Page 6 of Genesis
Protect my brother.
How? How was I supposed to protect him when I couldn’t breathe? When I’d already let his sister die? I’d spent my whole life being beaten, abused, whipped, and flogged, but I’d take that pain for all eternity against the pain I felt now. Hyperventilating through anguish and still breathing despite my demands for death, I threw up sand and breathed more in. Screaming, crying, dying and living, I broke. Shattered.
Consciousness came and went, and every time I opened my eyes, I saw Zan’s bloody body lying next to me. But when I touched him, he felt different. He wasn’t happy-go-lucky and submissive to love. This body wasn’t soft and pliable to my every touch. This body wasn’t anything but a taunt, a torment to look at for the rest of my miserable life, where my only purpose was to keep my promise and protect the identical body to the one I’d lost forever.
They were the same in appearance. Same dark hair and eyes with the same ridges and lines of muscle. Even the same tattoo. A mind-fuck to forever taunt me with the loss of the man I loved. The man I let die because I’d been a minute—a fucking minute!—too late. Now stuck in a mad world with the body but not the soul, I knew it was the only thing I deserved. I’d stick with Zade to keep my promise, but I’d follow him to admire the body. Zan’s body with a different heart inside it.
Masochistic. I’d follow him. Waiting for the day it’d feel good to look at him. To take pleasure in the way his body reminded me of all the ways I’d fucked it and praised it. I worshipped this body, and the sick part of my mind still wanted to worship it, just to keep Zan alive.
My boyfriend died, but his body stayed.
My love died, and his body hated me.
I begged for death, but life was my punishment.
A life with the body I desired but could never have.
I deserved it.
Zan’swatery fingers tickled my ankles, teasing me into joining him in the depths of Synner’s Lake.
Come get me, Cadoc. I love you. Don’t stop.
I closed my eyes even though they were already closed. A water-logged receipt with his writing became wrinkled between my fist, but I clutched onto it like the only physical tie I had to him.
Chase me, Cadoc. Find me. Don’t leave me.
I’d never leave him. I’d carry his dead heart as suffocating baggage for the rest of my days and never resent the weight of it. And if he hadn’t made me promise to protect his brother, I’d weigh myself with rocks and drown myself in his grave.
“No! NO! Fuck, no! No. No. No. No. Amelia!”
A body moved under my hand and Zan’s wispy fingers continued to lick at my ankles from the rising tide. My hand fell to the ground and my eyes blinked open, gritty and blurred from the sand.
“Amelia! Fuck!”
The blood-soaked sand lacked two bodies. Zade wasn't lying there. Amelia was gone. I dug my fingers into the blood, trying to hold on to whatever bits of her remained. Failure. A fucking failure. Two Enge kids dead in a week. My fault.
“She’s gone. Fuck, she’s gone.”
Zade tripped, collapsing right on top of me, making my ribs and bullet wound scream in pain. My soul screamed louder. Hetried to get up, but he kept falling against me, and when I rolled over to shove him off, he threw up right beside my head.
“Zade…”
“Don’t,” he snarled at me. “Don’t fucking… she’s gone.” He shook violently, trying but failing to stand. Either he gave up or his body quit on him, but he fell against me again, hyperventilating and crying too hard to breathe.
I’d hold him while he died.
I closed my eyes and felt him spasm against me. He trembled when I weakly put an arm over his back to keep him still, and the sick, sick, sick fucking part of me allowed myself one measly second to pretend he was Zan. One second. One second of Zan’s body against mine again. One second.
One second to pretend. One second that felt so real.
“I love you,” I whispered against his hair, stroking it back. “I love you.”
He cried harder, choking warm bile onto my chest. “Amelia,” he gasped. “Amel…”
The next time I woke up, I was alone and the moon was out. Orange and ominous, it stared down at me from above Synner’s Lake. I didn’t know what it was looking at, but I knew it wasn’t a nice sight. A wounded and scarred body that contained a tainted soul and a shattered heart. There was nothing worthwhile left of me, but Zade would keep me alive just to make me live like this.
I stared at the moon, trying to see what it saw. Was it looking down on Zan’s liquid grave, watching over him while he bloated and decomposed at the bottom? Would I be able to find him if I dove down there? What would I even do with him?
