.

Either way, I would bedead.

Either way, someone would get what they wanted from me.

They always did.

I took a deep breath and wrapped my arm around my waist, my body shivering as the water hit my belly button.

A shadow crossed over the lid, and a face hovered above me.

“Please let me out.”

The Boss smiled. “What’s the fun in that, Grace?”

“I’m sorry.”

The water splashed against my breasts.

“A bit too late for that as well.”

A solitary tear forged its path down my cheek, regret gnawing at my very soul like a relentless phantom.

Time slipped through my fingers like grains of sand, the ascending water rising to my ears, threatening to drown me in its dark embrace.

My tears mingled with the encroaching flood, hastening the inevitability of my own end.

I tilted my head upward and pressed my lips to the grate, gasping for breath—the survival instinct embedded in the fiber of our being prolonged the agonizing dance between life and death.

It wouldn’t take much to sink into the waters, take a deep breath of water, like I’d done in my mother’s womb, and complete the life cycle.

It wouldn’t take much.

Then why was it impossible to remove my mouth from the rusty grate?

Water filled the cavities in my eyes, and my world blurred into a wrinkling mess. Filtered words echoed in my ears, the liquid tomb vibrating with the beat of my erratic pulse.

Boom.

The barrel shuttered like someone had taken a bat to the metal sides.

I screamed, jerking my head down into the water, inhaling bits of fluid before I clamped my mouth shut.

11

Elias

The girl’s lips kissed the rusted metal grate, her eyes bulging with desperation beneath the murky water.