52. Esperr
ESPERR
This was how I was going out–a fucking headache that decided to stay permanent.
It lived behind my eyes now, deep and throbbing, that kind that made every breath I took feel like a personal attack.
I’ve stopped trying to blink it away—it wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was I, so I guess the pain and I have reached an understanding.
Jessi still sits across from me, having come back around a while ago, or maybe five minutes. It’s hard to tell time while being stuck down here. But I tried talking to her through it as quietly as I could, the same way Oliver used to talk me through the bad nights after my parents' deaths.
She looks worse than before, with a pale, waxy face, shallow breathing, and brows that pinch together whenever she moves even slightly.
“Hey.” My voice comes out rough, my throat dry. “Stay with me, Jessi.”
Her eyes find me, or they try to, and she tries to smile, but it doesn’t quite get there. “I’m here.”
I swallow and nod, wishing I could offer her more, but I can’t–not with Michael in the corner. He’s been there a while, just standing there, watching, and I hate it. I hated it years before, but now; it’s this new form of rage that makes me want to gouge his eyeballs out and shove them up his ass.
Refusing to acknowledge him, I keep my gaze on Jessi, watching her labored breath and eyes drifting close. She doesn’t have long—I know that, but I can’t bring myself to accept it.
I don’t know how long we sit there in silence, her breath turning to wheezing before Michael pushes off the wall.
My chest seizes, hands gripping the armrest. “Don’t.” The word comes out of me before I can think about it. “Please, just leave her alone, Michael. She’s not?—”
He stops behind Jessi’s chair, and her eyes widen as much as they can with how swollen they are.
“No—” I pull at the zip ties, my wrist screaming as the skin starts to tear and the chair scrapes against the floor. “Please, just leave her alone!” I’ve lost count on the amount of times I’ve screamed those words.
He tilts his head to the side, lips pressed in a firm line. “You ran.”
I got still, biting down on my lip to stop myself from screaming at him—of course I ran.
“I gave you everything.” He rests his hands on Jessi’s shoulder, causing her to flinch violently beneath him and then moan in pain. “I watched over you; I kept you safe from others, and you ran.”
“You killed my parents.” The words come out shaking.
“I removed the people who were keeping you from me.” He says it like he’s correcting me, and like he doesn’t see the problem. “There’s a difference, Melody.”
“There is no difference?—”
“You were always mine.” He tilts his head in the other direction, studying me. “From the first time I saw you, you were always going to be mine; it was just a matter of time before you understood that.”
I want—should—stay quiet; I know that. Every rational part of me is screaming to keep my mouth shut, to not give him anything, to just breathe and wait to hold on?—
“That’s not how it works!”
He blinks at my outburst. And because I’m already here, I can’t seem to stop.
“You can’t just see a girl and decide she belongs to you.
That’s not love, that’s not devotion! You might’ve convinced yourself that those things are love, but they’re not.
You watched me, you followed me, you destroyed everything around me.
” My voice is shaking, anger getting the best of me, but I don’t care, not anymore.
“You’re a fucking psycho. You are a stupid, fucking psycho and no matter what you do to me in this basement I will never—NEVER?—”
He moves so fast that in the blink of an eye a knife dives into Jessi’s gut—the sound that chokes out of her is the same sound my mother made.
“No—” The scream tears out of me. “No. No. No?—”
Michael stares at me as he pulls back just a bit and then twists the knife so it’s turning inside her stomach.
“Stop it, stop?—”
Jessi’s eyes find mine, my vision blurry as tears fill my eyes, slipping down my cheeks.
“It’s okay.” I hiccup, barely able to get the words out. “It’s okay… hey, hey, look at me, you’re okay. I promise, okay, I promise?—”
Her eyes go soft and then still with the silence that follows is?—
“You…” The words coming out of me are broken. “You monster. You absolute fucking monster; she had a daughter, she—she had a little girl! Jessi never did anything to you; she never even knew you existed?—”
He turns from Jessi’s chair and looks at me, slowly walking over. I tilt my head back, my eyes burning with tears, but I refuse to let him see me any sadder than he already has.
Michael’s hand closes around my jaw, his fingers digging in hard enough to make me hiss. He yanks my head back even further, forcing me to look at his face until he’s so close that I can’t focus on anything else.
“Scream all you want; plead all you want. No one is going to hear you. There’s no one here but me and you now, baby.”
“Fuck you!” I grit through clenched teeth.
Michael doesn’t react like I’d expect him; he just looks at me like I’m a child throwing a tantrum that he finds mildly inconvenient, and something about that, the absolute certainty of him, and the way he just stands there while Jessi’s dead behind him and I’m still here like he won—something about it snaps the last thread I have.
I throw myself forward, zip ties cutting into my wrists, and I’m vaguely aware of warmth spreading, dripping onto the concrete.
The chair legs scrape against the ground, but I don’t care—I pull against them anyway, again and again, twisting and wrenching, and the more I struggle the worst the ties dig into my skin.
My ankles and wrists scream, but I don’t care, I can’t anymore.
Michael watches, arms loose at his sides like he’s not even concerned a little that I’m trying to break free.
And somehow that makes it worse, and I grit my teeth, pulling harder.
“You’re going to die for this!” My voice was raw, completely shredded.
“Melody—”
“Don’t call me that!” I throw my weight against the chair, going nowhere. “Don’t you dare call me that! You don’t get to call me anything, you don’t get?—”
He’s suddenly back in front of me, and his fist hits the side of my cheek, my teeth chattering, before the pain explodes from the right side of my cheek. The world whites out for a second, and I can immediately taste blood.
For the first time since he began hitting me, I don’t cry out, instead accepting the pain and clamping my mouth shut, breathing in. Turning my head, I spit blood onto the concrete ground before lifting my head.
“He’s going to kill you.” I smile, blood coating my teeth. “When he finds out what you’ve done—” I hold his gaze. “And he will; he’s going to tear you to pieces, rip you apart until you’re begging to be killed. And when that happens I’m going to be the one holding that knife.”
The room grows colder, as his face reddens in anger. “Who? That guy who claims to be your boyfriend?”
“Yes. And you have no idea who he is and what he’s capable of. But you’re going to find out.”
He steps towards me, hands fisted at his sides, and the look on his face is changing as he thinks about my words, completely different from anything I’ve seen today—it’s twisting as different emotions hit him over and over again. Disbelief and then anger and something in between.
“There is no boyfriend,” he growls. “There is no one coming. There is no one who is going to find you.” He leans down, getting so uncomfortably close that I’m afraid if he talks, his lips are going to brush against mine.
Thankfully they don’t the second he continues.
“There is only me, there has only ever been me. And the sooner you understand that?—”
“He’s already looking.” I keep my mouth turned up in a smile even though it’s taking everything in me because the pain shooting through my skull is bound to be the reason I drop dead.
He straightens up, and the last thing I see is his fist slamming into my face.
The first thing I’m aware of is the light—still brutal, and it sends bile up my throat until I can taste bits of it in my mouth before I can swallow it down.
I blink once and then again—but it feels all wrong, my face that is. Everything in me feels wrong—my eyes feel like they weigh ten pounds each, my cheek is hot, and rubbing my lips together causes my skin to tighten and throb in pain.
My gaze sweeps the basement, but I don’t see Michael—I hold very still and listen, waiting for any sign of him. When I don’t, I finally let out a broken breath, my gaze falling to Jessi.
He left her in the chair, head dropped to the side, hair falling across her face, and hand still nailed to the armrest—eyes still open.
But they’re lifeless, completely empty.
Something rises in my chest so fast and so large that for a moment I genuinely can’t breathe around it. My throat closes and my vision blurs. Everything I've been holding in since I first woke up in this chair threatens to spill out all at once, right here?—
I shake my head and look away while breathing through my nose, not that it provides much oxygen. My nose feels swollen, like there’s a blockage preventing me from taking a deep breath.
I can’t fall apart right now, not yet. I’ll feel it all at once, every piece of it, and Michael can’t see that.
Later. I’ll let myself mourn her later.
Gathering what little I have left inside me, I pull against the zip ties, twisting my wrist and hissing as it begins to shred at my wrist again. White-hot pain shoots through my arms.
And then my arms just stop.
The strength isn’t there anymore, just simply drained from my body.
Come on.
I move my wrist again, only to gasp when everything tingles, and my fingers become numb. My eyes drift closed, feeling my chest trying to expand but not being able to. It’s useless; I’m not going to be able to get out of these.
The door hinges squeak for a second before a set of footsteps echo down the stairs.
I keep my eyes closed and try to remember what it felt like to be somewhere else—with Zyran.
I don’t know what time it is, but I imagine it’s well after my shift ended at noon.
We’d be at his house, probably sitting around the dinner table with his brothers, and I bet Zyran was trying to reach for a breadstick or a piece of potato from Slater’s plate.
He’d almost get stabbed, but his brother’s catch of his sleeve wouldn’t be enough to deter Zyran from attempting to steal more food.
It would encourage him. And he’d get this little twinkle in his eyes, this evil gleam that would come up with a plan to fuck with Slater even more.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” Michael says somewhere in front of me. “I was starting to get worried.”
I say nothing, not having a clue on how he realized I was awake, unless the fucker has cameras down here, which he probably does.
I hear his footsteps echoing around the basement, but I keep my face down, eyes closed.
“You gave me quite a scare,” he continues, voice trailing as I imagine him pacing back and forth. “I thought I went too far…”
I bite my tongue, saying nothing.
“Melody.”
Don’t fucking answer. Don’t take the bait.
“I know you’re angry. That’s alright, I expected it. It’s always been part of you, that anger. I’ve seen it?—”
“Kill me!” I blurt out.
And because I’m a committed bitch, I open my eyes and look at him unblinking.
Michael stands a few feet away, and for the first time it seems that I’ve actually surprised him. It’s only there for a second, but I see it—the brief break in his carefully placed mask.
“Kill me,” I grit out. “I will never love you, not in any lifetime, not in any shape or form. It will never happen.” I hold his gaze. “And the first chance I get—the very first chance, I don’t care how small—I’m running. Every single time. I will always run from you, you stupid fucking cocksucker.”
He looks at me for a long moment and then he crouches down in front of my chair and tilts his head and says, very softly. “No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will.”
I don’t know how delusional he can be; maybe his mother dropped him on the head too much as a child.
And then in a blink of an eye the pain burns, and I can’t help the sound that comes out of me, short and sharp because there's a knife’s handle sticking out of my side. I gasp, and when he starts to pull it back, I’m still there, still struggling to breathe, but I don’t care.
I smile, letting the burn and pain that’s everywhere fuel the anger inside me. “That’s right, kill me. Go ahead and fucking do it!”
His jaw tightens, and he raises the knife, slicing through my eyebrow, dragging across my eye, trailing to my lip—the scream that tears out of me is like nothing before.
Those were grief, rage, and pure desperation.
This one is just pain, pure and blinding, ripping right out of me before I can even think about containing it.
The world on my left side just… goes.
It’s not dark, just a blurred, useless image that I can’t figure out how to blink away—swimming red at the edges, and I can’t tell what everything looks like.
I scream my throat raw, cracking, and I suck in air, trying to stop myself from withering against the ties that are sending pulses up to my elbow.
Clamping my mouth shut, my body fell sideways, shaking and breathing in sharp, stuttering pulls.
Michael moves somewhere to the right, his whole body coming into view, looking down at me.
“Finish it, you coward.” I don’t know where I find the strength to keep goading him, but fuck it, let Zyran find my dead body—I'll haunt him until he kills Michael for killing me.
And then I’d haunt any girl he tries to be with.
I smile, blood coating my mouth, and I swear I feel my lip split open even more, but I don’t care.
His jaw tightens, and when the knife comes up again, my eyes drift close?—
The explosion hits like a thunderclap, shaking the entire house. Above us the building shudders, dust raining from the ceiling, and the light bulb swings as Michael spins towards the stairs every bit of his attention wrenched upward.
My smile widens, and I whisper, “You’re going to die.”