Witness

In the moment before you die, there is an inevitable amount of clarity. It’s as though every second of your life is laid out in front of you in a series of postcard sized flip books, the important moments played on a slide reel in a dark projection room. Everything else fades away and it’s just you and your life.



“Mara,” Thomas breathed lowly, his eyes searching my face as though he would find some sort of answer there, some sort of assurance that he was doing the right thing or the wrong thing. “Are you going to be okay to walk home?”

I felt like everything inside me was subject to projectile vomiting at any moment.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

Thomas. Thomas the film student, with his perfect filters and impeccable taste in soundtracking. Thomas, the rich son of one of New York’s film stars who just happened to spot me in a class and took a liking to me. Thomas, the first and the last. Thomas, six-four in his Timberlands and sleepy blue eyes. Thomas, all shaggy hair and thin lips and white, white smile. My Thomas. Thomas.

Suddenly nothing.

“Are you sure?” he asked again, prodding me to say the words that would give him some sort of solace to send me packing in the middle of the New York night. “I can call a cab for you.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Containing a heaving sob, I turned on my heel and walked out the door of his Tribeca brownstone, the steps of the stoop taking me further and further away from the relationship I’d tried so hard to save. Thomas, six-four in his Timberlands. Thomas, six-four with his heart in my hand.

“Mara,” he called after me. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t even glance back.

As far as New York City goes, Tribeca is one of the safest neighborhoods. Cue 'Empire State of Mind' on repeat – now I’m down in Tribeca now I’m down in Tribeca now I’m down in Tribeca but I’ll be hood forever. I swear I could feel the eyes of New York stars watching down on me as I wandered up and down their streets for what felt like hours, trying to get a hold of myself.

I had to keep talking myself out of going back to his front door and begging to talk more. We’d already been over it what felt like a million times – six months, no more feelings, it was as simple as that. I was just a broke dreamer from Alphabet City and he was… Thomas, six-four with his wide-open future. Not that he ever said that. He didn’t have to.

Tribeca. Tribeca. The safest part of New York City, perhaps. The eyes of Hollywood goddesses on their weekend trip to the Big Apple watching me as I finally convinced myself to get on the subway home. Canal Street station would be my salvation. Canal Street station would take me home to my bed and away from the sadness. I knew it was coming, it had only been a matter of time. I just needed to get on the subway home. Tribeca, safest part of New York City, perhaps.

“You won’t get away with this, Trask,” shouted a voice, shaky with the weight of fear and bravery mixing together came from an alley as I passed it. At first, I almost didn’t stop. At first, I thought to keep walking. Sometimes, crime simply happens and the best thing to do is to get yourself away from it.

Now I wish I would have just run.

But I turned myself into a pillar of sand that night, standing frozen with fear under a streetlight, my neck snapped toward the source of the sound. Just barely through the hazy light, I could see two figures, one crumpled on the ground and another standing defiantly over it, arms outstretched. All I could see was their shadows, to begin with.

And just as my eyes adjusted, they were greeted with the crimson spray of blood and brain matter. A scream involuntarily escaped my lips.

In moments, I was tackled to the concrete, the breath breaking in my own lungs. I struggled to regain it, gasping at nothing, as a body pinned me down, his hand on my wrists above my head and a gun pressed to my collarbone. I screamed again at the searing heat as it melted my skin right beneath it. Still hot with death.

I couldn’t see his face, he was so close. The ends of his long, stringy hair brushed against my skin tenderly as I writhed beneath him, his breath warm on my cheek. “What’s your name?” he demanded coldly, pressing the gun harder into my chest.

I couldn’t speak.

“What’s your name?” he demanded again, pulling the gun from my chest now to my temple. I screamed again. He spit on my face and I prayed someone would come to rescue me.

“What. Is. Your. Name?”

No one was coming.

“Mara!” I cried. “Mara Hitchcock!” I could see my life then, too, though so little had happened yet – my foster home, the glimpse of hope at NYU, Amelia, Thomas – and I could feel myself struggling to get away from death.

Just as I could feel his grip loosening on my wrists.

In a gut reaction, I drove my knee directly into his scrotum as hard as I could muster, sending him toppling over off of me. A shot blew off into the night, just narrowly missing my hands as I shakily pushed myself up off the pavement and began to run. He screamed after me, all of his voice screaming and tearing through the night.

Mara Hitchcock, the name that condemned me.

If only I could have just been born Lilia George. Maybe then.



Harry was lying in a growing pool of blood and I couldn’t stop myself from sobbing.

“It’s a shame,” Damien murmured darkly. “I would have maybe let him go if you kept playing by the rules.”

I could almost see straight up the barrel, and I struggled to focus on it as Damien took a step closer to me, and then another, slowly closing the gap between us until he finally was just at a half-arms reach. The gun would rip through me there. He would decimate my face and they would have to identify me by my fingerprints. Easy as falling asleep. Fingerprints. Pools of blood.

“I just have to ask, Mara,” he breathed, his voice low. “Did you really think you would get away with it? Did you really think you could escape me and start a new life with him? Did you really think you could out run me?”

Never underestimate him.

I thought to those blissful days in Holmes Chapel when we thought Damien to be dead. Harry asked me if I would maybe go to London someday. He wanted me in his life. And I thought about it too. I wanted it so badly – I so badly, wanted that normalcy, the happiness that he could bring me, the regularity it could return to my world.

“Yes,” I whispered, unable to do nothing more.

The gun was cocked, all he had to do was shoot. Easy as blinking. Easy as falling asleep.

I could see the little vein above his brow tense as he did, the anger flowing through his system. He simply laughed at my response.

“You know, you wasted my last bullet that night, Mara,” he hummed. “I had to go and buy more after that. I won’t let my mistakes allow you to get away again.”

The next few seconds moved very slowly. My glance flitted to that door from which Damien came, and I prayed to God that someone would come bursting through it to rescue us. That somehow, there was a God and he was looking after us – after Harry, who wore that cross on his very skin, and after me who loved him so. But the door didn’t budge.

No one was coming.

Then, my gaze flitted to Damien. His eyes were grey and muted, so unlike my eyes. But the rest… there it was. His long hair, the same shade as my own. His nose, the same as Arthur’s and the same as mine. And his lips, though shrouded with hair from weeks without a shave… they could have whispered my very secrets.

Easy as falling asleep. Fingerprints. Pools of blood.

I saw myself in him for the first time. We were one in the same, Damien Trask and I. We’d wandered our lives alone and found ourselves in something, and then we’d lost it at each other’s hands. He saw red when he looked at me, and I saw red when I looked at him – and when I looked at the floor where Harry’s body now lay motionless. But we were different in one way. I hadn’t underestimated him, but he had underestimated me.

“Oh Damien,” I murmur in an effort to distract him. “I wish you things could have been different for us.”

Incredulous confusion struck his face. “What do you – “

But before he could finish, I took one swift step out of his line of fire and brought my hand down on the gun. My brain felt as though it was working faster than my body could even move, and my movements then struggled to keep up with my plan. Whatever amount of a plan this could count as.

I punched the nose of the gun in his hand and his finger slipped on the trigger, sending off a bullet into the depths of the warehouse around us, the metal rattling off the tin walls. I could hear the snap of the bones in his fingers, simple as twigs, as I ripped the gun from them. Damien cried out in agony, his voice echoing off the walls just as the bullet had. And suddenly, before I could even realize it, the gun was in my hands. The very gun that had nearly killed me twice, the very gun that had shot so many innocents, so many people I loved.

It was now in my hands.

“Damn it Mara, things would have been so much simpler if you could have just learned how to play by the fucking rules.”

He took a struggling swipe at me and I dodged, my self defense classes coming into play. In one single movement, I ducked beneath his swooping graze and kicked at the back of his knees, sending him buckling to the ground. I cocked the gun and glanced back at Harry, praying for some sort of movement – a moment of weakness, I was a pillar of salt. Seconds later, Damien was on his feet again and with a instantaneous kick of his leg, he sent the pistol flying from my hand and skittering across the ground.

In a mad dash, the two of us crashed to the ground, our arms and legs nearly undistinguishable from each other as we fought toward the gun just meters from us. His fingers tangled in my hair, pulling me back as I clawed at his eyes, kicking and struggling against his force. He was strong but I was more knowledgeable. I kicked and kicked until finally he threw me off with a wide, wild punch to the gut. I gasped for air, my lungs unable to find any, my eyes smarting from the immediate pain.

I caught a glimpse of Damien attempting to scuttle across the floor, the bones in his hand sticking grotesquely through the skin, blood splattering all over the floor. I could see the blood trickling from his eyelids where I’d scratched them, blurring his vision with red. It was all red.

He was inches away from the gun and I saw that as my moment. I threw myself to it, to him, to whatever my fate would end up being. The game had to end. One of us had to win. And that gun was the key to the door.

My body landed on top of his. He cried out in surprise. I cried out in horror as I spotted his hand on the gun once more, no time for my life to flash in front of my eyes this time – only his hand on the gun, bones askew and bloody.

Damien writhed beneath me, flipping to face me, the gun gripped in his fingers. Once more, I dodged to the side, this time taking the heel of my hand and smashing it against his nose. He cried out in surprise, his hands immediately going to clutch his would, the gun clattering to the ground.

He realized at the same time that I did what was going to happen. And it all seemed to happen so slowly. My hands going to the gun, the power of the trigger heavy on my fingers. The wild look of fear and hate in his eyes. My glance to the door, my prayer that they would come and save us. That I wouldn’t have to do this, that it wouldn’t have to be my job. My vision blurred with tears.

No one was coming.

So I turned the gun to his head, looked right in his hollow grey eyes, and I shot him myself.

Easy as falling asleep. Pools of blood. Fingerprints. Damien and me.