Chapter Three #2
One single post on Instagram on the page for her business, Echoes and Embers. One innocent “Meet the Owner” post was all it took, and I’d found out everything she’d been up to all these years. Where she’d been, what she’d built, how she’d tried to hide herself behind other people’s grief.
So I’d known she was coming, I just hadn’t known she’d be coming here. And whatever she was playing at, I was going to find out.
Because if I could find her that easy, then so could he. I had a feeling he already had. A few days after her post, another murder, closer this time, in Chicago.
He was coming back home.
But this time, I would be ready.
Next to the wall of maps were newspaper clippings, photographs and court documents. The articles called her the Final Girl, the Miracle Survivor. The one who’d come back to life to put the monster away.
I traced my finger over a photo from the day she’d testified. The white blouse, the bruises peeking from over her collar. The bandage around her throat. The haunted eyes.
I’d studied that photo a thousand times, but seeing the scar in person…
it twisted something inside of me. Of course she looked different now.
No more blonde hair and pearl earrings. Now she covered herself in darkness and grief.
She’d even dyed her hair black to match.
But her eyes hadn’t changed. Blue flecked with silver, still unable to hide the haunted pain inside them.
In my arms, she felt fragile, breakable even.
But I knew she was a fighter. My jaw tightened at the urge to protect her when I knew she needed to be punished.
My gaze traveled to the center of the wall to the letter I’d received two years after my sentencing. The one from him.
Now you know how it feels.
Rage surged through me, and I exhaled, fighting the urge to smash my fist through the wall. But rage wasn’t going to help me win.
No, I had to be smarter.
Smarter than him.
I found her in the kitchen washing the dishes from breakfast. Silence stretched as I stood next to her, taking the plates and drying them before putting them away.
We worked in rhythm, like this was a natural thing to do, which made my skin itch.
The water steamed between us, the dishes clinking together as she scrubbed.
Her hand brushed against mine, and she withdrew it quickly, as if I’d burned her.
“Should we… talk about it?” she murmured without looking at me.
“About what?” I crossed my arms over my chest.
She threw her hands in the air. “Everything.”
It was the black cloud in the room, but I wasn’t in the mood to give her the satisfaction of clearing her conscience so soon. Not just yet.
When my lawyer had told me I was being released, I’d wanted to laugh in his face.
Not from happiness, but from fury. They’d finally found the murder weapon buried in the basement of a demolished house.
The fingerprints didn’t match mine or anyone else’s in the system.
And then Detective Parsons, that useless drunk, bragged to his mistress about planting evidence.
He’d taken a tool from my truck and staged it at the scene, tried to make himself out as the hero for finding it.
There weren’t words to describe the rage I’d felt, knowing I was rotting away in a cell because a crooked cop wanted a conviction and the court need a monster for the survivor to point at. I’d even told them who the real killer was, but his alibi was airtight and neat. Too neat.
“Not right now.” I grabbed my wood-carving knife and sank onto the sofa.
She stepped cautiously into the living room, circling the furniture to the fireplace. I could tell she wanted to push the topic, but I leveled her with a look that had her turning to face the fire.
“These are unique.” She trailed her finger over one of the carvings. “Beautifully dark.”
I grunted, not bothering to let her bait me into conversation.
“But this one…” She lifted the rabbit, tracing the curve of its ears. “This one is different. Honest.”
I gripped my knife, my heart hammering in my chest at her words. I let the silence stretch, not giving her what she wanted. She stood there watching me, as if she was unsure what to do with herself.
“Make yourself at home, Seraphine. You’re going to be here a while.”
She scrunched up her nose, gazing out the window at the whiteout outside. She sighed and pulled out a sketchpad from her bag.
We sat there while I carved and she sketched; the only sound was from the fire crackling.
Every so often a snap came from the logs, and she jumped like it was a gunshot.
I didn’t miss the way she gripped her pencil until her knuckles turned white, her eyes flicking to me then back down to the paper.
An hour later, her sketchpad slipped from her lap, hitting the floor with a thud. My gaze drifted to where she leaned into the couch, eyes closed, but her jaw clenched like she was refusing to find peace, even in sleep.
I walked over and picked up the pad, then stopped cold at the silhouette drawing of me with a knife in my hand. The lines were sharp and jagged, capturing the details of my scar.
I flipped to the next page. Then the next.
More drawings of me. Page after page filled with me in different poses.
Sometimes monstrous and sometimes human.
But between those pages were darker versions.
Faces with mouths screaming. Women lying in fountains of blood with their eyes hollowed out.
A figure with a grotesque mask was sketched over and over again, sometimes smiling and sometimes screaming.
It was a book of her nightmares.
Each page was like a window into her soul, and I saw myself reflected there as a monster.
My fingers tightened on the pad as rage, ugly and familiar, swelled inside of me. But something else coiled low in my gut. Something akin to possessiveness.
Protectiveness.
She’d been dreaming of me all these years, like I’d been dreaming of her.
The realization should have satisfied my craving for revenge. But instead, it awakened a different part of me I hadn’t wanted to admit. Something hungrier. Something that wanted more than just her suffering.
I wanted to possess her.
Break her.
Make her mine.