“For death begins with life’s first breath and life begins at touch of death.” – John Oxenham
X
I raise my hand and look at it. My muscles are cramped, my fingers like blades, because I could cut her right now. If I wanted to. I’m still not sure, but her asking that question gets my blood boiling. She dares ask me that? She dares to look at me like that? Pointing out my one visible flaw is not something most people can afford without losing a few fingers or their eyes in the process.
However, she’s different. I know who she is and what she’s become. I know what she’s done to me, but I remember everything. She doesn’t.
I want her to remember. I want to see the look on her face the moment it all comes back. I’m not going to kill her before I can make her see our past, present, and future. I want to see the horror in her eyes as she realizes there’s nothing. Only death. It follows us like a parasite, clinging to our bodies, making us diseased until we shrivel up and die.
Life is worthless. Better spend it in all glory than waste it regretting everything. I’m the glory, she is the waste. Blinded by amnesia. How incredibly ironic that she, the girl who was the cause of all my misery, asks me about the scar she caused.
I shrug and shake it off, laughing a bit.
“You’re not going to tell me?” she asks after a while.
“No.”
Just thinking about it brings back the horrific memories I’d rather forget. It has a twisted sense of humor, this brain of mine. No matter how much I try, I can’t seem to scrape out the last few inches of my soul. That one bit that keeps nagging, keeps making me furious. Control is an illusion. We have no influence on our history, nor our future. Only our present, which is abysmally small. Realizing this took me a few years. I never let an opportunity to manipulate my present pass.
Like now.
***
Nightmares haunt me. No matter if my eyes are closed or open. Hatred follows me wherever I go. This room … always this room. The fire is crackling in the distance. Goose bumps scatter on my skin as I watch them walk toward me. I know the pain that will follow. I have to escape it, but I can’t. Bound to a chair, I have nowhere to go. My captors are people I know, people I used to trust.
Not anymore.
They talk, but I don’t listen. They are evil incarnate and I participated in their every sin. Now they betray me. I can’t believe I let them win.
Eternal void surrounds me as they punish me in the most severe way possible. I’m not dead, even though every passing day I feel less alive than before. My face is ruined. My sight is gone.
I can still feel it burn.
Friday, August 16th, 2013. 5:00 a.m.
A couple of knocks on the door pull me from my nightmare. I shoot up from the chair and realize I had fallen asleep. Dammit.
Jay is still lying on the bed, tentatively observing me from a distance. She’s probably plotting her way out, which doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s her, after all. We were never really that different.
The knocking doesn’t stop, so I get up from the chair and walk to the door with the gun in my hand. I recognize the knocks. It’s a familiar rhythm. Frowning, I open the door, but there’s nobody there, so I stick out my head.
“Didn’t anyone teach you not to look?” Antonio says.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I say when I spot him leaning against the wall of the building with his hands in his pockets.
“Hello to you too.”
I check my watch. “It’s way too soon. I was supposed to have until 6 a.m.”
He shrugs. “I was early.”
“Whatever.”
“Have you killed her yet?”
“No.”
His eyebrows rise and his eyes narrow. Shit. “Any reason why?”
I smile. “I wanted to have a little ‘personal’ time with her.”
“Personal …” Antonio cocks his head.
Repeating what I said means he doesn’t believe me. And he’s right, because I never have personal time with my victims. I couldn’t care less about them, and usually want to kill them as fast as possible. However, that’s not the case with her. I have to make up something fast, before he becomes suspicious.
“You know. Fun. Ever heard of it?” Of course he knows. We torture people every day.
His lips part, but nothing comes out. He just nods.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a hostage to get back to.”
“Stop.”
I hear him move away from the wall and step closer to me. This isn’t going well. If they even suspect something’s up, he’ll have to take action, no doubt about it. I’d like to avoid that.
With my back to him, I cease moving.
“You will kill her,” he says calmly. Too calm.
“Yes.”
“Now.”
I take a deep breath and sigh. “Last I recalled, you were not my superior.”
“I’m not, but this is just a friendly warning. You know the code.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I do.” I turn around and face him. He runs his fingers through his hair like the impatient dipshit he is. “Be back in thirty. You can help me clean up then.” I flash him a smirk, which he gobbles up like no other. His face lights up like a Christmas tree. That bastard always loves the mess I leave. He has a thing for blood.
“I’ll see you in a few,” Antonio says. I wink and enter the room again, silently closing the door behind me. With my back against the wood, I take a deep breath and grind my teeth. Fuck. I guess I have no choice but to kill her.
Walking to the bed, I try not to pay attention to her. Try not to notice her fearful eyes and shaking hands as I tear the blanket away from her. I hold up the gun and point it at her.
“Are you going to kill me now?”
“Yes.”
She swallows, tears flooding her eyes. I refuse to let it get to me.
“I understand …” she murmurs. “Please, let me watch the sunrise.”
“What?”
“The sunrise. I want to see it one last time.”
My mind suddenly stops working. Baffled. That’s what I am. This one thing she asks of me peels away the layers of protection I built around myself long ago. The request is one that I didn’t expect of her, even though I know her so well. I never imagined she’d still want to watch it come up. Memories long forgotten, but the desire to repeat past experiences still linger. She is still that same person.
Only in a much more fucked-up way.
I shake my head and sigh again. I jerk at the ropes, undoing them quickly, as I don’t want to waste any time. I refuse to let this get to me. I have a job to do. This needs to be done, end of story. She needs to die. I will be the one to pull the trigger.
