Chapter 36 #3
My breath was shaking now, not from fear, but from too much of everything hitting at once, my chest barely keeping up, my heart beating so hard it felt like it was punching through my ribs.
“Look. At. Me.”
It came out rough and he obeyed, of course he did, he didn’t have a choice.
His eyes locked onto mine and for a second everything else dropped away.
I didn’t stop. Something had gone too far inside me, something that couldn’t go back, it had been permanently broken.
My fingers pressed deeper, cutting everything off and I felt it, the way his body started to lose rhythm, the way the fight turned sloppy and uncoordinated.
His hands slipped on my skin, losing strength, then finding it again for a second, then losing it worse.
His legs stopped kicking, then twitched, then nothing.
My grip didn’t loosen, not even a little.
I held it there. Seconds, maybe more, I don’t know.
Time didn’t exist in that moment. There was just the pressure and the way his chest stopped trying.
My arms started to shake, and something inside me cracked sideways, so I let go.
My hand came off his throat, and for a second I just stayed there, hovering over him, my breath coming in hard, uneven pulls that scraped my throat on the way in. He didn’t move, didn’t even twitch.
His head had rolled to the side, blood pooling under it. His chest, I couldn’t see it move. I didn’t check, didn’t want to check, I already knew.
Didn’t I?
My whole body was shaking violently, like all the adrenaline had nowhere left to go and was just tearing through me instead.
I pushed off him too fast, hands slipping on blood as I scrambled back, nearly losing my balance when I got to my feet.
Everything tilted for a second, the room, the walls, even my own fucking body.
I dragged a hand down my face, and it came away red.
My chest heaved violently, my lungs working hard enough to hurt while the air still somehow felt insufficient inside me. I looked at him again, still nothing, still not moving. Good.
I turned before I could think about it any longer, my legs moved on their own, fast, way too fast. I didn’t grab anything, didn’t look back, I just ran out the door, into the air and I didn’t stop.
It didn’t take long before the ground changed under my feet.
The road disappeared behind me, swallowed by trees that stood too close, branches clawing over each other, choking out the sky.
I didn’t slow down.
My legs kept moving long after they should’ve given out, long after the pain stopped meaning anything.
Branches tore at my arms, caught my skin, snapped back against me, but my body pushed through it without slowing.
My breath came in broken pulls, my chest fighting to keep up with the brutal pace my body refused to drop.
I just kept going and at some point, the trees loosened.
The forest opened into a small clearing, like something hidden, something the rest of the world had forgotten to touch. Light filtered through the branches above, soft and fractured, spilling down in uneven patches that moved with the wind.
White flowers covered the ground, heavy blooms hanging downward, their petals long and delicate, almost too fragile-looking to belong somewhere like this.
Some of them brushed the grass, others swayed gently in the air, as if they were breathing.
The light from the sun caught them just right, made them glow.
It shouldn’t have felt like that, not after everything that had happened.
It shouldn't have been that calm. I stopped because my body forced me to.
One second I was moving, the next my legs just refused to carry me any farther.
The world tilted when I stopped, the ground beneath me turning strange and unstable in a way that made everything feel unreal for a second.
My breath stuttered, chest tightening as something cold started creeping in under my skin. I swayed where I stood, blinking.
Once, twice.
My vision dragged at the edges, blurring into one big mass of nothingness.
That’s when it hit me. The blood, there was too much of it.
I looked down, my shirt dark and soaked through, sticking to my skin in a way that felt wrong now that I noticed it.
My hand came up instinctively, pressing against my side.
Wet. It hadn’t stopped. A dull, distant thought formed somewhere in the back of my head.
How much?
How long had it been like this?
I couldn’t tell. Time slipped somewhere between the house and here, stretched out and collapsed in on itself until it didn’t make sense anymore.
My legs gave out before I could think any further.
I dropped down into the grass, the impact softer than it looked, like the ground was catching me instead of hitting back.
My hands pressed into the earth to steady myself, but even that felt off.
Like my body wasn’t fully connected to what it was doing.
The air smelled different there, cleaner in a way.
Damp soil, something faintly sweet from the flowers, warm sunlight sitting lightly on my skin where it broke through the trees.
I could hear birds. I sat there for a moment, trying to breathe properly, trying to steady the way everything was slipping sideways inside me, but it didn’t work.
It just kept getting heavier. My arms felt weak, my hands didn’t hold me up the way they should’ve, so I let go.
Lowered myself down slowly, the grass bending under me as I lay back, staring up through the broken canopy above.
The light shifted when the branches moved, flickering softly across my vision.
Everything felt far away. The birds kept singing, but it started to sound different, muted almost. Like it was coming from somewhere I couldn’t quite reach.
My chest rose, fell, slower now. Each breath heavier than the last. My eyes drifted to the side, catching the white flowers again, the way they hung there so untouched by everything else.
That place, it didn’t feel real.
It felt like something you weren’t supposed to find.
My body sank deeper into the ground, muscles loosening without my permission, strength slipping out of me piece by piece.
My fingers twitched once in the grass, then stilled.
The sound of the birds faded further, softened, until it was barely there at all.
My eyes stayed open for a moment, then heavier, and the thought occurred in my head, as natural as anything else.
This is a good place to die.
It didn’t feel sad, just true, peaceful even. My gaze drifted one last time across the clearing, the light, the flowers, the stillness of it all and then everything went quiet.