37. PSYCHO #2
We both stare at the blood-washed pool in silence.
The water still faintly rippling from what’s left of them—tiny torn pieces of flesh floating mindlessly in the blood-red water.
I can feel his eyes shift like he’s trying to see something beneath the surface of it. Of me.
“You’re not leaving until I tell you, yeah?”
“Yup.”
One thing I’m sure of is that Asher is a pesky and stubborn motherfucker.
With a deep breath, I give up, starting from the beginning.
I tell him how I opened up to them—stupidly, vulnerably—about why I don’t date for preferring a very specific type of man. That I’m saving myself for him.
And he says it’s okay to wait for the right one rather than give in to the wrong one and regret it for the rest of your life.
I don’t go into full details—the British one with a rich voice and crisp accent, who’s at least ten years older and over a foot taller than me, big enough to manhandle me without trying.
Now, some people might kinkshame me for pedophilia, but once I’m an adult, which will be in two years, it won’t be a concern anymore.
My friends asked if I’d let him in my pants the first time we met, considering how long I’ve been dying to find my fantasy man in real life. I remember joking I might.
I didn’t know they’d take that joke seriously, sharpen it into a blade to backstab me, and make a fake account so realistic it was impossible to tell the man behind the screen wasn’t real, but my best friends. Even during video calls, voice messages, and whatnot.
I cringe, bile rising, thinking about every flirty moment.
All that swooning.
All that softness.
All of it was wasted on girls who laughed behind the screen at how na?ve I was.
Being honest doesn’t help. I’m shocked I didn’t throw up recalling those messages. Even if they weren’t sexual, the thought alone makes my stomach flip.
It wasn’t until Refayla called me one day, telling me she needed to confess something urgent. She told me to meet her at our usual spot.
When I got there, Sadie was with her. Athena joined soon after with drinks, saying we’d need them for the upcoming drama.
Refayla spilled the secret and apologized first. Said she couldn’t handle the guilt anymore—that she felt sick being part of it and keeping it from me.
Athena and Sadie tore into Refayla for apologizing to me—claiming I should be the one grateful since they “still hadn’t leaked the conversations.”
They mocked me for being a Keinston. “What good was it to be born into a tech-genie bloodline if you couldn’t even tell what was real and what was fake behind the screens?”
The memory alone makes my throat burn with newfound rage. Tears threaten to spill again. And they do.
I wish I could bring them back to life and do it all over again at least a thousand times.
Athena was my bestie. My ride or die. Or so I thought.
I used to take her punishments in class, hand over my homework so the teachers wouldn’t humiliate her or call her parents.
People think being in a posh school means getting away with everything. It’s the total opposite. The punishments are worse, the scrutiny suffocating.
I was suspended for three months because I took the blame for her being caught with a boy in the restroom.
Then someone spread a rumor that I seduced her boyfriend—a boyfriend she didn’t even care to mention to me, the same boy she was making out with in the boys’ restroom.
The entire class whispered that I betrayed my best friend. And the worst part is, she never once defended me.
Even when Refayla revealed their prank about ‘testing my character’—something they apparently cooked up during a sleepover I couldn’t attend because I chose studying over a wasted night talking about nothing but boys and gossiping ill about other girls—I cried and looked to Athena for something. Anything.
She just said they’d done the right thing.
I broke. I cried so hard my whole body ached from physical pain.
Refayla tried to soothe me, but I shoved her hand away and ran like a coward. Behind me, I heard Sadie laugh and say, “Let her be. Bitch will come back crawling on her hands and knees.”
The next day, they made sure her words stuck.
The whole campus buzzed with it—slut, homewrecker, seducer, liar, attention-seeker, pick-me, and whatnot.
My name was dragged through every hallway until the name Ariella Keinston turned into a punchline.
My dad had to pay the entire school to shut them up because I refused to transfer.
I wasn’t going to give them that satisfaction.
On the fifth day of being publicly flayed alive, I started watching them. Their routines, their habits… every move they made.
And now there goes the rest….
Asher pulls me into a hug. I didn’t even realize tears were already streaking down my face until he cups the back of my head, shushing me, telling me he’ll take care of the mess himself.
Our family, especially Mom and Dad, won’t know about any of this, that I killed them.
He promised to keep this only between the two of us.
He thinks I’m crying because of what they did to me. But he’s wrong.
I’m crying because I know I’ll never be the same again—at sixteen years old, I unalived two people without blinking once.
I’m crying because, even dead, they successfully ripped away the last piece of innocence I had left.
Losing innocence isn’t always about losing virginity. Sometimes it’s about losing the final shred of sanity you were desperately holding on to—the little white drop floating in your pitch-black soul.
And now I’m something in between. Too grey to be black, too black to be grey.
One thing I didn’t tell my brother. The picture of the man they used for their little prank? He’s my permanent obsession now.
Not a fantasy, nor a phase anymore, but something far more rooted. I’ve already concluded that he belongs to me, even if I’m not entirely sure of his existence.
All this I did… I did for him.
And so I’d leave no corner of the world unsearched to haunt him down. And from this night onward, my hands won’t tremble to kill anyone who gets in the way.