The next time my world had turned black had been moments ago, as I came across my driveway and damn near burst into tears. That bout of darkness hadn’t been as easy – I’dbeen out for at least five seconds; long enough for me to crash into the gate, ruining the car and breaking my locks. Yumi had woken me up a little shocked, but altogether okay. She’d even laughed again, like she couldn’t believe it.
It was fine. So fucking what? We were here.
A dead girl didn’t need locks on her house. A dead girl didn’t need shit. And I was going to be dead as soon as I made sure the little girl was safe.
“Your house?” Yumi helped drag me out of the car, my eyes blurring, body far too heavy, even as I stubbornly refused to drop the prize in my grip that had been brought from my dungeon.
“Yes.” Speaking was an effort I could barely manage, but I wanted to make sure the poor kid knew I hadn’t kidnapped her again.
That’s how she had ended up in that house.
On the short drive home, I had explained as best as I could who I was and where we were going. In return the crying voice in the walls had turned around and tried her best to let me know she was fourteen in the fall, had been born in a village too far away and too poor, and had been taken the same night her family were slaughtered about a year ago. She’d skimmed over it but she had three brothers, her parents and grandparents.
All were dead.
She’d bounced around safe houses until she’d wound up at the one we’d just escaped to be sold off to a nearby owner. She’d been damaged beyond repair, the same way all the others like her I had found recently in that other house, just like the one we’d left and where I had found Delilah.
“Doctor in your home?” Yumi double-checked my information as she helped me walk.
“Retta.” I whispered the name as we hobbled up my driveway, the object in my free hand still clenched tight. “Andanother lady called Nessa. Both of them are doctors and they are sweet – they will be nice to you.”
Yumi had said she was okay. She had cuts that had healed, bruises that would fade, and was hungry and thirsty as hell. She said all her injuries were in her brain, like me. But she insisted she was okay now. She said she’d killed the man who’d hurt her the most in that house. The one who had laughed and called her all sorts of nasty things as he did wicked stuff to a little girl who had deserved better.
She’d laughed as she stabbed him to death and repeated his words back to him and now she claimed that had made her fixed enough she wouldn’t die.
All she wanted was a shower, food, and a real outfit. That was it.
God, I hoped it helped her. I hoped the memory of her monster’s death made her feel better one day because it sure as fuck wouldn’t be easy to feel better. I doubted I could, and I hadn’t even had it as bad as her – nobody but my stalker had touched me, and even then it wasn’t sexual. It was just with pain.
Lots and lots of pain and drugs and water shoved into my lungs until I was sure they were permanently damaged. Cuts on my skin, burns sometimes too. Nothing I hadn’t gone through before. Nothing that wouldn’t have healed with time.
The only part of me that was broken was my brain.
“Doctors good. You need doctor, not me – you look dead.” Yumi nodded her head, looking the tiniest bit relieved when the lights from beside my front door came into view.
“I’m fine.” It was a lie, but it felt like I had to say it, anyway.
“You are dead.” She shook her head and repeated herself as she eyed up all the blood that gushed out of me in far too many places, and I used her as a crutch as I continued to silently count the steps toward my house.
I had counted to a thousand far too many times. Each step had felt like I was burning inside and yet I couldn’t stop. I happily embraced the fire because I knew I was heading home – I was going back to the place that was my own. The one my daddy built for me to be safe in. And I was going to sit there with nothing but his bones and the memories of what I had lost and what I had done.
I would sit there until the sun rose and Yumi was safe, then I would take whatever gun I could find and blow my worthless fucking brains out. That’s what I would do. That was how I could fix the things inside of me that were no longer right.
The door was locked when we reached it, but it was nothing my handprint didn’t fix – nobody had used all the extra locks, like the key too.
“Come inside.” I let Yumi half-drag me into my foyer as the tears that streamed down my cheeks almost burned and we checked out the house for people.
I still refused to drop what I held, even if it would have been easier.
There was nobody in the dining room. Nobody in the kitchen. Nobody in the lounge. There would not be anyone in my house again. The men I had brought there were dead. The ones who had once roamed the halls of the Leroux household and then my own were dead. Everyone I loved around me was dead because my touch was a poison that I had offered out without thought, despite knowing the consequences.
If my daddy had known the real depravity of my soul, he would not have called me an angel. He would have called me a sinner – the worst kind of one. He would have made me beg his God for penance and redemption. He probably would have denounced me as pure evil. Because only evil could do what I had done. Only evil could have torn apart flesh with her handsand commit such… such violence with her father’s body and against her mother.
My skin was stained with blood that would wash away, but I knew it would never truly leave. It had seeped into my soul and there was only one solution to such a thing.
One solution to me no longer being alone.
With my single free hand, I grabbed a bottle of vodka off the kitchen counter when we stopped there, swigging a few mouthfuls as I ordered Yumi to devour the contents of the fridge until she was full and no longer thirsty. She’d done as she was told, and the minute she was finished, I would offer her a shower and find out where the fuck all my doctors had gone and why the house was so fucking quiet.
