Page 139 of Cruel Malady: A Necrosis of the Mind

INERTIA

ALEX

In physics, inertia is the consistency of force moving at the same speed, on the same path, without change, unless interrupted.

In life, inertia is a state of apathy, lethargy. Idleness. The state of remaining the same, unmoved and unmovable.

Before Blakely, I never thought of life outside of science. Everything had a scientific explanation. And I was on a course to greatness, even if the world would never appreciate my discovery, my sacrifice. My ego was so that I didn’t sense my inertia, how I was drifting on a linear path, stagnant, for an unmeasurable timeframe.

I could’ve existed in that dormant state forever.

Until she interrupted my state of being.

The most unfeeling and cruel creature—inhumane by her own design—crashed my world of metrics and careful calculations and changed me. With a darkly ironic twist, she made me see the world through a human lens.

So as I’m thrust into the air, my wrists and ankles bound by cable, my limbs stretched and my body racked, all I can see is how astonishingly beautiful she is below me. How the widening of her sea-green eyes convey her vortex of emotions. How her parted mouth, her words hung in suspension just as I am, begs to be kissed to steal away her fear.

She removes all doubt.

“Alex—” she shouts, spinning in a circle below me. “What the fuck is going on?”

The cables cinch tighter, slicing into my skin, and I grit out a response. “You need to leave. Now, Blakely. Go—”

Even as I glut the painful words from the bowels of my desire to keep her, I know it’s already too late.

The timepiece starts to descend from the joist in the middle of the room, the ticking amplified by the speaker and acoustics. I watched Grayson design majority of the trap, but he left me in the dark for his finale.

When she left me in this cage, I knew where Blakely would start. I figured I’d give her a day to ease into her scheme before I picked the lock and took care of Addisyn who, by the way, spent most of her time on her phone and complaining of boredom, while she paid little notice to me.

I should have acted sooner.

I should have been more thorough.

But as always, when it comes to Blakely, I’m too narrowly focused on her to foresee the variables.

During our three days together, Grayson enlightened me on a number of details. The Rolex he stitched into my leg wasn’t a warped countdown measure; it was to conceal the tracker he placed beneath my skin.

Brilliant, really, because the painful wound masked any discomfort the tiny tracking device might have caused.

Grayson’s curiosity was piqued when the GPS dot showed me spending a great deal of time at a dog kennel. Oh, he had a laugh, walking in to discover me caged like an animal by the torturous love of my life.

“In love, we are all trapped,” I said to him.

“Indeed,” was his reply.

I spent the next seventy-two hours torn between my selfish need for Blakely to return, and my hope she wouldn’t—that she’d run away and, this time, she’d never look back.

Blakely stares at my pocket watch dangling from the beam as if she’s been entranced by the rhythmic ticking. When she finally speaks, her voice is low and monotone. “I kept the bargain,” she says, her gaze flicking up to find mine. “Brewster is handled. All the murders are pinned on him and his crew. Grayson is in the clear.” She wipes a hand across her forehead in thought. “I kept the fucking deal.”

“But the deal wasn’t with you.”

Grayson leans against the back wall, arms crossed over his chest. He’s partially obscured by the shadows in the room, his light gaze assessing first Blakely, then me.

He cocks an eyebrow. “I’m surprised the trap worked,” he says, his admission unexpected. “I had limited supplies to work with here.”

After he drugged Addisyn with the animal sedatives, he rigged a medieval stretching device using the top of the crate as a rack. The suspension is geared by a simple cable hoist. If not for my extremely uncomfortable predicament, I’d appreciate the mechanics.

He’s not as smug as I first perceived him. With an IQ to rival my own, he views the world like one giant puzzle he’s always piecing together, as evident with his meticulous traps. Admittedly, he has a very macabre picture in mind of that completed puzzle, but at this point in my life, strung from cables like a morbid marionette, I’m not one to judge.

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