Page 96 of Inevitable Destruction

DOMINIK

“Eternally Yours”—Motionless In White

Darkness descends,bathing the room in black, with only the light from the entryway creeping through the shadows.

I wish I could say I was numb, that I had the strength to move and fucking make myself that way, but I haven’t budged a muscle. I’ve kept myself in a pathetic ball of useless skin and bones as I let my mind relive the horrors I once experienced.

Time slows to nothing when you hit that wall of such deep fear, your body goes into shock. It seems ludicrous, to be frozen in time, but that’s exactly what happens when your brain can’t, or refuses, to recognize what’s in front of you.

My eyes tracked over every inch of that room, over naked flesh and bloody steel, brain matter and ripped clothes, chunks of hair and skull fragments.

I came home high as a fucking kite that night, only to be irreparably damaged to the point my high ceased to exist.

After that, a needle was the only way for me to just be away from it all, to get some fucking relief from the images that never stopped playing on repeat in my mind.

I need that right now more than the need to breathe, more than I need to fucking live.

I push myself up into a sitting position, bypassing the newspaper and the fucking box as a whole, but the manila envelope crunched to fit inside the smaller box fills me with impending dread. The second my fingers brush against the thick material, a frenzy begins. I rip open the top, tearing the envelope straight down the center, completely shredding it.

White papers flutter out at the burst of their confines, and I fall to my knees, waving my arms out. The moment my fingertips clasp around one of the papers, I bring it in my line of sight—which is far too close, but I can’t see much in the dimly lit room.

Le Grade Police Department

Official Incident Report

My eyes soak in every ounce of newly found information, but as I flip through papers, I quickly come to realize it’s nothing I didn’t already know. In fact, the first two pages are just the statement I gave the cops of what I knew when they first fucking came.

It’s not until I’m sitting on my haunches, chest heaving, surrounded by a flurry of white papers, that it fucking hits me.

“Why the hell does he have all of this shit about my parents?” I ponder out loud to myself, my eyes flittering over all of the evidence staring me right in the face, but not actually telling me shit.

“Come on, Dom. Fucking think,” I berate myself, smacking the heels of my palms against my forehead. “You’re missing something. You’re missing something… you’re missing something…” My words become a chant, giving me much-needed endurance when all feels so fucking hopeless.

Nothing makes sense, not when there are this many pieces of the puzzle that don’t fucking fit.

Everett Boyd upends my life at every—

The sudden, warped twist on my reality strikes me as fast as lightning, and as deadly, too.

“N-no,” I mumble, shaking my head so fast my curls whip back and forth, shadowing the papers with a blur of black.

Boyd rings loud inside my head, battering against my skull until my brain is bruised and bleeding. My hands become unfocused in front of me as I whip through the scattered papers in search of the newspaper I had—

I bring it in front of my face, and my eyes automatically scan down the page, falling right to my parents pictures, like they have a thousand times before, but it’s not until I unsteadily flip the single, creased paper over that I realize it’s the content on this side that I never once looked at—the obituaries.

The first name, written as clear as day in bold, black letters, along with a picture is staring back at me: Steven Boyd. Age 45. Survived by his son: Everett Boyd of Le Grande.

A laugh bubbles up my throat, spilling from my lips, boisterous and hysterical. My throat burns as the laugh rips through my vocal cords, severing straight through to my carotid, leaving me to bleed out on Everett Boyd’s floor.

“Boyd,” I cackle, feeling deliriously in pain as I slump down, instinctively curling in on myself.

It’s been right in front of me this whole fucking time. I knew who his father was—he was friends with my parents. By the time they had become friends, I was already spending most of my time high, not home, or both, because of the fighting, so I only ran into him a few times, but still.

I fucking knew him. And his name.

“Goddamnit,” I growl, feeling the vibration rip through my throat. I’ve been so blind with all the drugs, and the sex, and the manipulation… which is exactly what he wanted.

He… my stomach lurches again, and I gag, dry-heaving with my face pressed into the carpet, mere inches away from the puddle of bile where I spewed earlier.

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