✓ DYING MOURNINGS, original

four : blood bathing

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𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 : 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆

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"Fun?" I breathed, my heart jackrabbiting against my ribs. "Fun?"

Who is this stranger I'm looking upon? Who has taken over the body I had once loved?

"You–you took me on a killing spree!" I cried, shaking my head. This wasn't the Pandora I had known in life, this wasn't her at all and yet, here she was. She was looking at me with her big eyes, with her beautiful hair, and that gap between her front teeth as she smiled.

"What's the difference between me killing an obvious monster versus you doing the same?" she asked, her arms crossed loosely against her chest. "I'm not the one who's been killing people the past few months, anyway." She narrowed her eyes at me. "I just did what you were already thinking of doing, I only acted faster."

You're just a doll for her to use.

Frowning, I tried to wipe the blood from my hands but my clothes were wet and crusting against my body and there were too many things to focus on. I felt like I was being over-stimulated.

"What the hell happened to you?" I whispered, finally meeting her eyes again.

Her smile fell from her face and she sighed. "I died, what did you expect? For me to come out on the other side normal and fine after having my throat slit?"

"Obviously not–"

"And thank god you finally know who did it too," she said, shaking her head. "It was beginning to get annoying watching you go back and forth with Crow when he so obviously didn't do it."

I narrowed my eyes. "As if Ace being the one to do it was obvious too–"

"I never liked him," she spat back. "He was obnoxious and a know-it-all. At first, I thought he only wanted to sleep with you but it seems like it was all just a ploy to kill you." She smoothed out her bloodied shirt. "But he got me instead." She glanced back up and smiled, and strangely, the act gave me chills. "It's sweet how Crow had been trying to protect you from finding me. Begging you not to go into the barn alone, it seems he had better intuition than you and your ghostly spider tingle."

"I never thought you'd get hurt by all this," I whispered, shaking my head. "I never wanted it to be like this."

Pandora shrugged, even as emotion swelled up in my throat. "I don't think any of us could've seen this coming."

"How did–" I swallowed thickly. "How did Ace get you?"

"He pulled me aside at the funeral," she said simply with another shrug as she dug the toe of her shoe into the dirt. "Told me that you were in trouble and to meet at the barn." She let out a hollow laugh, shaking her head as she kept her eyes glued to the ground. "I don't know why I believed him, 'cause you would never have gone through him to tell me something. We were closer than that but I believed him because, well, things were already crazy and you weren't even at the funeral anymore so I just..." She shook her head again. "I left and got to my car when someone grabbed me from behind."

I frowned. "Do you know who–?"

"John." She met my eyes with a horrible smile. "One second we were in the parking lot and the next I was in the barn and there was some dude there, John called him Conner. They–they tied me up for a while until Ace got there, drew a bunch of random symbols on the walls and ground. I knew...I knew I didn't have long before they killed me but when John and Conner left, I thought I was home free. But..."