The Cult of Romeo

XXII. Everybody Wants to Rule

Act 3, Scene 5

I took a deep breath, the glimmer of the silver dagger was difficult to look away from. I didn't want to believe that I'd die in the hands of Francis Zhao just a day before we left school for the Christmas holidays but there was no light at the end of the tunnel this time.

My breaths were laboured as I struggled under the ropes that bound me to this chair. Everything in the world faded away until all I could see was Francis. This weird feeling washed over my figure, making me shudder. It was the same sort of anxiousness I got when acting in a scene with Francis as he played the bad guy. Now, he wasn't just playing the villain, he was one.

Stalking his prey with that flash of pride and hope and succession in his eyes as the world slowed down around us, I couldn't help but squirm.

"O happy dagger, this is thy sheath," he murmured Shakespeare's words as his they fell from his lips like honey.

Suddenly, I was snapped from my self-trapping blaze of negative emotions to feel the burn on the skin of my wrist as Khaleel untied the rope and snapped his body around. He was fast, faster than I could've kept up with.

I felt the breeze flutter past my cheeks as he pounced on Francis who threw his knife to the floor as it echoed loudly. He stumbled back with a grunt, fell against the costume racks and tumbled into the clothes that piled on top of him in a heap on the floor.

The rope fell lightly from around my skin and I stood with a wobble but didn't take my eyes away from the stack of thick dresses and frilly suits that my attacker now lay under. The air was tense and it felt as though I was walking through a thick fog.

Francis pushed past the costumes with a snarl and he pulled himself quickly into a sitting position furiously. His nostrils flared and cheeks ablaze with a fit of scarlet anger. That was until his dark gaze landed on Khaleel who had backed away now, so slowly and dizzily as though he were reeling from what had just happened.

Francis laughed aloud and the sound was so foreign to me as it echoed grimly against the basement walls.

Then, before I could have blinked, D'Angelo, who had stayed quiet and observing through the encounter, ran quickly, picked up the knife and charged at Khaleel who was unaware of his fate. He turned just in time for his eyes to widen and the colour to flush from his cheeks. Khaleel held D'Angelo's arm away from his stomach with a weak cry. His hands shook and knees buckled slightly and the room tumbled.

The knife soon plunged into his stomach and I gasped.

The dagger, once a glamourous silver, now dripped crimson as D'Angelo pulled it from Khaleel's skin dramatically and threw it with a clatter.

"What have you done?" Francis screeched. He staggered to his feet, tall once again but now dishevelled. "He wasn't meant to die! Tonight was meant to be for Romeo and Juliet, not him."

He spat the word 'him' with an obvious distaste and such a hatred that I was taken aback.

"O, I am fortune's fool." Francis sighed quietly, almost disappointedly with a furrow between his brows. He straightened his back and waved his hands in the air with power and elegance, leading like a conductor of an orchestra. "O, I am fortune's fool!" He repeated with his voice booming loudly as though he were trying to fill an auditorium.

A fit of anger that I'd never experienced before festered deep in my gut, swirling and licking at my insides as it snowballed into fury; until all I could see was red. I turned to the chair I'd been tied to and gripped it within my hands until my knuckles were a milky white.