Page 38 of Make Me, Break Me

ZINZI

Darkness eked into every part of my soul. I’d never be able to lie in Dex’s darkened bedroom with the drapes closed in full ever again.

That was, assuming I got out of this place with its close walls, and unbreathable air.

My assessment that first day in Dex’s black painted room had been right. I was claustrophobic. I had no idea if it was a late onset or if I'd always been like this and was just figuring it out. But right now ruminating on that little stupid and useless piece of trivia was so much better than dealing with the two monsters who shared my space.

Both had pale eyes tinged with red rings, pale skin and identical features. Pale hair, so light it was almost colorless or gray in this unfathomable light. Their bodies were like ghosts or worms in the void that surrounded us that could have gone on and on…or walls that shifted, containing me until they were right there and all I had was a handful of breaths before my last remaining breath of air ran out.

It was enough to make me want to scream, so that was what I did.

Scream and scream and scream, shaking my arms locked in their metal shackles they had screwed to my wrists and ankles when they perched me on my box and pinned me in place and took those fucking pictures that were almost as hideous as them.

And then they turned out the lights, and the all-pervading darkness made it so much worse. Because then my mind wandered and I lost track of time and place and how much space there was between me and them.

All I could hear was my breathing, and them. The screams were preferable, and so I did that instead.

Until I couldn’t scream anymore.

Then my head hung between my shoulders and I panted, my throat raw, my body sweat sheened and cold and exhausted.

Which was when they began to talk, their conversation bouncing off one another like they were two versions of the same person, only not.

“Strange, isn’t it?”

“Very strange.”

“To make such noise.”

“I didn't think it would go so long.”

“The last one who screamed like that?—

“—we ended before it stopped.”

“But that just kept going and going and going.”

“Like it would never stop.”

Their words bounced back and forth, my head turning in the darkness, seeking them out. The slivers of light when they shifted, gifting me horrific glimpses of too gaunt faces, pale hair, and red eyes. Skin that looked like it had been interred for months, not of the living at all.

And their words?—

Almost poetic, their phrases ran with a sort of cadence I barely understood but did all the same.

Because this was Key and Kash Laurent. The hellish twins of Rippton U. If all the rumors I never listened to held true, they were psychopaths who murdered for money, favors and fun.

I believed every single myth about them right now in this place.

“You're insane,” I whispered. “Both of you.” I hadn’t convinced myself that I wasn’t hallucinating, and they were just one person my demented, terrified mind had split into two.

“Which one does she mean?”

“You?”

“Or me?”

“It can only be one of us.”

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