Page 2 of Obsession

His eyes darted to me when I wanted to leave.

“I swear you’ll feel this pain one day, Stone. I’ll destroy every single person you love.”

His fancy threat pulled a laugh out of my throat. What movie had he taken that line from? I rubbed my chin absently, then took in the sight of my blood covered knuckles.

“You see, there’s a small kink in your revenge plan. You have nobody to destroy. I mean… maybe you could mess with my car, but then you’d have an even more painful death than he did.” I pointed to the corpse and turned to leave.

Before reaching my car, I heard his voice behind me.

“One day…”

CHAPTER 1

_____________________________________________

IN THE DEPTHS OF DARKNESS

KATHERINE

PRESENT DAY

NEW YORK CITY

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

There was this thing my mother always used to tell me:

“When you love someone deeply, their presence fills your life with happiness. But the moment you lose that person, happiness turns into pain. Pain turns into acceptance, acceptance turns into memory, memory into oblivion and eventually, oblivion turns into happiness.”

A circle of life.

I never fully understood the meaning of that saying because I’ve never lost anyone. No one had ever broken my heart. She spoke those words to me repeatedly and, as it turned out, she was also the one who tore my heart to shreds.

I gritted my teeth nervously as I played with the syringe between my fingers, willing myself to hold back, to turn the pain into acceptance, to move on to the next phase, but I failed.

Again.

I used my teeth to remove the protective plastic from the needle.

One dose per day – that was the limit I had imposed on myself. I hadn’t set a specific time to take it. It wasn’t a medication that had to be taken religiously, because that would have led to a stressful schedule, which in turn would have made me feel like I had a disease. The plan was to resist the urge each day for as long as possible and take my dose when the pain became unbearable. The later the better, as the hunger peaked at night. That’s when I craved drugs the most.

I told myself not to break this one rule.

Since I hadn’t listened to anyone for a long time, I had hoped I would manage to stick to my own advice after coming a little too close to death in the last few weeks. Maybe I enjoyed the taste of the end. It smelled like freedom and tasted like oblivion. Or maybe it just didn’t matter anymore. If I died, who would care? In any case, death felt more inviting than my own parents… or parent, because I only had the one left, and he didn’t seem very capable lately either.

And drugs… well, drugs were a false and dangerous friend that made you feel like you finally belonged, with a back pocket filled with the pretty little lies you so desperately wanted to hear – much like a charming assassin, with an amazing sense of humor and irresistible eyes. You knew you were going to die, that you would suffer terribly at the hands of the predator, but you were still tempted to become the prey.

I had stopped feeling the pain of the sting a long time ago. My skin bore too many marks, silent witnesses of my fall into the depths of the abyss. These marks were the battle scars of a defeated warrior.

“Kath, you with us?”

I turned my attention from the syringe in my veins to the source of the voice. Nicky made a disapproving face andargued quietly with me about doing it again, even though I had promised her I wouldn’t.

I broke that promise, too.

She jerked her head towards the window and motioned for me to follow her gaze. She sat in the passenger seat while I sat in the back. Adam watched me in the rearview mirror from his place behind the wheel.

I looked out of the window and squinted to see the inside of the restaurant clearly. The windows were steamed up from the rain; the improvised establishment built on the first floor almost seemed to be falling apart. The cheap insulation that was fitted directly over the cracked bricks didn’t seem very resistant. Above the door they had put up a pathetic nameplate, held together by nails that were no doubt rusty.Decepticon Fast Food. The owner probably couldn’t afford one of those custom-made neon signs, which in a place like this would have resembled a homeless man wearing a gold watch. So, neon fantasy gone, he improvised with a few normal light bulbs to illuminate the lettering. They didn’t really go hand in hand with the rain and would either burn out soon or set the whole building on fire.

---