The stag hunt with the scarlet heart

Chapter 34 "I'm the bloodthirsty villain created by Bill"

I'm feeling quite familiar with this predicament —as though I've been here before. It's safe now to relinquish the untruths we have been fed, right? I was unwise in accepting their tales, overlooking the subtle hints. They provided me with the illusions that suited me best. Of all the times I saw him, I now wonder which were hallucinations and which were real. I guess I've lost my reality.

I have lost everything in me, we act like a god, or at least try to, and an addiction to pain twists the stake in my heart as depression becomes my religion. I used to think I was invincible, but now I have lost everything in me. I have been trying to be wise, but I wonder if I will ever believe again.

For my body, for my heart, and for what's left of my soul the future doesn't matter, this is fair warning for whoever wants to hear it, for a moment I felt like I should stop breathing and even though I would give it all up, those thoughts are the kind that you don't comply until you're on the vergers and I know I'm going to end up in the fire, I'm burning in their lies.

I couldn't confine all my thoughts inside my room, so I angrily tore off my dress, ripping some of the fabric to slip into a pair of pants and a sweatshirt, along with a winter jacket that would do nothing to dispel the cold that had already settled in my body.

The rage bubbling inside me is turning into sorrow as I step out of the doorway, stopping when I see myself stabbing Callum for no reason. So, I ran as fast as I could, Atlas' words ringing in my ears.

Maybe I made it all up.

Maybe this is a bad joke.

Maybe it's just a hallucination.

Doubtful statements in which my mind is spitting out, trying to get my heart rate to calm down, my legs to stop because I feel like my chest is going to explode, my mind feels like a burning engine, like one of those old oil machines. The noise in my head is so loud that I have to lean against a tree and let myself fall.

I open my diary to the very last page, at the bottom of which I've written the address of the cemetery where Atlas' is supposed to be buried; The page is full of tears, the drops that have dried up. I turn a few pages back and there are slightly thicker drops, the ink has run a little, my fingernail traces the edges because they aren't my tears. They are Callum's, his pain immortalized in a book where the author is the villain, and the characters are her puppets.

I pick up the pencil as my chest thunders with pain, for Atlas. For me. For Callum. For death. For life. And for all the fucking things we have taken for granted, having tangible ghosts hugging us with no awareness of it.

Dear Jesus,

I haven't written for so long that I've forgotten how to do it. How to say all the things that get stuck in my throat. It used to help me until it became easy to hate you.

I disavowed your existence, wondering what the point of was believing in a God who didn't save me from Bill's hands. Who allowed it all to happen. Who allowed sadness to consume me until I finally dried up, but there were times when I believed so strongly in the stories written in a book that was so many years old, so many impressions that I didn't know which one was true, I believed that you could pull me from the earth and free me from all evil, that you could take away my pain, I believed so desperately that when it didn't happen, I died and had to live under the mistakes of others.

I forgot about you, I decided you weren't worth it, I hated you for my unfulfilled prayers, I hated you for the damage they had done to me, I hated you because he was the only thing I had that could keep me on my feet, I hated you so much that I still do, and I don't know how to stop. Something so strange for someone who says that doesn't believe that God exists.