Chapter Five
Slaughter
The walls were closing in. Every day, they seemed to creep a little closer, shrinking the space around me until I felt like I was trapped in a coffin.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but feel the crushing weight of grief pressing down on my chest like a goddamn anvil.
Every breath was a struggle, like trying to inhale through wet concrete.
My lungs refused to expand fully, my ribs felt like they were caving in, and my heart—God, my heart felt like it had been ripped out and stomped into the dirt.
Two weeks in this room. Two weeks of whiskey and darkness and the sound of my own pathetic sobbing echoing off the walls.
The curtains stayed drawn and blocked out the sunlight that had no business existing in a world this cruel.
Empty bottles littered the floor like fallen soldiers, and I had lost count of how many times I had passed out on the small, framed bed.
Two weeks of trying to drink myself into oblivion, into forgetting, into anything that wasn’t this endless, suffocating pain.
But the whiskey never worked the way I wanted it to.
It dulled the edges for a few hours, sure, but the grief always came roaring back, sharper and meaner than before.
It wasn’t working. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I drank, the thoughts kept coming back. They clawed at the edges of my mind, relentless and unforgiving.
Nothing worked. Not the pills Shadow brought me. Not the late-night conversations with Kansas. Not the silence. Not even the numbing embrace of alcohol could remove the ache for more than a few fleeting moments.
I grabbed the half-empty bottle of whiskey from the nightstand and stumbled to my feet, my legs unsteady beneath me.
The room spun violently. The walls tilted at impossible angles.
The ceiling dipped and swayed as though I were on a ship in rough seas.
I didn’t care. The dizziness was almost welcome.
At least it was a different kind of pain, a physical distraction from the mental anguish that had become my constant companion.
I needed out. Needed air. Needed something, anything, other than these four walls and the memories that haunted every corner. The bedroom had become my prison. Each object was a reminder of better times, each shadow holding echoes of laughter that would never return.
The house was dark and silent as I made my way down the hallway, nothing but shadows and the faint creak of old timber settled in the walls.
My bare feet were unsteady on the hardwood floor, each step careful and deliberate, testing my balance with every movement forward.
I didn’t bother with shoes. Didn’t bother with a shirt or jacket, even though I knew the night would be cold.
Just me, my jeans, and the bottle clutched in my fist like a lifeline, as if it were the only thing keeping me tethered to the earth.
The back door opened with a soft creak that seemed to echo in the stillness, and the night air hit me like a slap across the face. Cool. Clean. Sharp enough to sting my lungs. I sucked in a breath, held it for a moment, and kept walking, letting the door swing shut behind me with a muted thud.
Past the greenhouse with its foggy glass panels. Past the garden where tomato plants drooped on their stakes in the darkness. Into the open field beyond, where the grass was tall and wet with dew, soaking the cuffs of my jeans as I pushed forward into the night.
I didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t care. Didn’t even bother to look at my surroundings as I passed them, one after another, as everything blurred together in the darkness.
I just needed to move. Needed to walk until my legs gave out or my heart stopped beating or something—anything—made this pain stop. The cold night air bit at my face, but I welcomed it. Embraced it, even. Physical discomfort was easier to handle than the emotional wreckage churning inside me.
I lifted the bottle to my lips and drank.
The whiskey burned going down, scorching a path from my throat to my stomach, but it was a good burn.
A distraction. A reminder that I could still feel something other than this crushing emptiness.
I drank again. And again. The amber liquid sloshed in the bottle with each unsteady step I took down the worn path.
No matter how much I drank, I couldn’t ease the pain in my chest. The hurt.
The raw, jagged ache that threatened to tear me apart from the inside out.
The longing for the one woman I would never hold again.
Her laugh. Her smile. The way she looked at me like I was the only person in the world who mattered.
All of it was gone now, vanished like smoke, and no amount of whiskey could bring any of it back.
I stumbled forward as my vision blurred at the edges, everything going soft and hazy.
The stars were out tonight. Bright and clear, scattered across the endless sky like diamonds carelessly tossed on black velvet.
There must have been thousands of them up there, maybe millions, each one burning with its own cold fire.
Julie used to love nights like this. She would drag me outside just to look up at the stars, no matter how tired I was, no matter what else we had planned.
Her hand would find mine in the darkness, warm and sure, and she would rest her head on my shoulder, her hair smelling of jasmine and summer rain.
“Make a wish, Chap,” she would say, her voice soft and full of that quiet wonder she never lost, not even after all our years together.
I would tell her I didn’t need to wish for anything because I already had everything I wanted. And I had meant it. Every single word.
And I had.
Until I didn’t.
Until the universe took it all away.
The pond appeared out of nowhere, a dark mirror reflecting the moon and stars above.
It emerged from the darkness like something from a dream, materializing between the trees as if it had always been there, waiting for me to find it.
The water was still, glassy, perfect—undisturbed by wind or wildlife.
Moonlight glistened off the surface like liquid silver, as it cast ethereal reflections that danced and shimmered across the obsidian depths below.
I stopped at the edge, swaying on my feet, my legs threatening to give out beneath me, and stared at it. My breath came in ragged gasps, fogging in the cool night air.
Beautiful.
Peaceful.
Serene.
Everything I wasn’t.
My grief rose up in my chest like a tidal wave and crashed over me with a force that drove me to my knees.
The damp earth soaked through my jeans, cold and unforgiving as I roared.
A pitiful, soul-crushing cry that tore out of my throat and echoed across the water, shattering the silence of the night.
Birds scattered from nearby trees, their wings beating frantically against the darkness.
But the sound wasn’t enough. It couldn’t contain the anguish, couldn’t express the vast emptiness that had taken root inside me.
It was the sound of a man breaking. The sound of something fundamental and essential shattering into a thousand irreparable pieces deep within my chest. Of a man who had lost everything and didn’t know how to keep living.
Everything that had given my life meaning, everything that had anchored me to this world, was gone.
Stripped away. And I was left adrift in a vast, cold emptiness with no map, no compass, no destination.
I roared again, louder this time, as the sound tore from somewhere primal and savage inside me.
I roared until my throat was raw and bleeding, until my lungs burned like they were filled with fire, until my voice cracked and broke.
I roared until there was nothing left inside me but emptiness.
A vast, hollow void where my heart used to be.
Where my hope used to live. Where my future used to exist.
And then I heard it.
A twig snapped behind me.
I turned fast. Too fast and nearly fell. My vision blurred, then focused. And I saw her.
Her long, wavy brunette hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back in thick, lustrous waves that seemed to shimmer with each step she took.
Her white nightgown caught the moonlight and made her look like something out of a dream, or perhaps a ghost from another era.
The fabric was thin and delicate, almost translucent in the silvery glow, billowing gently in the night breeze as she walked toward me, slow and cautious, her bare feet silent on the grass.
Her movements were hesitant, deliberate, as if she were afraid of startling me, or perhaps afraid of what she might find.
Her eyes were fixed on mine, wide and searching, and I could see the uncertainty written across her face even from a distance.
I blinked. Then blinked again.
She didn’t disappear, and my heart stopped.
I stood rooted to the spot, my feet seemingly fused to the cold ground beneath me, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid that if I did anything at all, if I so much as blinked or shifted my weight, she would vanish like smoke dissipating into the night air.
My heart hammered against my ribs so hard I thought it might break through.
“Julie?” I whispered, my voice barely audible, cracking on that single word that held so much weight, so much history, so much desperate hope.
The woman stopped immediately, her body going completely still. Her shoulders tensed. Time itself seemed to freeze in that moment.