Page 82 of The Circus

After putting Eden to bed in the asylum last night, I’d gone back to work, hacking Miss Goss to pieces and tossing those pieces off the cliffs. This cove on the Sound isn’t frequented due to the bowl-like area trapping high winds, the frothy white caps hiding deadly rocks. Her flesh and bone will melt there, stuck in the torrents of forever rushing water while fish and birds feast upon her.

Anything too risky—such as her fingers, toes, teeth—I burned behind the mausoleum. I’d intended to cuff her to the walls and bury her alive with wounds for maggots to wriggle into, but alas, my little ghost beat me to it.

And even now, the smile that paints my lips is just as insane as she is.

AsIam.

I could never give my heart to anyone or anything less.

A subtle, phlegmy cough has my eyes jumping up, narrowing in the direction of the living room. Before they can adjust to the dim light filtering in through the sheer white curtains, Dick’s ugly, smug face is illuminated, the click of the lamp switch as deafening as a gunshot.

My heart stills in my chest, but my finger ticks against my thigh, my hand itching to feel the comforting weight of my knife in my grasp. Eden is safe back at her home, and I’d only returned to slip mom a note.

Eden and I are packing our shit and running away to the asylum.

It won’t save us for long, but it will buy us some time. I just need my mom to leave, too, and that’s going to be the tricky part.

“Teddy,” he says calmly, cordially. Muscles as rigid as a corpse, I say nothing, prepared to slit his throat this instant if he stands in my way of freedom. He won’t be the first pedophile’s throat I slit, and he won’t be the last. “Don’t try anything with me, boy. If you think she’s safe, you’re more naïve than I thought.”

My blood curdles in my veins, and my jaw becomes so tight I fear my teeth will shatter.

“If you touch her, I will gut you like a fish and make you eat your own intestines.”

His face pales, slowly, but it pales shade by shade all the same as my threat sinks in. He knows what I am, what the voices can make me do. They are me, and I am them, a multitude of souls pressed into one human form, a multifaceted being that understands what this moment means, and far better than the man in the chair thinks.

He is playing the short game.

I play to win it all, and I am fucking patient.

My downfall is coming, far sooner than I’d hoped, but I intend to rise from the ashes, forever the master of the dead. Andmy life, my heart, my queen will be at my side. She will forgive me for the decisions I make from this moment on. And if she doesn’t?

Good thing she fucking sucks at running away from me, but either way, I’d catch her every time.

“She’s already being watched.” He presses his hands onto the armrests of the chair and pushes his old ass up, raising his eyes to mine, nothing but a feeble, aging man. The easiest kill I would ever make. The voices demand it. But I just can’t fucking do it. I’ve played out every scenario in my head of how a situation like this would go, and every single one will be painful in one way or another.

“What gave it away?” I say smoothly, quirking my brow and feigning nonchalance. He smirks.

“You two made the yearbook. I sit on the approval council. The eyes don’t lie, Teddy.”

Of all the fucking ways this asshole would figure it out, it would be something as stupid as fucking prom. Eden would be gloating if she could see me now.

“What does it matter to you who I fuck?” I hiss, the more sinister voices pushing forth. Ever so slowly, the walls begin to close in around me. It’s hard to drag a breath in through my nose, my chest tightening in familiar panic. His eyes glint in interest, and the despair that comes crashing over me is devastating in nature.

Not again, please, whatever god is in the universe, not again, I beg to nothing.

“It matters who you kill for, Teddy.”

“You will not touch her—” I seethe, taking a harsh step forward, my knife flipping open with a sharp click. But his smile stops me in my tracks, and the voices collectively hush and mourn. There is no choice. I’ve thought this exact scenario through, and I know how it ends.

“I will have her killed, and then your mother, all while you watch. You’ve become a burden, anyways.”

My hand drops to my side, the knife handle slipping in my limp grip. Stomach churning with acrid bile, I fight the urge to vomit. Clear my throat.

And damn myself to hell, all for the woman I love.

“What do you want from me?” I croak.

His lips quiver into an excited, yet tempered, smile.

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