After his parents' sudden death, Chester Covington leaves everything behind and moves in with his aunt.
But nobody knows what is going on behind the facadé of a traumatized boy who has watched his parents die that he puts up ever single day of his...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
He looks me deep in the eye, his minty breath still fanning the tip of my nose, leaving me with goosebumps all over my body. My breathing is coming out in short puffs. My heart is clawing against my ribcage.
Riku's jaw is clenched and his fingers are tightly holding onto my collar.
"Keep out of my business. And don't tell anyone what you saw in that alley, understood?" he threatens, his voice husky and deeper than usual.
I nod. "I won't."
My hands are trembling and still wrapped around his jacket, which I have managed to pull over his injury without further hurting him. When he finally lets go of me and backs away a bit, I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, and put his jacket on my lap.
"Why are you doing this? Helping me?" he suddenly asks out of the blue, startling me slightly. I turn my face to him as I put some of the ointment on the washcloth and carefully put it on his injury. Then the ghost of a smile crosses my face, something that tends to happen whenever I refuse to cry. And right in this moment, I want nothing more but to do that. Because this whole situation reminds me too much of my mother, of the helplessness, of her very last breath and. . . the silence.
That was the worst. After 5 minutes of her blood curdling screams and pleas, there was just silence. I could hear my own heartbeat back then, it was the only thing that filled my ears. My father was so quiet with what he did after killing my mom, that I didn't even notice when he kicked himself off the chair or when he, too, took his last breath.
But instead of telling him that, instead of spilling out all the heavy secrets that are lying on my chest, I reply, "I promised myself to never not help anyone ever again, if I can help."
"What if I was a serial killer though? What if I was a stranger who had just killed 3 people? Would you still help me?" I stay quiet, mostly because I have no idea how to answer that.
Would I? Would I help him if he had just killed a person? Taken their last breath? Robbed them of something, that he had no right of stealing? Would I really?
I don't know. Maybe.
My life is fucked up. I am fucked up. So why let someone die just because they took someone else's life? Do they deserve to live less than any other human being? People ain't know shit about killers, yet they judge them. Maybe they had reasons, fears, scars. Things that made them do it. I know it wouldn't justify killing someone, but it would justify the 'why'.
"Are you?" I inquire, my blood running cold. "Are you a murderer. . .? Did-. . . did you kill someone?"
"What if I did? Would you be scared?" The corners of his lips quirk up into a smirk, his eyes darkening. I gulp, but don't avert my gaze.
The brown color of his eyes turns black as he watches me closely, as if I was his prey, his next victim.
I wouldn't mind. Getting killed isn't the way I originally wanted to die though, I wanted to do it myself. Take my last breath, break every bone in my body or just drown myself. Why? Why I want to kill myself rather than have someone kill me?
