She laughed when things exploded, and I laughed with her. But unlike the girl I was not amused, I was… I was… I was fairly sure I was insane. I had cracked beyond repair. I wasn’t finding it funny because my enemies were being slaughtered. I was amused because I was one step closer to death.
One step closer to whatever the fuck was out there for me, and where those I loved now resided.
“One gangster, two gangster, three gangster, four.” As the world around me exploded, I hummed a little rhyme to myself. “How many brains can we paint on the wall?”
Their screams began as fire engulfed the room. Their screams ended by the time I got to my feet, trembling and half-deaf. I didn’t need my hearing, anyway. Corpses had no use for it, and that is what I would be soon enough.
Once I found the rest of the people in the building.
Once I found the piece of shit responsible for hurting me – for hurting those I loved.
A door on the opposite side of the room was kicked open, a woman I knew shoving her way inside through the smoke, a handful of unarmed gangsters behind her… God, they were dumb. Who didn’t carry a gun in a house that they held someone captive who would love nothing more than to torture them? I mean, one of them had a knife, but it was a switchblade; nothing compared to the wicked knife I passed over to Yumi, as I used my daddy’s bone as a sick sort of satisfying weapon against my new foe.
I wanted to make her bleed with something of my daddy’s, so she felt just how much he hated her, too.
“Fuck.”The woman ran a hand over her face, her big brown eyes wide and filled with fear.
Fear that was valid because I laughed as I saw her. I laughed and pointed my daddy’s bone toward her as a promise that she knew I would fulfil.
“Run.” She hissed at her men in such a way that I knew she was aware I was going to kill her. “Get the fuck out and call John – call Cass.”
Cass.
Why was that familiar? Why did that name seem important? Why the fuck did my brain flag that as something as I felt blood start leaking from my nose and down my lips… it seemed important that I remember it, but for the life of me I couldn’t. My brain was almost… almost emptying. Thoughts and memories were slipping out of me so fast I ought to have been scared but I was too busy thinking of a single thought.
Killing Elaina.
Yumi seemed to agree that murder was important because she pushed past me, chasing after one of the gangster men in particular who had taken one look at her and headed for the hills. I probably ought to have stopped her, but I was busy, and she seemed like she was having fun when she tackled the man to the ground with her knife in his back and a speed that I was envious of.
The same knife she pulled out and used to stab him far too many times to count as she laughed at him and asked how much he enjoyed being her little whore now… a statement I shivered hearing, but not enough for it to touch me yet.
I was still laser focused on something more important to me – something I would not be letting go.
Something that I had yearned for, for far too long.
Something I would not make mistakes with again.
“Mommy!”I yelled across the room as I strolled Elaina’s way, ignoring the burning bits of debris that stung my flesh, or the wicked sharp shards of things I trod on.“Don’t run from me – we have so much to say to each other!”I laughed.“Come on, why are you running away? I thought you liked playing games!”
Elaina had turned on her tail and went back the way she came. Shame. Shame. Shame. Running was for cowards. Running was for the weak. I was no longer weak. I refused to be weak again. I was going to lean into the thoughts that the voicein my head screamed at me until I had nothing left to give but my life.
I was going to do whatever it was I had been trying to do today… wherever I was. There was something important I had been thinking about, and I guessed it was Elaina. It had to be. She was the only one here and nothing else mattered… nothing else was a thought in my mind.
And as I held onto my daddy’s withering bones, latched onto by pieces of his rotting flesh, the flames licked the walls around me, suffocating me with their power. Laughter stained my lips as I bared my teeth, facing the inevitable with no remorse tingeing my words and with enough hatred on my tongue that I would taste it long after my death.
I raised the bone in my hand, staring at it with a smile that a tiny piece of my mind flagged as being wrong, but most of me seemed to enjoy.
“Come on then, daddy. Let’s see how your God likes me now.”I followed my mother across the flaming hell of my cage, feeling nothing but death in my heart.
Hers, then mine.
Bones were good as weapons. They were strong and hard to break. They were even better for smashing things. Say a woman. As she scrambled to unlock a door that would let her outside. Her fists were banging on the wood, the smoke in the air making her cough up her lungs, and she was panicking over the state of the death that came for her. It was like she could taste it in the air or something. Each step I took toward her, each glance she made my way, it felt like she was seeing something in my face or my eyes that said she was not making it home to see her shitty choice in husband today.
She would not make it anywhere but to hell.
Perhaps that was why she tried to fight me. Perhaps that was why she had turned around and attempted to hit me. Butshe was not a fighter – she used weapons and her husband’s reputation. She knew how to throw a punch, but she was not prepared in the slightest as I dodged her blow and swung my ailing body around, head butting her in the face.
Elaina wasn’t able to cope as I broke her nose and grabbed her hair, slamming her face against the door for fun. She couldn’t do anything at all when I turned to the window beside us, the one bigger than me and made entirely of stained glass, ready to make my ultimate escape… my final fight…
