Page 6 of Vile Emotion
Killing Juliana wouldn’t have given me what I needed at all. Her dying would leave me with a sensation of a heavy heart and a tightness in my chest that would have never loosened no matter what I would’ve done so right now, Juliana is like thatthing I love to hate, no, loathe because that feeling to me, is even better.
“There are rules in this house, sweetheart,” I begin while leaning lower and pressing my forehead against hers. The fear is so palpable and it makes me want to let her run away so that I can hunt her down. It’s never been my thing to hurt or torture someone, I was very much a person who kept to themselves hiding the darker side of me because my wife deserved the better half of me and now everything good about me is buried six feet under with her.
I tilt my head and my hand travels up to her jaw lifting it up so she can look nowhere else but me. In another world, I’m sure someone else would be getting off on this and loving it but there’s nothing for us to love about this. I would rather drown in a pit of acid with my eyes open than fall in love with the woman that killed my pregnant wife and first son.
“You don’t have a say when it comes to anything that belongs to me here. That’s the first rule.” I relay. “Repeat after me.”
There’s this spark in Juliana’s eyes as if she's going to rebuff my statement but instead she keeps her eyes on me as she repeats. “I don’t have a say when it comes to anything that belongs to you here.”
“Do you know what that includes?” I tilt my head to the left, not removing my forehead from hers.
“N, no.” She says but I know she’s lying.
I can tell by that little nervous tic of her brow. She doesn't understand that I studied everything about her.
“Let me say it word for word when it comes to you so that you can hear me clearly,” Moving away from her forehead, I trace my nose slowly to her ear. “Your life is mine. Your soul, the very air you breathe is mine. You cannot do anything with it or take it away from me. If you try, I promise you, I will revive you just to make life worse for you. There’s no running away from me.Your fear, your hope and the little bit of joy you think you gained from being released from prison is mine. That hopelessness you received when you were thrown in solitary confinement belongs to me and hell, if I have to repeat myself about it, I will drag you through the mud much worse than the media ever could.
“The clothes on your back, every single follicle of hair is mine. Just think of it this way, Juliana, I am your god and your devil all in one. One side can grant you freedom one day but the other side will make sure you never get far enough to live out that freedom. Pray to me and I might give you a small reprieve of not feeling like you've been doused in a tub of sulfur. My fingers as they touch you and every part of you, you will see that it is not a gift to feel my touch but a curse. It is damning. Your everything is marked. I give you life and I take it away.”
Leaning the side of my head against the gray accented wall, I turn her jaw to look my way. Slowly, her eyes look up at me and there are those useless tears in those hollow fucking eyes seeking something she will never get from me; redemption.
My brow raises again indicating that I’m not fucking with her and she better repeat what I’m saying. “I’m marked. You’re my god and my devil. There’s nothing that belongs to me, not even myself.”
“Good.” I remark. “Especially your tears so hear me this one time because I won’t repeat myself. You will not cry unless I tell you to cry. Not one tear can drop from your eyes because there's nothing that can make me change how I feel about you. The way that I fantasize about you, about choking you out until I swallow your last breath adding another to mine, makes me dizzy and my chest swells with pride. Don’t tempt me to fulfill the wish that could take you back to where you first began. You should’ve never left your home that night.”
There’s this expression in her eyes but I don’t know what it is. Just as quickly as she lets her mask slip, she glues it back onquickly. I don’t care about her reasonings or why she was out that night or where she was going that fast but all I know is that she drove herself right into my life; crashing and burning everything in its wake.
6
You should’ve never left your home that night…
There’s his voice again in my head as I try to fall asleep on this bed but it feels all wrong.
Granted, I thought he would throw me in a dungeon or some sort of cell built just for me when he dragged me into this room but outside of that earlier exchange, Alaric hasn’t said a single word to me.
There was food delivered to me but I couldn’t eat. I don’t know if there’s something in it or if he wants me to die slowly.
I should be hurt by what Alaric said to me but I can’t be. I deserve this and if I just do whatever he says, eventually, I hope he forgives me and lets me go live out my life or like he said, just die here. But I’d rather die early than stay as a constant reminder of losing his family.
“How does he do it? How can he stand to look at me?”
I whisper into the dark room.
Trying again to shut my eyes, I hear a sound then open my eyes quickly. The nightmares have started up again. I felt safer in jail because I knew Edwin wouldn’t show up, he wouldn’t step foot near authority but now, it was different. I was out inthe open. I was exposed and my face was plastered all over the tabloids and all media outlets because of Alaric Crowne.
A man whose family was much more powerful and more influential than mine. The Harts are up there too but isolating myself from them, disappointing them and then, at last, shaming them in all that I’ve done. They’ll never speak to me again, my parents that is… as for my siblings, I know how they’re being watched like hawks, I don’t know if they even want anything to do with me now either. I have no way out. If Edwin finds me again this time, I know that he’s going to kill me. I won’t be able to get out of his grasp.
“Because it reminds me that I can hate someone really well.”
Alaric answers and my eyes search for him in the dark as my heart beats rapidly in my chest.
When my eyes land on his, I blink back so many thoughts I had of how to escape this place. It was one prison to another. He sat there like a god of death waiting for me at the bridge to cross over to hell. There was no heaven for me.
“You’re going to kill me.” I state.
It’s not even a question at all. I just know that’s what’s going to happen.
Alaric stands in his expensive robe, shirt and pajama pants. I hear as his bare feet pad a path toward me but I can’t do much else besides lay back down on the floor and stare at the ceiling. If this is how it ends then let it end. I want to be gone from this world already. It’s been too cruel to me.
