Paradise. The place people go when they die.
Heaven!
But I don’t get to go.
I killed a man.
In a way, you can say I prepared the last six years for that sin. -to bring death upon another. That wasn’t my intention, but that is how it played out. If he had left me alone, this never would have happened.
I now close my eyes and keep them closed, shielding the window into my soul. I am a female and a small one at that—four-foot-nine inches. I had once believed I would hit the five-foot mark, an invisible block of hope that only melted like ice. The height never came, so I had to develop a fire inside to compensate for my shortness. That infernal billowed out of control when anyone tried to push me around. Just don’t mess with me, and all would be good. I had the tongue of a serpent, deadly. I could strike anyone with my fangs, releasing venom and dissolving their will with my toxic words.
But my stature, people looked down upon me, literally, down upon me.
Despite my inner strength, I looked like a victim to most people who passed me. I was either mistaken for a young child or a damsel in distress.
As an adult, I collected bizarre and uneasy encounters with strange men as I ventured into the world. On seven occasions, creepy men followed me to my car in parking lots. Once while I was fishing, a man hid in a bush to watch me. Even around the mall, men stalked me. Eventually, I was going to get hurt. I needed to make the outside of me as strong as the inside.
That’s when I took up mixed martial arts, which consisted of Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai. I trained as often as my schedule allowed, building my muscles and knowledge. At first, my gym-sparring partners loved going against me. I was someone they could build their ego with. They flipped me around like a rag doll. Back and forth. I hated the disregard they gave me, but my professor of martial arts always said, “Don’t let them disrespect you.” I took that to heart, dedicating the early morning of each day to transforming body and spirit.
And then it happened. The moment I had spent hours and hours training for.
One early morning while hiking in the mountains, a beast of the land spotted me. I, his prey. His nose caught the scent of my pheromones, with drool running down his jutted chin when he appeared, his canine teeth glimmering against the rays of the mountain sun.
He followed me, the sounds of his feet crunching frozen ground and rocks. It didn’t matter how fast I went or how slow I sauntered; he kept my pace perfectly. I couldn’t stand it. I wasn’t going to play his games until he decided to strike. Finally, I turned to him, threw my arms in the air, and said, “What!”
That coward looked around to make sure we were alone. He wasn’t man enough to attack a small woman with an audience. He came after me when he saw it was only him, me, and God. Dark fear tried to seize me, but I had to push it aside. This is what I had spent the last five years training for. As he threw his arms toward my neck, I caught hold of them and pushed them to the sky. I slipped under his arms and used my tiny four-foot nothing to ram my back into his chest as I flung his two hundred-plus pounds over my shoulders and onto the ground. His breath burst out as his back slammed into a pile of rocks.
That man was shocked. He couldn’t believe he had just been bested by someone as small as me. He grabbed my ankles and yanked me down. I did a break fall, keeping my head from hitting the ground. He climbed on top of me, and I wrapped my body into his. I bet he wasn’t expecting that. He probably assumed I would try to push him off. No, I wanted to keep the distance between us at a minimum.
This beast flattened me with his weight, making it hard to breathe. The frosty ground soaked into my back. I had to do something quickly before I lost all my energy. I wiggled a little, and when he adjusted his position, I flipped my legs over his thick neck, twisted my body around, and locked him in a triangle choke. It surprised me to get the correct submission with such a blubbery neck. I squeezed my thighs tightly together, stronger than I ever had before, and I kept constricting that stupid neck. His flesh puffed up, and his face went purple. The sound of something clicked. It didn’t take long for him to stop fighting. I thought about letting go, but I feared what would happen. I had the advantage and wasn’t ready to give that up.
Not sure what to do, I went into my head and meditated as I squeezed that bastard’s neck. Eventually, I moved my legs, and all his dead weight collapsed onto me. I pushed and fought until I shimmied out from under him. He didn’t move. His whole body was flaccid. A nervous laugh came out of me, a high shrill like the sound a rabbit makes as it is dying, which frightened me even more.
I wanted to check his pulse, but I couldn’t put myself in a position where he could grab me again, so I ran. After running for ten minutes, I stopped and called the police. Later that evening, red and blue lights danced on my living room walls when the police showed up at my door to tell me they had found the man dead. I didn’t know what to say as real panic moved in me, raw and course, tearing my nerves apart. Was I going to jail, where I would spend the rest of my years rotting away?
The police took me in, and our steps echoed as our feet slapped against the tile. Giant clanks rang out from each door that control let us in and out of. I gave my statement in a dingy room with stains on the cinderblock walls. The distinct odor of stinky bodies distracted me occasionally as I tried to ignore it and only breathed through my mouth. The light above buzzed and flickered, much as my fear did. Many people there couldn’t believe I had killed the perpetrator as I described. I think some of them thought I had poisoned him or something else. His autopsy concluded he died by strangulation.
Talk show hosts tried to interview me, but I didn’t want to make a spectacle of this man's death. Most likely, he held a place in others’ hearts, those unaware of the monster he really was.
He was a monster. What if he had attacked a woman who didn’t know how to protect herself? Instead of appearing on their shows, I recorded a video encouraging all women to learn self-defense.
I did what I set out to do. I protected my life.
But I will have to live through eternity with the knowledge and pain that I killed a man.
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Defending to Death
by Stephanie Daich