Page 90 of Sick Bargain

Something in my mind changes, and when they grab me, I don’t fight it. Because the clicking sound told me not to.

29

DON’T BE NAÏVE

REMIEL

I free you,Remiel.

I free you, Remiel.

I free you, Remiel.

I don’t want to be fucking free!

I want to be owned. Alive under his protection and under his skin because our sicknesses seek one another. Why the hell did he free me? Our bargain isn’t met! There’s still one name on my list, and now that Krypt has cut me loose, I’m feeling closer to the family curse than ever.

Vile House was empty when I searched it this morning, everyone having already forgotten about me since Krypt left. Left… just gone. Without a word or any sort of hint at when he’ll be back. It’s been four days, and no one will talk to me. Not even my brother.

I have no home. No friend but Cain. No fucking clue what is going on or why he freed me. Where is he? Is he safe? Did I do something to push him away?

Of course I did. I’m the pathetic idiot who fell for his rapist. I should have known from the beginning he’d never see me as anything more than an object to own. He treated me like shit, took me against my will, drugged me, and violated me. Krypthas made his intentions clear from the beginning. I’m a piece of property and nothing more. It’s my own fault for deluding myself into thinking it could be something more.

He fled at the first sign of love. Feelings he’s learned to handle, but love?! What was I thinking? I can’t love him, yet I do. He can’t love me, and he doesn’t. I thought I’d be okay with that so long as he kept me as his. I could live my life as his voodoo doll because his attention is the best thing I’ve ever experienced. I relied on it, got comfortable under his gaze, and stupidly expected I’d have it for the rest of my life.

I never expected him to free me and disappear.

The Matter Cult is dead, and Gregory Malone is locked away, so I pace the length of the Sauder graves in solitude. No eyes on me, no stalkers at my back. I’m losing my mind to abandonment, but it’s worry making my heart skip beats. Selfish worry, because I don’t know what to do now that I’ve lost him. But worry for him, too.

I saw it in his eyes, something like love, or as close to it as he can get. I heard it in the way he asked me if I’d still pick him if he set me free. I saw it in the way his usually flowing calligraphy stuttered on his final calling card, freeing me against my will. In such a cowardly fucking way. A calling card?! Not even a face-to-face rejection? My god, he’s an asshole, and I miss him an unhealthy amount.

“Hi, hun.”

I’m too dead to be startled, but I blink at my mom as she walks over Dad’s grave like she doesn’t even see it. The fog is thick in the cemetery today, but she drags more along with her, shrouding her in something ominous. The bags under her eyes aren’t new, but they’re deeper now, darker purple. When I look into her eyes, they differ so greatly from Krypt’s thrashing monsters and rattling chains. Hers are empty, void of thoughts and vacant of emotion. Nothing expressive or emotive comesthrough when I look at her, and I wonder when she became such a shell.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, scrunching her face into something like concern.

I look closer. When I woke up in her house and had breakfast with her and my siblings, she was acting strange, but she wasn’t empty. She was still our mother, and she wanted a family meal together after all the time that had passed without one. I didn’t know about the microchip then, but it was inside her, doing something to her. She cut me months before that morning and held a knife to me again that day. What happened between then and now to change her so drastically?

“Thinking of joining them?” Mom asks, nodding at my brothers’ graves, still standing on my father’s.

I take a subconscious step back. She’s never outright asked me about suicide before. “Do you want me to?”

She laughs. It’s a sad, forced sound. “No, hun. But I think you should see the doctor.”

“What doctor?”

“Dr. Graves. He can fix you. He has what you want.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles down at Dad’s headstone. “I heard you fell in love with Keegan.”

Has what you wantandKeeganin the same breath…

“What does he have that I want?”

“Dr. Graves found all sorts of things in his head. He’s got many secrets, but you were his best-kept one.” She smiles at me like we’re having a happy conversation instead of a dire one. “He calls you a hero.”

My body chills and my spine tingles. Dr. Graves has Krypt, and somehow, my mom knows about it. I don’t know if it’s intentional or if he’s in danger, but the warning signals within me, the ones gifted to me by Moros itself, are all blaring alarm bells.

“Dr. Graves is with Keegan?” I ask her.

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