Duplicity [h.s]

95

tw descriptive violence!! mentions of SA.

thank you for your patience yet again. i love you so so much and i hope you're taking care of yourself / drinking your water!! i've had so so much going on and just want to make these chapters perfect.

Aven Brooks

A ticking time bomb, that's what we've always been. The only difference now is that there seems to be a tangible clock doing it for us. Ten minutes decides our fate, whether we live or we die.

10:00:00

It seems as if the odds are never in our favour when it comes to Harry and I's love—that fate did everything it could to make sure we couldn't be together. The hardest pill to swallow is inevitable fortune. Every time you try to stomach it, your body reflexes a hardy gag and splutters it back out in front of you. I never let myself swallow that pill, the pill that put logic in my head and told me Harry and I would always be passing ships in the night. We would never find the shore.

The world has been manipulating me from the start—but now that all makes sense. I am a product of manipulation. After all, my father utilized my mother into having me. I wasn't just an accident, I was a potion of trickery and deceit. I ruined my mother's life simply by being born. To him, I'm business. I will always be business.

I'm sweating—not just a little. I'm sweating enough that it paints my entire body in a shimmer. My hair sticks to the perspired skin along my neck and shoulders, a draft running up and down my spine despite how much I'm boiling in heat. My heart wouldn't let up, it beats to be heard in my eardrums. It's warning me to flee but there was no way for my brain to tell my vessels to let up.

Handcuffed to an old wooden chair, I stare at a horrid skeleton mask across the room.

"Why are you doing this, Quincy?" My voice scratches, shaking my head. "Malikai says that if you kill me, you kill your brother."

He stands there in silence, hiding behind the mask like he has been this entire tour. Stationed near the wall, he stands like a statue. Unmoving, he keeps the knife clenched in his right hand. My heart trips a mile a minute, embodied in perspiration. My throat hitches pain that could only be described as the horrible reflex of anxiety. I'm sure he could see my chest rising up and down in stress.

"He told me everything, you know." I try to keep my collect. "About your father's death, your mother's too. It haunts him, and I'm sure you know that."

I turn my head back to the clock, looking up at the massive digital countdown mounted to the wall.

09:12:01

I've already lost a minute,

My wrists start shifting in the metal cuffs that were attached to one of the chair's back spindles. Even with how sweaty I am, nothing was slipping these cuffs off me. The only thing stopping my hands from slipping out from the cuffs were the jagged joints in the base of my thumbs. At least my feet weren't strapped to the chair, I could kick if I need to.

I look back at Quincy standing there solid and hushed. I don't let up the squirm of my wrists. My chest continues to rise up and down as I feel like every heartbeat in my eardrum is another second gone. My eyes dart around the empty room, trying to spot the key. The only objects in this room are a table, two chairs, a pot light, and a security camera in the corner. My eyes scan every nook of this concrete room in the hope to catch a silver key anywhere.

Nothing—there's no fucking key in here.

I double over to look under the table, feeling the muscle pull on my shoulders. The old chair squeaks from my movements. My blinking eyes attempt to see under the table and chairs, nothing. I part my knees and try to valley my sight under my wooden seat, nothing.