Chapter 23
Rack and ruin
“I have to finish, I have to write, I have to help her. I have to…”
We open the door and see Marshall, full of blood, sitting at his desk, desperately writing in his journal, which I don’t even remember bringing.
One hand is on his stomach, and he is writing with the other one with an unimaginable speed, while he’s constantly repeating the same words.
He doesn’t even see us when we enter and close the door behind us.
“Too much…”
“Marshall?” I ask in a small voice, scared of what Bianca could’ve done to him, but also happy that a small revenge was taken upon him.
When he hears my voice, he quickly turns his gaze to mine, and for the first time, I can see an intense fear in his dark eyes, full of prominent vascularised lines.
“What the…” I start, getting closer to him, having his gaze still locked to mine.
I end up one step away from him, and I realise that I’m no longer afraid of him. It’s like we switched places, because his bottom lip starts to tremble and his eyes grow wider as the panic is slowly capturing his being.
I look around and stop at the only thing that could’ve intervened with Marshall’s feelings: an empty syringe, with its needle as big as my palm.
“That fucking bitch did it…” I say, laughing in panic.
I feel the tears forming at the bottom of my eyes when I realise what that means exactly.
Oh, God…
I look at Lucas, who remained in the door frame, and I can see in his eyes that he is thinking the same thing.
“She works for Cathal,” Lucas says, giving a voice to my thoughts. “She used us. She knew I would call her. She knew we would bring her exactly what she needed.”
I turn back to Marshall, already feeling my cheeks wet, and I shudder when I see his expression.
I can’t fucking believe it.
He is crying. Marshall, the emotionless man, is fucking crying, and it only makes me cry harder.
All that he ever wanted materialised, but not through his creation and not at the right time.
“Anmara, I am so sor…” Marshall starts by saying, but a strong cough interrupts his words, making him spit black liquid in his palm.
He looks at me with regret, with an unimaginable sadness, and what surprises me even more: with love.
For the first time ever, I am truly seeing the love he only showed me before through facts, gestures, and words.
But it is too late.
I watch how his eyes roll back into his skull and how he falls off the chair he was sitting in.
“Marshall!” I scream as I try to make him come to his senses.
I roll him on his side, helped by Lucas, when he starts foaming at the mouth. The wound from the stomach of an intense black liquid terrifies the hell out of me.
“You fucking idiot, don’t die on me just now!” I scream and slap him hard.
He starts to cough abruptly, spitting too much liquid that looks just like his eyes.
The two extinguished embers return to their initial position, watching me intensely.
“I l-love you, Anmara. I’m sorry that I truly told you these w-words just now,” Marshall says while his tears flow down his bloody cheeks. “Don’t let them…”
The coughing doesn’t let him continue. I feel his body lying soft in my arms. I start moving him, hoping he would wake up and tell us more. I stop when I can’t feel a single movement from him anymore. With my shuddering hand, I go to his neck to check his pulse.
It isn’t there anymore.
Marshall is dead.
I feel a strong shiver conquering me.
Something is not right… I also feel emotional. Damn it, Marshall.
I look at Lucas. He shakes his head regretfully and gets me in a strong hug, where I release a long row of tears I was holding inside for too long.
They were still there. My feelings for Marshall were hidden deep inside my broken mind, and now they came to the surface way more painful than I would’ve ever thought I’d feel.
It fucking hurts, especially because the person I loved abruptly went to the other side, and he died knowing that I hated him.
I will fucking kill her.
I will destroy her. Bianca and all of the people she cares about. Her whole family will be in danger. Nobody around her will see my revenge coming because I will release the weapon that lies within me. I will let her torture them, however dangerous and bloody she can.
It will be havoc, and I’ll have to do it alone because I won’t be able to control the hell that will be unleashed around me. She wants to get out into the world, and I’ll finally let her when the time comes.
You will protect those three with your life. You will keep them as far away from the chaotic fury, Anora.
I will let you free for the whole world to meet you.
You won’t regret it. Rack and ruin: that’s all that’ll be left.
?
The crying didn’t last too long, but now, I’m colder, more calculated, and tougher.
With my heart of ice. Until the war is over.
I abruptly get away from Lucas. On my face, you can’t read anything while I’m looking at Marshall’s body.
I feel the fury that violently started to flow through my veins. My revenge will be sweet, and I will have the main place in the stands. I will enjoy the show from behind the curtain, without even moving a finger. I’ll just savour it.
“I’ll handle him, Anmara. You just… read,” Lucas says with his gaze on the last words Marshall had ever written in his journal.
I look at Lucas with my face full of dried tears, which feel like they are sucking my skin, making my expression even harsher. Perfect for what I’m feeling inside.
He looks at me with a worried expression and a raised eyebrow, but I only nod and sit next to Marshall’s journal. I turn back the pages until the beginning of his final entry dedicated to me, which starts with a bloody palm on the paper.
The first page surprises me by going directly to the subject and telling us exactly what the last set of solutions contained, but also what he missed to make it perfect. He figured that out when he felt it flowing through his veins.
All that was missing was a human tear. A tear full of pure emotion. I knew it when I felt it going through my whole body.
Even more, I felt tears coming from my eyes when she started cutting my forehead, my arms, and when she stabbed me in the stomach. I have never felt such severe pain…
Actually, I never felt pain in my life. Now, it hit me with such force that it overwhelmed me immediately. Tears came out of my dry eyes along with all the feelings I never got to experience.
Bianca let me lie in my own pain when she untied me. I couldn’t even react to what she was doing to me. I barely knew what was happening to my body.
I stayed in the state of pain enough time to be able to experiment with all the emotions that were dominating my brain simultaneously, and I am so sorry that I couldn’t experience them sooner.
The fury was stronger than in any other moment of my life, especially because someone else succeeded in making the perfect drug.
Happiness followed, and it hit me hard. I was feeling EVERYTHING. I laugh in happiness and grunt in pain at the same time.
The hatred was next. Hatred towards myself, towards what I was capable of doing. Hate for my hands that were full of innocent blood just to be able to satisfy the small pleasures of an empty soul, of a heart of stone.
The love for you almost killed me on the spot. My heart violently beat in my thorax, wanting to go and search for you, to tell you what I never got to truly tell you.
The tears that didn’t stop from flowing down my full-of-blood face gave me a gruesome sadness, making me remember all of those moments when you didn’t smile, when you cried, and it made me cry even harder. I never did that, and it felt like it was tearing me apart.
I can feel my body succumbing, wanting to make me lose a true human interaction. I fight against it while I write these words to you. At least this way, I can give you a piece of the thoughts I have at this moment.
I can’t feel my legs anymore. They were the ones who gave up first. My vocal cords are blocked by my tears and the depth of the emotions I’m experiencing. I can’t scream, I can’t walk, so all that I can do is transmit through these pieces of paper a last entry of the journal that ate me alive.
The project “Romance Me In” was… everything I’ve ever wanted, lost in years of carelessness. So negligent, so deadly, so perfect… the pain and the blood that’s leaking through my fingers make it extremely hard to endure. I will try to tolerate it to finish writing my last words.
I always wanted to behave as normal and as in love as possible for you, Anmara. I told you many times before that you are truly special, and I lied when I said you weren’t, but I never told you what that really meant to me.
You were like a detachment from the real world.
Just like when you were reading a book, and you were so caught up in it that you didn’t pay attention to what happened around you.
That was all I felt when I was with you, and it was enough for me to keep fighting to feel the real influences of your love on my own being.
To be able to really transmit those words, not just empty talk, like each time.
I love you, Anmara. Even though the only time I tell these words to you for real is just through a piece of paper addressed to you, I want you to know that I always loved you deep inside of me.
I didn’t know how this thing would feel, but I knew it in my heart.
I couldn’t develop emotions naturally, but I wanted to fight for them.
And look where this took me: to give up before taking your face in my hands and showing you all the emotion from my eyes in this moment, even though I know how much you hate me while reading these words.
I’m sorry I’ve made you hate me, Anmara. All I ever wanted was my real love for you.
I stop for a second, already feeling my heart of ice slowly melting and monstrously hurting. However much I want to stop my feelings, I can’t, so the tears are inevitable.