41. June #2
With a final, desperate wrench, I tore myself out of the denim, leaving it hanging on the branch like a shed snake skin.
I scrambled up a mossy embankment, my fingernails gouging into the damp earth, my toes weeping blood as they caught on the jagged rocks.
At the top, I rolled behind a rotting log, pressing my face into the cold dirt and rotting leaves.
I stayed there, paralysed. I heard him reach the embankment. I heard the soft, dismissive hiss of the jacket being tossed into the mud.
Then, the sound of metal on wood.
Skreeeeeeeeee.
He was dragging the dagger across the log, he was right there. His face was mere inches from my own.
“Peek-a-boo,” he breathed, the words heavy with a sickening playfulness.
I instinctively rolled away, kicking off the ridge and sliding down the opposite side. I hit a slick patch of pine needles and plummeted towards the shore, my body thudding against the earth until I crashed into the freezing reeds.
I stood there, shivering and bared, the cold mud squelching between my toes. Above me, Cain stood like a god of the abyss. He didn’t move to catch me. He didn’t have to.
I was trapped, frozen like prey against the edge of the dark water.
“End of the line,” Cain called out, his voice echoing with a terrifying edge. “The show is over. And the guest of honour is already in the trunk.”
A frantic, frenzied thudding erupted from the car. Julian. The sound was panicked and desperate, the screams of a man dying to save me and failing. I couldn’t breathe.
The mud of the lake shore was like ice between my toes, but I couldn’t feel the cold.
I couldn’t feel anything but the overwhelming terror tearing through my chest. I tried to scramble past him, my hands clawing at the air, but Cain moved with the effortless, sickening grace of a shadow.
He stepped into my path, the white porcelain mask gleaming under the full moon like a skull.
I collapsed to my knees, I was sobbing, my voice a broken, high pitched plea as I looked towards the Camaro.
“Julian!” I shrieked. “Julian, help me!”
From the direction of the car, I heard it—a muffled, frantic yelling that sounded less like a man and more like a wounded animal.
The trunk thudded, the metal groaning as Julian kicked with the desperate strength of a man listening to his world end.
Thump. Thump. Thump. He was only metres away, trapped in a steel coffin, forced to listen to my terror through the cracks.
“Please, Cain… just stop,” I begged, my hands shaking as I held them out in a useless, pleading gesture. “Why are you doing this? I’ve never done anything wrong to you. I’ve lived in your house… I’ve followed your rules… why hurt me?”
Cain tilted the mask, tracking the way my tears streaked through the dirt on my face. He looked entirely, terrifyingly bored.
“This was always the ending, June,” he rasped, his mismatched eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying, detached glare.
“It’s a simple equation of supply and demand. You were born with a light that doesn’t belong to you, and I am the dark that was made to house it. All things return to their natural state eventually.
He lunged.
I didn’t have the breath to scream. I threw my arm up in a blind, animalistic reflex to save my face. The bite of the steel was instantaneous—a sharp sear that tore through the space between us and buried itself deep into the meat of my forearm.
“JUNE!” Julian’s scream ripped through the night air.
The metal of the trunk groaned in the distance, a frantic bang-bang-bang of someone fighting a losing battle against time.
I let out a defeated sob, clutching my arm as blood began to drip down, pooling between my toes.
Cain hovered over me, the silver dagger held high, his posture loose and terrifyingly fluid. He was a cat savouring the final, pathetic twitches of a mouse that had already been devoured in his mind.
“Quiet, little bird,” he whispered. “It’s almost over. I’m going to eat your heart whilst it’s still beating for him.”
A jolt of strength hit me. I forced myself up, the pain in my arm a secondary thought to the maniac behind me. I dived back into the trees, my bare feet hitting the dirt as I sprinted towards the cabin.
Each heavy thud of his boots behind me ticked down the seconds I had left.
Relentless. Predatory. The sound of an animal finally done playing with its food. I surged through the brush, branches whipping my face like lashes, my lungs tasting of impending death. The porch was right there. The open door was a golden promise. I was almost—
Pressure.
A sudden, crushing weight hit the centre of my back, driving the air from my lungs in a silent, wet wheeze. My feet skidded into the dirt, stalling my momentum as the world momentarily stopped.
I looked down.
Slowly, in a dreamlike blur, the silver tip of the dagger breached the centre of my chest. It tore through my flesh gleaming and bright for one heartbeat before a dark, heavy crimson began to bloom around the metal like a grotesque, hungry flower.
I watched, paralysed, as Cain slid the blade back out of my body with a wet, jarring, schloopp that echoed in the night air.
My knees buckled. I hit the forest floor hard, clutching at the gaping ruin in my chest as if my bare hands could hold my soul inside. The cabin lights were blurring into long, bleeding smears of gold.
Cain lowered himself over me, a shadow blotting out the stars. He knelt in the dirt, his mask looming inches from my face. He reached out with a hand drenched in my blood and gently, almost lovingly—wiped a stray hair from my forehead.
“See you in the next life, little bird,” he whispered, his voice a mocking melody.
He raised the blade high, the moonlight catching the silver one last time. He plunged it down, but I didn’t feel the pain—I only felt the burning heat.
Cain didn’t relent. He moved with a determined, aggressive motion, his hands rising and falling in a maddened, bloody prayer.
Through the blurred haze of my vision, I watched as he plunged his hand into the ruined mess of my chest.
My breath stalled as he withdrew, his fingers curled around a slick, pulsing mass of muscle.
My heart.
It twitched in his palm, a dying thing desperate for one last beat.
I watched, paralysed, as Cain tilted his mask back just enough to reveal his mouth, his mismatched eyes burning with a starving, unholy light.
He leaned in and sank his teeth into the muscle, the scent of my own life filling the air.
The world went permanently still, the light retreating as I watched him devour the part of me that belonged to his brother.
A strange, phantom warmth settled over my skin, like the sun hitting the garden on a late spring afternoon. I wasn’t sure if my brain was finally misfiring, playing back the final seven minutes of a dying consciousness.
The sound of Cain’s wet, carnivorous chewing drifted away, replaced by a low, melodic vibration that hummed through the fabric of my DNA. It was a voice I knew better than my own. It was the only sanctuary I had ever found in this life.
“And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side / Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride…”
I leaned into the sound, letting the rhythm of the poem replace the rhythm of the heart I no longer had.
The darkness didn’t feel so scary. It felt like a poem. And as the last syllable of my life slipped away, I finally understood the truth: Julian hadn’t been my hero, and Cain hadn’t been the only villain in my story. They were just two demons who had loved an angel into her grave.
With one final, silent struggle, the light went out, and I stayed by his side—just as the verse had always promised.