Page 85 of Collateral Damage

Her words cut through my heart like her bullet wound, ripping away at my kindness as the Devil speaks down my ear. Everything happened because of me and it will forever be my greatest burden to bear. I punish myself because that is my trophy for letting the only women who loved me,down.

“Don't!...” I push away, trying to give myself space before I do something stupid but she is reluctant, clawing at my sanity, trying to crawl inside of me.

“Let me in! What is it going to take for you to let me in?! Do I have to break that door down myself?!” I freeze, glaring at her in hysterics, watching her bleak fit of pain explode in front of my very eyes but my vision only tunnels red as she screams at my absence, thrashing at my forearm as white noise invades my ears.She is not going to let this go until one of us is dead.I clear my throat, seeing his face and his words breath down my neck.

“Once people realise how worthless you really are. They will see you the way I do.

An abomination. People do not play with broken toys, baby girl. They discard them.”

“This is your funeral. Don't expect a burial.” I grip her wrist, crushing her with my demons, heading straight forthe door.

C H A P T E R 50

CONSUMING HER MONSTERS

Puppeteer

Ibreak the basement door open with the force of my boot, opening it up to the trauma laying heavy in the air as I push her in front of me, making our way down the creaky stairs until we are in front of the barricaded cell glaring at it with distant strength. I try to break my fear as I rip the panels off the door frame, clicking the key in the door with difficulty where it’s seized up leaving it free to enter, smothered in cobwebs and dust a decade old.

My chest shakes my upper body with anxiety as she peers at me with unknowing resistance. I turn the knob and let the door swing open. A black void of desolate screams echo back to me as she walks through it, finding her way to my calls, carving crescents into my palms as she disappears into the room, holding my breath as I follow her in.

The atmosphere holds such a heavy weight on my shoulders I feel nauseous, fumbling for the light switch on the concrete wall, lighting up my past with nothing to hide behind. I haven’t been in this room since he died. I’d been avoiding it. I thought if I pretended it wasn’t here that this ache would eventually dissipate but it never has. This room carries haunting memories hard wired like the night I lost her. A box filled with all my forbidden whispers. My cries seeped into the walls casing this asylum that is meant to be my home.

Play – ‘The Line – Twenty One Pilots’

She freezes, soaking in my secret, glaring at the chair in the middle of the room. A wooden structure with no back, braced with heavy duty metal buckles on the arms and legs. Walls scattered with various tools.My own personal torture chamber.

“I don’t understand? You do this? To people?” She studies my vice, tracing the grubby wood with her fingers making me squint like she’s wedged a knife inside me.

“No.” Of course that would be her first thought. I have kept it from her after all so she’s bound to assume the worst of me. Exactly like she should.

…

“Oh my god…” The penny drops. Staring at me in disbelief. The face of a girl who is regretting digging up my grave. Exposing the rotting bones and spirits that keep me tied here, closing in on her ears, bringing her to tears. She’s absent-minded as she glares at me with disturbance bleeding from her eyes.

“Hays…” I don't want to hear her pity. I don’t want her sympathy. I don’t want any of it. She pushed this. She wanted to see my demons in the flesh and now she can sink in her fucking guilt.

“You just couldn’t leave it alone.” Her face is painted with shame, swallowing all those unspoken words as she gawks at my demise. Right here. In this room. I am an apparition of myself. A ghost haunting my own grounds. Stuck in an eternity of suffering with my own devil and angel, and now she knows that too.

“I’m so sorry- Hays…” She moves towards me and I step back, she doesn’t want to come near me right now.

“Bit late for that now, don’t you think?” I can feel unwelcome tears trying to cut through my face, tightening my jaw in frustration.

“Show me.” My brow burrows, glaring at her with utter shock, trying to make sense of her words. “Show me Hayden. I want to feel it. I want to harbour your pain.” I stare blankly in disbelief.

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous.”

“I want to understand your suffering!”

“You think experiencing just a glimpse of my suffering is going to fix things?! I’m not laying a hand on you,Alora.” She ignores me, placing her ass in the seat and my temperature rises, feeling my blood boil beneath my skin as I stare at myself.

“You’re a clown baby girl. A circus act of disappointment.”

“What more do you want from me?!” Being in here is ringing my ears with a need to destroy my own mind, blanking as she refuses to move.

“Alora.You need to get out, right now.” My blood buzzes underneath my flesh, crawling out of my wounds as I look down at my palms, hallucinating my harm as the back of my hands burn.

“No.” My back itches, trying to think of all the reasons I should let her breathe right now.

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