Page 61 of Rot

“No. She didn’t run,” I spoke with confidence, my arms folded over my chest. The letter in question had been set on the coffee table in the living room. “Our fates are tied together. She believes that. She’d never run, not while I’m still alive.” My eyebrows came together, and I turned to look at him, tearing my gaze off the front door. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” Elias said.

“Why did you do it?” I didn’t need to specify what I was talking about; there was only one thing I could be curious about at a time like this. He handled that crossbow like a pro; I assumed he and his father had gone hunting an awful lot. Accidents didn’t just happen, not like that.

Elias’s jaw tensed, those deep, black eyes narrowing at me somewhat. It was clearly a sore subject, but I wasn’t going to take the question back. I think we were past the point of pretending now, so him coming clean and telling me the truth about what happened with his father three years ago was the least he could do.

His answer was a simple one, one most people wouldn’t understand, “Because I could. Because I wanted to. Because I hated him and he deserved it.”

“Why did he deserve it?”

The look he gave me right then told me enough. There weren’t many reasons why Elias would claim his father had deserved to die. Whatever it was, in Elias’s mind, his death was justice. Maybe his father had stepped out on his mother, and Elias didn’t like that. It made sense, seeing how bananas he went when he thought of me with someone else.

I opened my mouth to tell him that it was okay, that I understood him more than anyone else in the world could, but the sound of a car door shutting outside alerted us to the fact that someone else was here. My mother, probably.

I darted to the window, peeking out, as Elias readied the sheet he’d rolled up and tied into a makeshift noose. My eyes spotted my mother walking up to the door, glancing all around, appearing generally frightened, as always. “It’s her,” I said. “Get ready. She’s about to come in.” Her hands shook with the keys as she made it to the front door.

Elias and I hid in the living room as my mother entered the house. She stepped inside and immediately went into the kitchen. Elias followed her, and I was a few steps behind him. “Oh, my God,” my mother’s voice came out trembling. “Oh… oh my God.” It was all she could repeat to herself as she stared at the body bolted to the wall. She dropped her keys to the floor, and they clattered loudly, landing near his gun, which we’d left untouched.

Elias made not a sound as he crept up behind her, and he tossed me a look over his shoulder. I gave him a nod, and he got to work. He hoisted the noose up and over my mother’s head, bringing it down and tightening it around her throat before she knew what was happening.

She struggled to no avail, and Elias turned her body towards me so she could see me standing there with a smile on my face. “Hello, Mother,” I spoke with an icy tone, watching her struggling cease.

Not because she was dead. No, she stopped because she knew it was pointless, because she knew right then and there she was a dead woman on borrowed time.

The truth was she always had been. That night when she was sixteen sealed her fate. Her life could never be what it was, nor could it ever be what it was supposed to be. Charles Bovine, the Bedlam Butcher, had made sure of that.

“Sloane,” my mother sputtered out. “Sloane, what have you done?” A question she’d asked me multiple times before. This time, however, would be her last.

I stared at my mother with a smile on my face. She looked so tiny with Elias standing behind her, holding onto the noose and keeping it tight. She looked, in that moment, as pathetic as I had always known she was. After today, our fates would not be tied together… because she’d be dead, and I’d have a new life.

A new life, a new love, a new mother.

Quieter this time, I repeated, “Goodbye, Mother.” I gave a short nod to Elias, and he responded by tightening the noose around her neck.

Chapter Twenty-One

We hurried to do what needed to be done. Time was of the essence. The school would show that Elias had left earlier, so the timeline would be a little messed up. I was hoping the evidence pointing to my mother would be enough, that the police wouldn’t pay too much attention to the fact that Elias had skipped the rest of the day after I’d called him.

We put my mother’s hands everywhere, on the laptop keys, on the crossbow and its trigger. Everywhere, just in case. And then Elias strung her up to the ceiling fan in the living room and let her hang there, motionless.

It was a beautiful sight, I couldn’t lie.

I went upstairs and pushed around the stuff in my closet, made enough room for me. My story would be that my mother had told me to hide while she dealt with whoever had come to the house, and so I’d done just that, hiding in the corner of my closet for what felt like an eternity. I’d heard shouting, but that’s it. Eventually, I’d called Elias, too freaked out to dial nine-one-one.

Elias had come home, finding my mother hanging in the living room while she was still warm. He read the suicide note and found the body in the kitchen, and then he’d come upstairs to find me. He’d helped me out of the closet, brought me downstairs, and together we sat on the front porch while he called his mother and the authorities.

I worked on bringing tears to my eyes, pretending I was shaking. When the police pulled into the driveway, Elias got up to greet them while I remained where I was, just a scared little girl who’d seen too much shit in her life.

Blackrain’s police department must’ve been small. I recognized the woman cop who’d handled me the day before. There was a hint of suspicion in her eyes, but whatever amount there was vanished when she came out of the house after inspecting the crime scene.

She asked me questions, while another officer asked Elias his own questions about twenty feet away, separating us to make sure our stories lined up. I played the part of a freaked-out girl just as well as I had the day before.

The more I talked, the more the officer believed me. Her face softened as she jotted down what I was saying. Who would take one look at me and think,guilty? That was the perk of looking like an angel, like a doll. I was a girl who could do no harm—a really unlucky girl.

Aunt Maggie arrived half an hour later. She had to park on the road, since so many police were here. An ambulance had come too, though they weren’t needed. Just a coroner or two. By the time she was running up the driveway to reach Elias and me, the police were done questioning us. She hugged her son first, muttering something incoherent, and then she hugged me.

Being hugged by someone who meant the gesture was unlike anything I’d experienced. I could feel the love, the sincerity behind it, and before I knew what was happening, I was hugging her back.

---