The one place I just fingered her. How fucked up is that?
Naya doesn’t reply to me, and as stupid as she is, she uses her foot to push against the flailing body that has already been lying here for days, one that has been bleeding profusely. As I stare into the black depths of the eyes, I wait for them to move, but they remain still, like two pools of unmoving ink. It is a grotesque sight, something even I cannot accomplish. I may not feel emotions like others do, but I know what is ethically right. A thick crimson grin spans across the face of this man with black eye sockets where the eyes once were, and it’s at this moment that I realize there are no eyes. A harsh swallow is forced out of me, and I’m too stunned to move a single muscle as my body begs me to do something. Anything.
I know that person. He disappeared months ago and completely vanished after entering the new program. Sweat makes its way down my neck, dripping from my dark curls, soaking my shirt, and streaming down my back. Naya almost tumbles as she crawls out of the water, disgust evident on her face. Her face is ashen-hued, making me think she will vomit, which I would be doing if I hadn’t witnessed such a sight before.
The water has absorbed the blood from the lifeless body, and only the head sticks out above the surface. Although the body lies at an unnatural angle below the water, I can see its arms crossed like a person trying to defend themselves in some way. Half of the face is full of old wounds and bruises, and part of the skin is cut away. Nausea bubbles up inside me, and I’m forced to sit down, running my hands through my hair and breathing deeply. No matter what I do, nothing works. Even though the body has been submerged for several days, it still smells rotten, precisely like something died, and I cannot believe I didn’t smell it when we first arrived a mere hour ago.
In a way, it looks like a single shell made of only skin and does not reveal the presence of a soul within. It’s as if whoever was there before is long gone, and perhaps that is for the best.
“Fuck,” Naya curses beside me, and I catch sight of her furiously scratching her wrist as she focuses on breathing deeply.
I desperately want to tell her to stop, that she should not hurt herself, but I cannot move my tongue to say a word, feeling like lead in my mouth, and I’m frozen in place. She starts pacing back and forth, panic finally gripping her as she screams out her frustration, all of her raw emotions that are my fault, yet I cannot feel remorse for it. I feel nothing. Only simmering rage and fear of abandonment because I know she’s about to snap. I can see it in the way she scratches and picks her skin and her mismatched eyes dim with panic, yet I still cannot sense anything.
“Suicide?” She chokes out, her gaze empty as she stares at me where I’m standing closer to the pond than she is, and I shake my head.
“This is not suicide. This is fucking murder.”
And the realization of that has something firing inside me. My chest feels like a raging bonfire, where a dark, smoky haze slowly smothers the flames. It only takes a few words for her to stop, stare at me with wide-open eyes that scream to be saved in silence, and I can’t feel anything but numbness and dread that something is wrong.
So fucking wrong.
“M-Murder?” she stutters, and I tentatively nod, unsure of her reaction.
Amidst the majestic trees surrounding us, a sense of utter disbelief fills me as I realize that the person lying one meter in front of me has been killed because there is no way in hell he could have done that to himself. The death itself is too grotesque and macabre to be caused by suicide.
Naya suddenly withdraws from me, her eyes wide with shock, as if I’ve just taken away her most treasured possession. Her breathing becomes labored as she backs away from me like a startled animal. Before I understand what’s happening, she repents and flees, leaving me alone in the obscuring, menacing fog.
Chapter 20
Naya
Death comes in manyforms and figures, in ways we don’t know about, some more obvious than others. Every living creature lives in a dance of death, hanging on by a thread that can break at any moment. Death is something that comes to everyone at some point, some sooner than others. It’s something that everyone fears will happen, yet it’s the one true thing that is completely inevitable. Death can both be a gift from the heavens above, but also a punishment for those who have sinned. But if that were the case, I would have left this earth long ago.
Death is the main thing in the chain of nature and life, everything we do, how we live, and how we behave, everything leads to death. Sometimes death is unjust, sometimes people don’t die because of the natural chain of life. Sometimes people do grotesque things, ruin lives and dig their own graves by taking the life of another.
I know I am what I have done. As the architect of my own destruction, I’ve always felt most comfortable in the chaos erupting around me, always being forced to stand in the ashes of who I used to be. But when it comes to someone else’s death, something even more grotesque than what I did, that’s when I become terrified of the dark thing living inside of me, of the emptiness threatening to ruin everything I have fought so hard for.
I’m moving toward my room, leaving Grey behind and realizing that I never should have followed him because my mind is clogging up and my walls are sky high. He made me lower the walls, caging my heart and soul, leaving me utterly vulnerable with a glimpse of hope. No, he tore down the walls; he carved out that door as if he had the goddamn right, and yet he dares claim that he didn’t feel something for me, too. I need to keep my distance from him if I’m going to make it out of here alive, or else I’ll be too distracted to find a way to get out.
A strange sensation of being watched sweeps over me, but I dismiss it as an irrational fear. I reach my room, and the peacefulness is interrupted only by the sound of the door slamming shut behind me as I approach my wardrobe. As I scramble for paper and crayons, I scramble to scribble down my discoveries before darkness clouds my mind.
Fence unwatched, lake. Escape?
I quickly stuff them into my backpack and shove them into the wardrobe. My hand hits the wall repeatedly as I scream out all the emotions inside me that threaten to spill over. Someone was murdered here, and from the look on Grey’s face, I know it was someone who used to be a patient here. Someone was fucking murdered, which means the murderer is still out there.
You are a murderer.
“Shut the fuck up!” With a loud screech, I attempt to drown out the voice in my head that taunts me.
This place is fucking me up, more than Grimhill Manor did, and I still cannot remember why I’m here. The pain takes over in my head, black spots dot my vision at the pain in my hand and inside my chest. Everything hurts because the sight of that body all lifeless with no eyes, only black holes at an odd angle, reminds me so much of memories I don’t want to remember. I’m barely staying afloat in this turbulent sea of chaos, the last thread of stability I have is close to breaking, and if it does, I will plummet to my death, but maybe that is what I deserve. Maybe death will silence the demons in my mind.
The walls slowly collapse around me, suffocating me with their force as the oxygen in my lungs crumbles and breaks apart. The sound of a knock on the door reverberates throughout the room, yet no one enters, and my state of mind prevents me from responding. Nothing can rouse me from this state.
Nothing can save me.
I scream. Scream until the pain in my lungs becomes unbearable, and my throat turns hoarse until it feels like I will never be able to speak properly again. My vision blurs from the adrenaline coursing through me, and I let out all of my rage on the wall, feeling the vibrations of my fists shaking through my arms. I can barely distinguish the old scratches on my hand beneath the new wounds, and the smell of metal from the blood becomes more prominent, yet I’m still not feeling anything in my hand.
I feel lost. Utterly, completely lost and devastated.
