lifeline ⇾ kai parker

38┃a serpant's coils

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
explicit content ahead 📢📢📢
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IF THE COLLISION OF THE doors hitting the wall and the reverberating stomps of her footsteps didn't signify how enraged she was, the contorted features of her face did. Cheeks hollowed from a puckered mouth, nostrils flared in distaste, and eyes that resembled the pointed tips of blades completed her aflame expression. But none of it encouraged any sort of reaction from him.

In the vacant bar, Kai was settled across the room. He didn't bother to spare more than a brief glance over his shoulder at her arrival before he was back to the task before him. A dart was nestled between his fingers, but instead of aiming for the appointed board, he was targeting a man, the only other person occupying the place.

Mila knew from his motionless body and expressionless face that he had been compelled to stand there against the wall. The closer she got with her determined strides, the more she could make out the handwritten drawings on his face, circles and numbers staining his skin in black ink to pass as a dartboard. Blood trickled down in a few spots from past throws.

"How did you do it?!" Mila grabbed him by the arm in an attempt to get his attention, but he shrugged her off with a force that made her stumble backwards. She caught herself on the rounded edge of a table.

"Don't distract me. That's rude. I am clearly trying to focus," Kai told her, squinting his eyes in concentration.

With a swift jerk of his wrist, the dart flys through the air and punctures the delicate matter of the man's eyeball. The latest victim of Kai's blatant cruelty doesn't even flinch. But for a second, Mila's fury falters, and her lips part at how this innocent person is becoming more disfigured and bloody as a means for Kai to simply pass the time.

"Bullseye." Kai hums in delight. His smile is merely just a movement of muscles, lacking the emotion it takes to make it real and genuine, but it radiates a sinister tone nonetheless.

He finally turns towards her, blue neon light from a hung sign cascading over him. He is completely indifferent to her company, neither happy nor angry to see her again; she knows that that's what she should expect. He is physically incapable of feeling any range of emotion. But it's just not something she could ever get used to. Every look, every touch, every thought, every word spoken would always contain the hope of her sparking something from him.

"How did you manage to do it?" Mila repeats, swallowing anything that wasn't anger.

"You mean block Josie's little memory restoration spell? It was quite simple really," he utters nonchalantly. An elbow leans on the surface of a table adjacent to hers as he takes a quick sip from his glass. She can hear the straw spin through the melting ice, provoking more annoyance from her. "I knew it was coming. I would be stupid not to protect myself."

"Protect yourself?" Mila's face scrunches at his wording.

"You think I didn't catch on to your visit the other day? That I don't know a Malivore victim when I see one? When you realized I had no recollection of you... oh man, you were just this poor, heartbroken little thing. Almost felt bad. Well, not almost, but you get the idea. You were so hurt that it was so obvious that you were going to do something."

He sets his drink down and starts towards her. Mila takes a cautious step back, not expecting him to diminish the distance between them. She bumps into one the chairs, fingers coiling around the backside.

He stops when he is right in front of her, towering over in a way that is meant to make her feel helpless and small, and that's exactly what he succeeds at. Under his gaze, even though it's void of everything it used to possess, she feels its influence. Layers are peeled back, walls crumble, and her heart reveals itself to who it belongs to. She knows that he intends to crush it, squeeze it until it's reduced to carnage, and right now she doesn't know if she could prevent it from happening.