Page 75 of Razors & Ruin

I sit back in my chair and regard the scene, aware of a fundamental shift within me. It should feel worse than death but hits like a good whiskey.

God fucking damn.

Johanna represented goodness and purity, yet I believed she came from me. That dissonance, that disquieting contradiction, drove my vengeful ire all along.

I had to find out what happened to my child because I could not tolerate the existence of hope. In her dwelled the potential I never believed I had, the possibility that my darkness was a choice.

If my daughter was dead or living a cursed life, it would have been confirmation that my blood had damned her. Had I discovered her alive and safe, I would have been tormented by the mockery of fate.

Either way, I had to know because her innocence was part ofme.

I begin to laugh, and Sommers recoils, his face twisted with concern.

“My son,” he says. “I know you are in pain.”

“Pain?” I cry. “Don’t you see? Johanna was never mine, and neither was Veronica. I had no salvation to lose, no love to cling to. It never belonged to me in the first place!”

I rise to my feet. “Pain? No fuckingfear, my friend! It’s clarity, and it feels fantastic.”

Never did I speak truer words. I can be who I am, full-throated and unsurpassed, the bastard king of death and fucking and whatever else I conceive to unleash.

No more false hope. No more delusions of redemption. I am finally free to be all I can be.

Nellie will bethrilled.

“Thank you, Sommers,” I say. “Do me a favor and curse my name as I leave. It’d really give a little extra something to this moment.”

“I will not,” he says, rocking Johanna gently. “I will pray for your soul. Will you let us go?”

He’s braver than I gave him credit for. There’s no tremor in his voice, no begging or pleading. Just certainty, a steadfast belief that prayer and forgiveness still mean something.

What a joke.

“Yes, if you swear to go far away and never return. I can do without anyone sniffing around my end of town looking for Currer Brook, and I’ve done enough harm here already.”

“As you say. We were leaving anyway.”

Johanna lifts her head, and our eyes meet. Veronica’s cornflower blue eyes.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” I tell her. “No matter what this man tells you, do not forgive me. A little hatred is good; it reminds you you’re alive.”

Johanna says nothing, and I don’t look back as I leave. I hear the priest murmuring behind me, trying to soothe her sobs.

Everything is now in its proper place exceptme.

I have no business here anymore; my territory is in Fleet Street, and my true solace awaits me there, locked away, her throat blooming with bruises.

Outside, the rain is torrential. I tilt my head and open my mouth, letting it fill, and I gargle before spitting skyward.

Take that, God, right in your fucking all-seeing eye.

I laugh as the downpour soaks my clothes, shaking the rain from my hair and letting the storm wash away the remnants of the old lies I clung to.

Nellie is waiting. She’salwaysbeen waiting.

Finally, for the first time, I am free.

And I’m going home.

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