In the Deep, Deep Dark
There is such comfort in darkness.
It is soft and gentle and quiet. It is full of stars and the dust of the universe. I always tell my children it is nothing to be afraid of. Monsters don’t hide, silent and waiting, under your bed.
They come for you face-to-face.
This darkness, this monster, is not quiet. Not at all.
It takes me a heartbeat to realize I am not quite dead, that Alex has managed to shoot out the lights. There are muzzle flashes and shouts, then the wet thunk of a body dropping to the floor next to me.
Which man has fallen?
I don’t think I will ever know. A new darkness is coming for me. This one has jaws and sharp teeth and wants nothing more than to drag me into its embrace.
There will be punishment for what I’ve done.
For the men whose lives I’ve taken. I thought I’d killed Alex.
And because Roger knew, because he saw me do it, he had to go, too.
The first act was mine, and mine alone. The second was the idea of the bright, quiet girl who flew to be by my side when I told her I needed to get out of a bad situation.
The good girl who had a very bad idea. Who knew what was in Alex’s bag, and knew exactly how to handle the situation we found ourselves in.
Once upon a time, there were two sisters, born on the same day to parents overjoyed with their birth. Two of them, who looked so very much alike. Mirror images of one another, a reflection in still water.
One was very good, and the other, very naughty. And one time, one desperate moment in time . . . they changed places. Good became bad, and bad became good, and oh what a tangled web we weave.
“We’re here,” a voice calls. It is so familiar, this voice. I am floating. The darkness embraces me. The teeth withdraw. The maw softens.
“Hang on, sweetheart.”
“Trey?”
A soft kiss presses my lips. “I told you I would always come for you.”
I am slipping, the pinpricks of the stars are fading. “The kids?”
“They’re okay, babe. Everyone’s okay. Eden—”
A spike of fear. “She’s trying to kill us both.”
“She’ll never hurt us again. She took too much of her own poison. She’s not going to make it.”
This comforts me. I imagine Trey, Neve, and Four. I see them happy. I watch Margot move through their lives, an ever-present guardian angel, like she always was for me.
“I love you,” I tell him. “I love them.”