My biggest dream.
When I left my childhood home, taking all the cash my mother had in her drawers, I thought I would come straight here, to his house, to him. But I couldn’t.
My mind was split in two, my heart crying for the man who helped me remember, who helped me understand in one simple hour who I was, yet I couldn’t go to him and be with him in the way he wanted me to be.
My fingers itched for something new.
My feet yearned for a new town, a new experience, fresh blood.
My body needed to be my own again. My mind had to be what it used to be prior to that accident and prior to all the drugs my mother fed me. I wanted to stay and watch her reaction once she got home and saw my message, but I decided against it.
It was enough torture for her to know that I remembered everything. That there was nothing she could lie to me about anymore.
She thought I was a sick child, but she was just a mother who wasn’t ready for me. Hell, I didn’t think that she ever should’ve become a mother, but who was I to say that? I never wanted to have kids. Not because I wouldn’t be a good mother, but because I would hate to bring them into a world that hated everyone who was different.
We weren’t good for them because our minds worked differently. Because our souls cried for something opposed to what they liked. They wanted to fit us into the mold, but all we wanted was to be free, to do whatever the fuck we wanted to do.
I wanted their screams.
Their tears.
I wanted to hear them beg as my knife sliced over their veins, praying to their invisible God, thinking he could save them. But they had no idea that God didn’t live here anymore. God would never step inside Winworth, inside this hell on earth, where the Blackwood family pulled strings and everyone else was just their puppet.
I watched them, these fucking bastards, as they went to their little catacombs, doing God knows what in the middle of the night, leaving screams behind and ashen faces of those who joined. I watched them as they gathered more and more people, pulling in almost the entire population of Winworth.
I held the knife that was strapped to my thigh right now. Many of those nights, I sat behind the bushes next to City Hall, watching as they all went to the basement area behind the building, wishing for one of them to find me.
My feet hurried deeper into the maze as memory after memory smashed through my skull, giving me all the necessary information.
Winworth had an Order, and the founding families ran it. I just had to figure out what they did inside of those catacombs, and what their plans were. I had no doubt that something wicked ran underneath this town, and the people of Winworth had no idea.
Fear not the monster that showed its true face. Fear the monster that showed only its smile, fooling you into thinking that it was just a normal man.
Fallen branches broke underneath my feet as I went deeper and deeper into the maze, my heart thundering at the mere thought of getting caught.
I liked to think I was more of a predator than a prey, but with Lazarus, I wanted to be caught. I wanted him to catch me, to show me everything I was missing, to teach me his ways.
I couldn’t erase the image of a young Lazarus in my head, and the way his hair shone underneath the moonlight. I couldn’t forget the blood dripping down his hand, or the dark aura around him when I stumbled upon that clearing, seeing him fully for the first time ever.
I couldn’t fucking forget the way my entire body became alive at the mere thought of getting caught by him.
My blood flamed through my veins, pumping in and out of my heart, rushing through my bloodstream and pushing me to go faster and faster and faster until I couldn’t hear anything but the whooshing in my ears.
The claiming, the reckoning, they were all coming for me, and I was ready. I was finally ready for this life, for him, for the new chapter that would allow me to be who I was always supposed to be. The blood on my hands was just that—blood. The stains on my soul were just that—stains.
I was free. I was remembered.
I knew who I was.
The cold air slammed into my face as I ran faster and faster and faster, but I didn’t mind. I wouldn’t mind anything right now if the end was the same. I wanted to brand myself into his heart, into his very soul, so that the only being he could ever think of would be me.
I wanted to carve my name into his skin, to show him who he belonged to. I wanted him to know that I wasn’t here only tonight—this was my eternity, my fucking happy ending.
My mother had no say anymore in what I did and where I went. I saw her frantically locking all the windows and doors at night. I saw her changing the lock on the doors the very next day after I left. I saw her going into the police station to report me as missing.
What a fucking cunt.
I wasn’t missing… I was finally found. I found myself, my true purpose, and tonight, we would paint this town red.