Just
Hold Me
I shut off my car engine and pulled the key out of the
ignition. Then I grabbed my purse from
the seat beside me and got out of the car, shutting the door behind me with the
tip of my high heeled shoe.
I climbed the two steps that led to the back door of my house and
hit the button on the wall that closed the garage door.
“I’m home!” I called, as I entered the kitchen through the back
door and tossed my keys down on the counter.
I kicked the heels off my tired feet and left them by the door, as I
walked through the kitchen.
Suddenly, I stopped and looked around. “Tyke?” I called, wondering where my
chihuahua was. Tyke was always there to
greet my husband Brian and I whenever we came home, yapping frantically. But that afternoon, he was nowhere in sight.
“Litty?” I asked, calling the name of my other chihuahua, Tyke’s
little sister. Litty was more reserved
than Tyke, but she was usually right there beside him to meet me at the
door.
I wandered into the foyer and saw that the front door was slightly
open. Sighing in annoying, I closed
it. “Brian?” I called, wondering where
that husband of mine was, irritated at him for leaving the front door
open. Didn’t he realize that Tyke or
Litty could get outside and get lost, or even get kidnapped again, like they
did last year? Obviously not. He could be so irresponsible at times.
Upon entering the living room, I gasped. The wooden planter beside the doorway was
tipped over, the beautiful antique vase that had rested on top of it shattered
on the hardwood floor, dirt and leaves scattered all across the floor.
One of the dogs must have knocked it over, I thought,
but that didn’t seem quite right to me.
Tyke and Litty were very small, and the planter was heavy and
sturdy. I didn’t think they would have
enough strength to knock it over.
Maybe Brian had bumped into it by accident. Just as I was about to call for him again,
I saw that the phone on the table beside the couch was off the hook, dangling
off the table by its cord.
I started to feel uneasy.
It wasn’t like Brian to be this scatter-brained and
irresponsible. Leaving the door open
was one thing, but knocking a plant over and not even bothering to clean it up
and leaving the phone hanging like that were different. Something didn’t feel right.
I headed towards the staircase that led to the second story of the
house, figuring Brian must be up there.
Halfway up the stairs, I stopped in my tracks, my eyes widening. There was a spot of something on the stair
in front of me. But it wasn’t just a
little spot. It was bigger, more like a
puddle. It was dark in color… almost
like blood. Squinting down at it, I
bent over and touched it, pulling my hand back in shock when I realized it was
still wet. I examined my fingers,
finding a dark crimson substance streaked across them. I sniffed them and became aware of the
bitter, slightly metallic smell that could only be one thing. Blood.
It was blood.
I gasped and hurried up the stairs, my eyes growing wider as I
realized there was a trail of little blood spots. By the time I had reached the top of the
stairs, I had grown dizzy and slightly nauseous. It wasn’t that I couldn’t stand blood; it
was the fact that I was suddenly terrified.
“Brian!” I called, following the red trail down the hall. It was leading to our bedroom. Oh my God, please, no, I silently
begged, scared to death of what I was going to find at the end of the
trail.
Taking a shuddering breath, I flung open the door to our
bedroom. At first, I saw nothing, just
a few more small blood spots dotting the light colored carpeting. I looked all around on the floor, afraid I
was going to find Brian there. But he
was nowhere to be found.
Then I eyed the door to the bathroom. It was open partway, and the light was
on. “Brian?” I asked, surprised at how
trembly my voice sounded.
I took a deep breath and headed to the bathroom. I walked inside and felt slightly relieved,
seeing that everything looked to be in order.
But there were a few more little blood spots dotting the tiled
floor. They led to the shower. Bravely, I strode up to the shower and
jerked back the curtain. And then I let
out a scream of sheer horror.
There, hanging from the curtain rod above the shower, was Tyke, a
shredded piece of a towel wrapped around his neck like a noose.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, one hand going to my mouth. The other reached out gently to touch
Tyke. His body was limp and lifeless,
his neck titled at an odd angle. My
poor little dog was dead.
“Oh my God,” I cried again, panic rising within me. “Who did this?!” I demanded out loud. I turned away, unable to look at the
horrible sight before me any longer.
I ran out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. Suddenly, another thought came to me. Where was Brian? I still hadn’t found him.
“Brian!” I screamed shrilly.
“Bri, where are you!?”
I jumped, as something rustled in the walk-in closet behind
me. I whirled around to find that the
door was slightly open. I began to
breathe rapidly, terrified. There was
someone in the house. Whoever had
murdered Tyke was still there, lurking in the closet.
I wanted to run, I wanted to scream, but I felt frozen in
place. My feet refused to move, staying
planted to the floor instead.
Suddenly, the door inched open even more. I opened my mouth to scream… and then I
began to laugh, as I saw the little head that poked out.
“Litty!” I cried in relief, bending over to scoop up the little
dog. Litty looked up at me with wide,
scared looking brown eyes. Her whole
tiny body was trembling, and I knew it wasn’t just because she was a
chihuahua.
“Litty, who was here?” I asked softly, cradling her to my
chest. “Who did this?”
Of course, she couldn’t answer me, but I knew she knew that
something had happened. I could only
imagine what had gone on. Being the
shyer one, Litty had managed to run and hide in the closet when whoever had
killed Tyke had come into the house.
Poor Tyke, always the curious one, had probably gone to
investigate. I realized that it had
probably been a burglar, and Tyke had caught him in action. I smiled tearfully. Just as curiosity always killed the cat, it
had killed the dog, in this case.
I felt a little better having Litty there with me. Besides being scared and nervous, she was
unharmed. But there was still one
unanswered question. Where was Brian?
“Come on, Litty,” I whispered.
“Let’s go find your Daddy.” My
heart pounding, I carried Litty out of the room and down the stairs.
“Maybe he went outside,” I said, talking aloud, even though Litty
of course didn’t understand what I was saying.
It was more of a way to comfort myself.
I saw that the French doors that lead to the screened-in back
porch were open, but that was not a surprise.
We usually left them open on warm days to let some fresh air into the
house. I walked out onto the porch,
looking around for Brian. He wasn’t
there.
I carried Litty out the door and down the steps to the
backyard. I looked around, wondering
where Brian might be. I didn’t hear the
lawnmower running, so I knew he wasn’t off mowing the lawn somewhere. So where was he?
The answer came to me when my eyes rested upon a blue lump lying
on the grass towards the edge of the yard, behind a large tree. “Oh my God,” I cried, breaking into a
run. I dropped Litty and let her run
along behind me, as I raced towards the lump.
That lump turned out to be my husband.
“Brian!” I screamed, dropping to my knees beside him. He was lying in the grass, on his side, his
back to me, curled up in a fetal position.
“Brian?” I asked, touching his shoulder.
“Leigh,” I heard him say weakly.
My eyes scanned his body.
I didn’t see any wounds on him, luckily. “Are you okay, baby?” I asked, gently
gripping his shoulder and rolling him towards me.
He winced in pain, and I gasped in horror as I caught site of him
from the front. His blue Kentucky Wildcats
T-shirt was soaked with blood all down the front. “Oh my God,” I gasped. Trying to keep the panic out of my voice so
as not to scare Brian, I softly said, “Honey, there’s an awful lot of
blood. I need to lift your shirt up so
I can see where it’s coming from, okay?”
Brian nodded weakly, looking up at me with scared blue eyes, which
were glazed over with pain. I grabbed
his hand and gave it a squeeze. “It’ll
be okay, honey,” I whispered reassuringly.
“Everything’s gonna be fine.”
Very gently, I eased up his T-shirt, trying not to hurt him. He winced and clenched his teeth in
pain. “I’m sorry,” I said softly,
getting it up over his stomach. That
was enough for me to see where all the blood was coming from. There was a large gaping slash wound running
all the way from his right side, just below his rib cage, to the middle of his
stomach.
“Oh, my God, Brian. Who
did this to you?” I cried, desperately trying to hold back tears.
“It was a man,” Brian replied softly. “I-I was on the phone in the living room,
and he came in through the front door.
Tyke started barking at him, and I ran.
He-he chased me, all the way out here, and then… then he stabbed me.”
I began to feel light-headed, like I could pass out at any second,
but I fought it. Brian’s breath was
coming in short gasps now, and I knew he was in trouble. “Brian, I’ll be right back,” I choked
out. “I need to go call for some help,
okay? Just hold on.”
Before he could even respond, I leaped to my feet and raced back
towards the house. I grabbed the phone
in the kitchen and started to dial, when I realized there was no dial tone.
“Damnit!” I cried, realizing the phone in the living room was
still off the hook. I hurried to that
phone and used it to dial 911. I spoke
quickly to the operator that answered, rattling off my name and address and
briefly telling her what had happened.
Before she could even tell me to stay on the line, I hung up and ran
outside. I had to get back to Brian.
When I got there, he looked worse than before, even though I had
only been away for a couple of minutes.
His skin looked pale and ashy, and his lips had a bluish gray tint to
them. His whole body trembled, and a
cold sweat had broken out on his forehead.
“It’s gonna be okay, sweetheart,” I whispered, smoothing his hair
off his clammy forehead. “An ambulance
is coming. It’ll be here any minute.”
“I… I love you… Leighanne,” Brian wheezed.
I bit my bottom lip, unable to blink back the tears that had begun
to flow from my eyes. “Don’t say that,
Brian,” I said fiercely. “Don’t tell me
that like you’re going to die or something, cause you’re not!”
He smiled sadly at up at me, and then his eyes began to slowly
close.
“No!” I cried, gripping his shoulder. “Don’t close your eyes, Bri. Stay with me!”
His eyes fluttered open again.
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said, his speech slurred. “I’m just so tired…”
“I know. But you can’t go
to sleep. Not yet. Fight it,” I urged stubbornly, my sharp tone
causing him to become more alert.
I noticed that he had begun to shiver. “Are you cold, honey? Can I get you anything? A blanket, anything?” I started to get up, remembering something
about how you should keep injured people warm until the paramedics got there.
“No,” Brian cried sharply, startling me. “Don’t go,” he said, his tone
softening. “Just hold me.”
“Alright,” I replied, my voice barely a whisper. I carefully leaned down and took him in my
arms, trying to move him as little as possible. I gently pulled him into my arms so that his
head rested against the crook of my right arm, and his upper body was in my
lap. I held him tightly, cradling him
as if he were a baby.
His trembling stopped, as his body began to relax, except for the gasping
painful breaths he struggled to take.
“Just a few more minutes,” I said softly, stroking his hair. “Just hang on a few more minutes.”
But Brian could not do this.
Seconds later, he took his last shuddering breath, and his blue eyes slowly
closed for the last time. My Brian died
in my arms a moment later.
I began to sob, hovering over him, my tears falling onto his
face. “Brian,” I whispered, softly
chanting his name, as if it would bring him back. But of course, it did not.
I heard a mournful little bark behind me and saw that Litty had
come up. She came around and sniffed at
her master, still lying lifelessly on my lap.
She began to lick his hand and looked up at him with hopeful eyes,
expecting for him to pet her.
I turned away, unable to even look at the tragic sight, and cried
even harder.
***
I woke up with tears streaming down my face. As I became oriented, everything came
flooding back to me.
“Oh God,” I murmured aloud, wiping the tears from my eyes.
“Leigh? You okay?” a sleepy
voice asked.
I rolled over in bed to face the man lying next to me. “I’m fine,” I replied. “I just had a horrible nightmare, that’s
all.”
Brian nodded sympathetically.
“You wanna tell me about it?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No,” I
replied. “Just hold me.”
And he did.
The End
AN: This story was inspired by the video for
Fuel’s “Hemorrhage”. I hope you liked
it!
Just
Hold Me Ó 2001 by Julie