Chapter 46
Gravity
Zoe
I’m dead. I’ve died, and not too long ago it was something I wanted so deeply but was always too cowardly to execute. I thought it’d be more peaceful. I thought that maybe the itching guilt that set my skin on fire would go away, but it still persists.
However, this is a new type of guilt. This is a guilt that reflects words never spoken, untold truths, and so much fucking regret.
I died, and I never told a single soul that I loved them. As far as anyone was concerned, I was never capable of the emotion in the first place.
I suppose that isn’t so bad. I was raised to believe love was a weakness, anyway, feeling anything was a weakness.
But over the last month or so, I have felt everything. Hate, anger, frustration, ecstasy, and love that is so incredibly potent and bitter sweet that even in death I can feel it fluttering in my stone-cold heart.
I’m dead, and all I have ever been, is a liar. I never really said anything meaningful or true.
I wish I lived my life more like the Karma’s.
Brandon lived with a free spirit and never shied away from affection. He was willing to do anything in his power just to see someone smile. He paid attention to every detail of a person, and never, ever, held any dark secrets against you.
Dean was strong, and powerful. He protected everything he loved with ferocity and such gumption that a lion’s strength radiated from him when he entered a room.
Dean was also secretly gentle and tender.
He had a hard shell with such a gooey caramel center that you couldn’t help but sigh in delight when you were lucky enough to reach it.
Max was incredibly stubborn and the most infuriating man to walk the planet most days.
But that smile, his laugh. I always treated him like a robot, or some sort of machine, and I regret not letting him in sooner.
We mirrored each other in a way. He was everything I hated about myself, but I somehow found myself so undeniably in love with him it has made me question why I hated myself at all.
But I think I know why I hated myself. Max never lied, even for a second, about who he was.
Sure, he was cold, but he loved, and he cared.
He was controlling, but he always, always did his best to make sure everyone had the best life possible.
His intentions were always right, and I hate that I may have disappointed him once again.
I’m positive that Teddy and I were twin flames.
Destined to meet each other in every single life.
That’s what I have to look forward to, maybe my luck will turn around and I’ll get to meet him again.
I didn’t believe in reincarnation until I met Teddy.
But the type of connection that pulls us together could never be coincidence, because our connection is cosmic.
He is so familiar, and comforting. Teddy is devotion personified.
Teddy would have crawled to the ends of the earth to make any one of us pleased.
Teddy didn’t get enough credit where it was due, and I should have praised him more.
Teddy was love, devotion, loyalty, and constant.
He was my exact and my opposite. Teddy was everything.
I wish I could be as devoted as him. To love so hard, it hurts.
To love so hard, it can only be described as destruction, wrath, heat, and raw electricity.
Teddy was not unhinged. Unhinged couldn’t describe him well enough.
No, not unhinged. Chaos. As chaotic as an earthquake, complex and unpredictable, but so impactful that he should have his own entire wing in a museum.
I was never good enough for any of them. They’d never say that, but I know it. They gave me a home, a real home. All I gave them in return was petulance, and arrogance. I was just another headache, a problem, for them to solve.
I died before I could make them proud. I died before I could make myself proud.
I never did see enough sunrises, and I never got to lay on the grass and pick out shapes in the clouds.
I don’t know where I’m at, but I know I’m somewhere in between. Waiting to learn my eternal fate.
I have no doubt I’ll be headed to Hell if it exists. I never really followed an organized religion, however, that’s not to say I don’t believe in evil.
I’ve looked evil directly in the eye as I carved out his heart.
However, if Heaven and Hell don’t exist this reality is much more devastating. I’d rather have an eternity of flames and torture and never-ending pain, than this empty void of regret and guilt.
Maybe I am already in Hell? I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this is the fate I deserved. I’ve killed, and tortured, and fucked nameless faceless people for years. I’ve let myself waste away during a year of binge drinking. I even mutilated and murdered my own father.
This black void goes on forever, I look down and I don’t even see my body anymore. It’s just dark and empty and there is nothing here to distract me from this spiral of should haves.
I stretch out my invisible fingers and for a moment, I get the sensation that I’m actually touching something, I try to create more movement and there is this shocking ping in my head, and I wince.
It’s good to know I can at least feel pain in this void, so I find comfort in the thought and continue to repeat the movement.
Stretch, grab, roll, then the shock comes again. Stretch, grab, roll, shock.
The more I repeat the cycle the bigger this little light in the far distance starts to grow.
Stretch, grab, roll, shock.
I start to feel what I believe are my ankles and I repeat the movement in both my hands and feet.
Stretch, grab, roll, shock.
The light seems to get bigger and brighter, almost closer.
Stretch, grab, roll, shock.
Then I can start to hear something, a mechanic hum of some sort.
I’m in excruciating pain, but at least it's not an eternity of nothingness.
Stretch, grab, roll, shock.
The humming sound increases, and the ball of light is so close I feel like I can almost touch it.
Stretch, grab, roll, shock.
Then suddenly I’m gasping for air, choking back sweet, sweet oxygen that seems to be too thin in the air around me. I begin to blink, and I realize I’m no longer in the void.
The ball of light I saw is more blinding than ever and I’m finally surrounded by it.
I blink a few more times and my eyes eventually and I realize I’m not in a ball of light, I’m in a brightly lit room, in a bed.
I look down at my hands that are restrained by metal clasps to the railing of the bed, and my ankles are in the same state.
I’m not dead, I’m alive. I’m still in the same clothes I was wearing earlier.
Earlier.
A flood of memories came back to me. The Cambions, the drop, Max refused to let me go with them on the mission. The urgent text from Brandon. Speeding down the highway. The tunnels.
The powder.
I was captured. Tricked. It was a set up. It was all a set up.
I panic and pull at my restraints but there is no give in the metal. I study my surroundings.
It looks like a hospital room, with a lack of equipment. Plain walls, no windows, no furniture aside from the bed I’m attached to.
All of my weapons are gone.
Aside from me and the bed, the only thing in the room is a camera directly in front of me and it’s mounted to the wall with an all seeing blinking red dot.
“The second I am free; you are so fucked!” I scream towards the lens. “You will burn. Do you hear me?” I cry out. “Burn!”
I try yanking on the restraints again but as expected there is no release.
“When Teddy finds out about this-.”
“He will make me beg for death, and follow me to his own kingdom in hell?” The new voice comes from behind me, and a chill slithers down my back and cools my blood to below freezing.
I know this voice; I’d know it anywhere. But it’s not possible. It couldn’t be. Not him, anyone but him.
There’s a click that comes from each slow and steady step he takes as he rounds the bed and slowly comes into view directly in front of me.
It can’t be.
“I’ve heard the monologue, Zoe. Quite theatrical.” A wicked and vile smile stretches across his face, and my heart has gone completely still.
I dig my nails into the palms of my hand, trying my darndest to wake up from this nightmare, but nothing comes of it other than prickles of blood now filling in my fist.
I still my breathing, refusing to panic any further. I roll back my shoulders and look him in the eye.
“Dad?”