Page 15 of Vicious King

All of a sudden, something cut through the fog in my mind. A voice. Don’t do it. Then something else, stark and bright against the backdrop of misery. Images of home. Images of my old college. My friends.

The voice in the back of my head grew louder, calling to me, begging me to see reason. You aren’t worthless. These men just made you feel that way. Don’t you remember? You’re strong. You’re worth something.

“No,” I murmured to myself, delirious and confused. “I’m a bad person. A murderer….”

Don’t jump, Tatum. Don’t do it.Just stop. The voice almost seemed to be coming from somewhere behind me now, not just in my head.

“I have to do it,” I mumbled.

No. You didn’t do those things. This isn’t you.

The voice in my head grew louder, chanting until it was all I could hear. Finally, my eyes flew open, and for the first time in weeks, I truly saw myself and where I was.

I gasped, staggering back from the edge, unable to believe how close I actually came to jumping.

Holy shit. What the hell was happening to me? How far had I slipped into the abyss of despair that I genuinely believed I deserved to die for even a few seconds?

I shook my head and fell to my knees in the pouring rain, rubbing my eyes as all my mental faculties regained their proper function. I couldn’t let this happen again. Couldn’t let myself descend back into this state for even a second. I had to force myself to see the truth.

These last few weeks held nothing but hazy lies and rambling delusions, slipping in one after another like wraiths in a fog, sinister and insidious. In the end, only one thing mattered: none of it was true. I didn’t deserve any of this.

I didn’t sign any contracts or invent any false memories to cope with some sort of crushing guilt. I didn’t push Ben Wellington off a cliff, and when I stabbed Tobias King, that slimy old prick well and truly deserved it. He was a bad person. Not me.

I gulped down several breaths of icy air, grateful for that one tiny bit of hope in my mind that refused to be snuffed out. I thought it was gone, thought it was dead like the rest of me, but in my grimmest time of need, that little voice came roaring back to life, yanking me back from the call of the void.

I wasn’t going to die. Not today.

I wiped my face and turned around. I was going to go back to the front of the mansion and get on one of those helicopters, and then I would go to the Lodge and bide my time, even if it was hell on earth. I would play along with their twisted demands, but I wouldn’t stop fighting back in devious little ways, wouldn’t stop trying to escape in any way I could. Fuck Crown and Dagger, and fuck all the twisted pricks who ran it. They could all rot.

A sudden barrage of sleet began to fall from the storm clouds overhead, making the ground slick with ice, and one leg gave out from under me as I slipped and fell.

“Shit!” I tried to scramble to my feet as another heavy gust of wind hit me in the face, but I slipped backwards, heading perilously close to the edge of the cliff again. I screamed and tried to dig my nails into the rocks to no avail.

Then I slid right over the edge.

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