Nobody.

His word echoed loudly in her head. Serena put her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut tightly. Unwilling to let herself be conquered by his violent mood swings again, she knew she had to try to break free before he returned and she succumbed to his touch one more time. He crossed a line Serena didn't know she had. She'd taken so much from him, but this…that woman was too much. No one cared about her. No one was coming for her. Wolf! Wolf...

She tried the bedroom doorknob. He hadn't locked it behind him. He really didn't give a shit. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and went outside to sit by the dog. The creäture approached snarling until Serena said "It's okay he's a bastard I know." The dog caught the woman's scent and settled into a sad whine. She whispered in a soothing voice. "You're an attack dog. You're supposed to kill me. But I understand you, don't I? I'm not afraid of you." She scratched the dog's muzzle. "Mac is an attack dog too isn't he? " She mused sadly. She sat on one side of the fence the dog on the other continuing to rub his head through the links. The night was chilly and the sky was luminous with stars. It was beautiful, she wished she were up there with the stars. It was cold and white and she wouldn't feel. She had to get away from him. There was only one way to do it. She couldn't sit forever dreaming under the stars, she had to take control. She pulled her exhausted, aching body up by the chain link. Keep on running. It's what she did best.

Inside the house, she dug through her duffel bag, still sitting in a corner of the kitchen for her black jeans, favorite t-shirt and makeup kit. Lastly, she took Mac's bottle of whiskey from the table, swigging as she walked to the bathroom. Cool. Calculated. Concentrating.

She showered, watching in awe at the illusion of her tattoos spinning down the drain. Then there was nothing left, but a dirty girl wrapped in a filthy towel. She dressed and brushed her hair so it was straight and shiny. She stood in front of the dingy mirror over the sink. It was like any filthy dressing room in a run down rock club. She lined her eyes heavily in Kohl as if for the stage. You have seen some unbelievable things with those eyes. She applied blood-red lipstick as if getting ready for a gig. Screams had flown out of that mouth. Real lung ripping screams and not just while singing. Singing is like a freight train running through her head and screaming was part of it. The emotion of that train baring down. In real life, evil had kicked in and it wanted her to scream. The blackest knight of all wanted to own her screams.

Now the song couldn't get to her. She stepped out of its path and watched it like a roller coaster racing past. She no longer thought like a musician. She tried to remember what it was like?

What did I used to say? That I had a mission, a calling. That music was beautiful and it owned its own violence? Songs were her faith, her religion. It was respect for hurt and happiness. Remember? But now she felt like she could just wander off. Off the rails. Finally leave it all behind. It had abandoned her as she it. Mama was right. Oh my God she was right! Serena could never get away from judgment day.

She retrieved the bottle of Valium she'd stolen from his box yesterday and hidden under the mattress. Almost lovingly, she stroked the bottle then held it to her cheek.

She'd been doing this dance with death for years.

She thought too much. She'd been replaying the terrible, incredible scenes in her head. She'd take the pills to forever shut out the whispers of "mine, bitch, mine" that woke her in the darkness every night. Loving and hating the words as much as the feeling of him, unbidden, thrusting between her legs again and again. She wanted him to use her, to take her for himself. She thought if she could make him want her, make him frenzied with lust, she would always know he'd love her. She thought she made him love her. She thought she understood him like she understood his attack dog. She had been wrong. Tonight proved just how wrong. Serena and her illusions.

When she realized she loved him, she knew she truly hated him. In love with the pain. Only when you totally love can you totally hate. Only when you love can you feel the agony of betrayal.

A sip of golden whiskey, anesthetic for the pain of remembrance, courage for the minutes ahead.

She's nobody.

Am I ready this time? The dance is over.

Serena was just a nobody crushed under the weight of her mistakes.

"I'm ready." Serena said aloud to the drawings of spiders on the walls surrounding her.

She opened the bottle of tablets and poured them onto the bed. She looked up as if facing her audience. She swallowed one at a time, washing them all down with small sips of whiskey until both pills and whiskey were gone.

She sits. She waits. The lights begin to dim.

Softly, slowly, gentle as night, the curtain falls for the last time.

And by and by, perhaps she did have stars. She was choosing flight. Fight hadn't worked out so well.

Then she took the dog and started walking. She wasn't really sure where she was going. Was she going home?

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Mac watched Jade's body disappear into the sink hole. He'd fucked her on the back of his truck, trying to erase the picture of Serena's pained face; Serena tried to mask it with hatred. She was still feisty, giving him the finger as he left her humiliated on the floor. What had she said "You're just like all of them?" He fucked the hooker, slamming her head into the rusted metal of the truck bed with each thrust of his dick. She was unconscious when he slit her throat. He didn't have to cut her, he could have just snapped her neck, but he wanted to use his knife to try to erase Serena with the other woman's blood.

He lit a cigarette, sat back in the cab and checked his cell phone messages. Harley telling him the parents of those girls had finally given up and accepted that their precious daughters ran away probably with some rich sugar daddy, and the guy snooping around after Serena had left. He grunted. See? Fuck Walter being on his back all the time. You better fix this son. Fix it fix it fix it. Clean up the mess. Well, he had. Again. But would Walter give him any credit? No, no he just expected it. Nothing interferes with his business. Mac cleaned up after himself no one could say he didn't. He had just one last piece of trash to put out now. Right?

He'd been doing this for days, weeks maybe; he didn't know. Back and forth. Doubting himself when it came to her. She didn't act like the rest of his victims, like any other woman he'd dealt with. She threw him. Her eyes had brought something out in his head. Memories had become a confusing thing. Dust in his eye that he was continuously trying to work out. It was a stained black-and-white photograph that made no sense. Memories don't matter, what happened before doesn't matter. If it ever did.

She doesn't know me. She doesn't matter. That's what he kept telling himself. The last piece of trash.

Mac was used to people finding him intimidating. He had a way of projecting a menacing indifference that immediately hid his keen intelligence. But for some reason she was never really intimidated by him. Afraid sometimes, but never intimidated. There was a difference. Also, she talked to him like a person, not like a goddamned dog.

He rubbed meth on his gums and sat back. He'd cut down recently thinking that might help with his betraying thoughts. Now a small pounding opened its way into his ears, sounding like a rushing river making its way over a thousand-foot cliff. The ecstatic feeling of pins being pushed into his every nerve sent a quiver through his body and he become aware of her hand on his bare chest under his shirt. Serena was touching the wound. The bullet wound. She was tender and he wanted her to touch it. The scarred wound where Walter had shot him when he was seventeen and tried to leave Caineville. Leave the business. Make his own life. He had the scar to remind him he'd never leave.

He felt the sting of sweat roll into his eyes and he tasted her lips on his own. He opened his eyes and he was alone in his truck.

Did he want her, did he feel something for her?

Mac thought for a moment though not about the answer to the question, rather, he thought of the danger that comes from letting a crack form in an emotional wall, even a small one. No, he didn't feel anything. But, when she was there he wasn't so alone. And he liked that she took every goddamn thing he did to her. That he could admit.

As he drove, Mac turned off that part of his brain that normally held control. It didn't go away though, only became a passenger. It watched and listened, but didn't speak. It raised no objection when, feeling a sudden shudder, he pulled into the driveway and realized he was glad she was there. That's as far as he'd let his mind go.

Mac returned to find Serena asleep on the bed. He hoped she'd learned a lesson about who was running the show. He glanced at the book Serena always wrote in laying on the pillow by her head. He remembered Jade's mocking 'she loves you.' He felt nothing for the word. Not even anger. Just...nothing. That was worse because it meant something could take the place of his missing rage. What?

How far would she have to walk? Serena didn't know but was glad she'd never feel tired again. She didn't feel the pebbles or rocks under her bare feet either. She felt no pain if fact. She was really going home. "Where are you from girl?" A man on a horse stopped her on the road. She squinted up the sun was glaring behind his head so she couldn't make out his features. Faceless man.

"Lookout Mt Tennessee.

"Long walk you got."

She nodded because then she was sure. "I 'm going home now." She pulled her leopard coat tightly around her and the rhinestone tiara on her head sparkled in the sunlight as she began to walk faster.

Mac stood in the doorway feeling uneasy as he looked at Serena. Why was she dressed? Fucking bitch got into her stuff while he was out. Whatever, he 'd have her out of those clothes within minutes anyway. He entered the bedroom to find she hadn't stirred. He sat beside her and put his hand between her legs. She still didn't move. Then he saw the empty pill vial. He gripped her face in his hand and saw her skin had a bluish tinge and hear breathing was faint if it was there at all.

"Fuck…." he said under his breath.

He picked up her limp body.

"Hey!" Mac's voice was trying to break into her head. 'You don't die on me bitch!" She blocked it out and kept walking. Long way to go.

"No, you don't, you don't die on me unless I say! Wake the fuck up!" He slapped her face as he walked to the bathroom. He put her in the tub and turned on the shower. He sat behind her keeping her upright. "Don't die!" He said again as the water assaulted both of them.

"Shut up!" she screamed in her mind as she walked on the road. It had started to rain and Mac kept trying to force his way into her head. "Let me go!"

"Think you're smart do you?" He shoved his fingers down her throat forcing her to vomit. She coughed and heaved the blue pills and amber whiskey while the water drenched them both. He kept shoving his fingers deeper and her retching became violent. "Stupid bitch!"

Serena stared towards Death, silently pleading with her, inviting her. Wordless, Death remained still, gazing at Serena with that sorrow in her eyes. Instead of coming to her, instead of wrapping her up in her arms Death moved back, letting the black swallow her until all that was left were the empty shadows. "No please don't go….take me with you!" Serena cried, feeling it all slipping away; not her life, her escape. Even death had abandoned her.

"Let me go!" she choked out.

"No way fucking tough girl you aren't going anywhere, less I send you. I own you. I decide whether you live or die. Don't forget that. "

Is it that I am not ready? That I have not suffered enough? Serena desperately wondered. Every day my pain and my guilt swallows me, and I try to drown it all out with the poison, try to escape it. Instead of living and atoning. Serena felt devastated.

Finally she opened her eyes, finding herself sitting in the tub, the shower on, Mac behind her. When he saw her look back at him, he ignored her disappointed, crestfallen expression and kissed her head.

"No.," she said weakly. "No."

"C'mon," he picked her up and carried her back to the bedroom.

"Fuck was that? Crazy bitch." My crazy bitch.

She didn't answer. Goddamn, it she'd been on her way, she'd finally made a decision. And he ruined it.

Mac noticed a change in her. She was cold and distant. He felt like his control over her was slipping. She didn't care about him anymore.

"I'm tired." Was all she said feeling dizzy and weak.

"I'm not, get your fucking clothes off. Now."

He started to gently undress her, but she pushed him away and stripped off her wet clothing herself in an almost bored way. When she was completely naked, she turned to face him, and he sucked his breath in sharply. She was covered in his marks. So many scars, on her back, thighs, legs, breasts. She was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous, the most perfect body that he had seen in the flesh. He had made her that way.

As he kissed her neck, she heard the click of his folder knife. Her eyes widened and her brain switched into gear. He eased the knife over her pussy. She put her mouth over his hungrily and pulled back with a seductive smile. "Hey, let me, let me start it."

Mac was glad she was playing again, so he let her take the knife

"Say it, tell me I'm nothing." She smiled and plunged the blade into her lower abdomen. She pulled it out and plunged it in again and twisted. Right into the scarred M he'd carved. The blade was low enough in her abdomen on the second pass to that it hit the aorta or lower vena cava either one would cause death.

Blood slowly bloomed as a flower on her white skin leaking out from the wound and dripping on the floor.

"Shit!" Mac pulled back and let her slump to his feet. "Bitch, this isn't your call!"

"I told you, you can't hurt me any more than I already hurt myself. Fuck you Mac. You're nobody too." She closed her eyes and she smiled. He heard her whisper "I loved you."

"It isn't your call!" He crouched and said it close to her face as her last breath escaped. Her call to die or to love him?

Mama you were right. You were right. Serena walked, singing as she went.

"Oh sinner, you'd better get ready

I thought I heard the preacher say,

The time's a comin when the sinner must die,

You'd better get down on your knees and pray,

The time's a comin when the sinner must die."

I'll hold them snakes now mama. It's okay.

She was walking home. We all die.

*Well here we are at the finale. I can't thank you all enough for your interest and support of this story. It was a challenge to write and you guys made me feel like I handled it well :) It was a twisted, dark, intense f**d up ride and I love you all for being on it with me! All your reviews really motivated me. You guys are the best! Mac is a tough one to write.