“Jerry is not home, right? I saw him leaving?”  Bobby walked up the stairs.

“Yeah, he said he’d be home late,” Jerlina and Scarlett followed Bobby to the media room, both filled with expectations as they were in the dark about the content of the pen drive that Bobby wants to watch with them. 

Bobby close the door the moment both of them entered. 

“I’m not sure how gory the contents of this pen drive are. I was told this has the recordings of Emma’s final moments. So if you are not prepared, you can leave and keep watch-“

“I’ll watch!” Jerlina interjected.

That woman had hurt her a lot and even in her death, she tried to hurt Joel. She wanted to know how she died. She wanted retaliation. She wanted to know if karma got her. She wanted closure. 

Scarlett sat between Bobby and Jerlina and Jerlina held Scarlett’s hand tightly. She could see Bobby holding her other hand. 

“Both of you… if you cannot handle it just stand up and leave. There were instructions left that the entire footage can be played once. I don’t want to miss even a second,” Bobby said. “Seriously, I’d kill anyone who interrupts me.”

Jerlina saw the convition in his face. Bobby even removed the safety from his gun and placed it on the coffee table in front of him.

“Aren’t you going a little too far?” Even Scar found that excessive. 

But Jerlina could understand. Emma pushed Daisy and left her alone to die a slow and painful death. Bobby would want closure too.

The video started playing. It started after Emma was on the floor after her fall. People were shuffling and shifting. Many people were trying to take a video or picture of the woman who fell. It was rather poetically ironic. 

Emma wanted everyone to see that Jeremy is a bad guy and tried to record him and when she was on the ground asking for help, people were more focused on taking pictures of her than helping her. No one was giving her first aid and everyone was asking the other to move back and give enough space for her to breathe, while no one turned off their camera. 

Like a circus animal…

Emma was grunting and grumbling. One of the videos was taken very clearly and it showed that Emma had a small cut at the back of her head that made blood spread out on the pavement. Scalp injuries do tend to bleed profusely and most times they aren’t that serious after all. One of her wrists appeared to be twisted and her legs appeared to have fractured.

She would have survived! But she didn’t!

As she lay in a twisted way, she cussed and blamed Jeremy for pushing her down. 

“Please… call for an ambulance…” she started to beg. “It hurts…”

Jerlina let out a sigh. It was tough to hear the desperate pleads for help and the fear that started to get projected on her eyes as she saw the cameras pointing at her. 

“She’s bleeding down there too…” someone said and she saw a couple of men trying to take a video of the blood pooling between Emma’s legs. Emma had her miscarriage very recently and the fall must have caused more bleeding.

As a woman and as someone who went through that suffering, Jerlina oddly felt pity towards Emma for getting videoed in that state. There are some things she wouldn’t wish even on her enemies and this… It caused goosebumps in her skin. Scarlett too clutched Jerlina’s hands tighter. 

It is something any woman can sympathize with. 

But is Emma worth the pity?

No one said anything and they all focused only on the big screen. The speakers amplified even the smallest of noises and they felt like it was happening in front of them.

“No…move away…” Emma tried to get the men off from her. Maybe her legs were badly hurt, she couldn’t keep her knees together and the men kept on filming not minding her discomfort as she was getting filmed in one of the worst ways a woman would prefer to get filmed. 

“Please… call an ambulance…” Emma pleaded and only after that did someone bother to call for an ambulance.

And the ambulance arrived and the footage then changed to the video camera inside the ambulance. Jerlina didn’t know if all ambulances had a camera inside, or if it is a special one. 

She found out the answer pretty soon.

Emma was carefully placed on the stretcher and was secured inside the ambulance. The door of the ambulance was closed and the vehicle started to move. The EMT professionals or the ones that were dressed that way stopped doing whatever they were doing and sat on the seats at the side. 

What?

“Help!” Emma said meekly. The recording was made with a high definition camera and the voice recording was very clear and crisp as if they used an ASMR microphone. They would hear the movement of Emma’s hand over her sheets even.

“No!” One of the EMT professionals said. His face was blurred in the video and Emma’s bewildered face was shown in close-up. 

“Help! I cannot die…” she tried to get their attention but then she started to scream at the top of her lungs. 

“Ahhhhh! Ahhhhh!Ahhhh!”

Emma started to scream and writhe in pain as if she was on fire.  “Help! Help!” she screamed but the EMTs didn’t offer any help and just stared at her. 

For more than two minutes, the video was filled with the screams of Emma. She screamed and screamed until she started to choke on her saliva, but even then she didn’t stop screaming.

“If you stop this, I’ll shoot!” Bobby’s shout made Jerlina turn to the side where Bobby was pointing his gun at. 

“Joel!” she stood up and ran to Jeremy standing by the door. She didn’t even know how long Jeremy was standing there. She knew it would hurt him to hear his sister’s scream, but Bobby had a loaded gun.

“Do you want anything?” she asked and tried to push him outside. She knew Bobby is serious when he said that he would kill anyone disturbing him.

Jerlina noticed Jeremy’s eyes were on the screen and Emma was still screaming as the EMTs were sitting calmly.  “You can play it only once and so Bobby… We can talk outside, Joel,” she tried to push him out of the media room.

“Let me in, Jeryl,” Jeremy looked at her and she saw the darkness in his eyes. It scared her.

“I want to watch,” he said and Jerlina’s heart skipped a beat. Jeremy then bent and placed a kiss on her forehead. “I am fine. I want to watch,” he said and walked towards the recliner. Jerlina followed him and sat beside him. 

“Do you remember the bumblebees that were around you, Ms. Cooper?” the other EMT who was a woman asked. “One even stung you, right?”

Emma was not even listening and was screaming nonstop as the woman continued, “It injected a special poison inside you…Do you know what it does?”