Phases (editing)

thirty

AN- Chapter songs: Love in the Dark by Adele and Xanny by Billie Eilish

11th February 1996

Waning Crescent

She wouldn't stop screaming, and I was forced to watch.

Watch as blood spilt from her lips and mixed with the sounds from her lungs. Lucius sunk the tip of his wand further into the crook of her neck. The part of her neck that once tasted so sweet and so addicting, was poisoned with her own blood.

Her fate was excruciating to bear witness to.

And for the sourest rotten cherry on top of the icing, my lips were sewn shut and my eyes were glued open, forcing me to be the only audience member of the crime. For a moment there, her eyes went from two tight wrinkled lines to wide and full of terror. Her eyes met mine and, without a word, I could see her expression shift. Within that minuscule second, I saw the once plentiful fire of fight within her, simmered under the rain. She was accepting the option of death, as it crept up on her slowly from the shadow on her face.

She was choosing to die.

Aspen was choosing to die.

A girl who'd been known to persevere through her intolerable stubbornness chose death as her preferred option.

That is what shattered me.

I'd lost her plenty of times in my short life, but this moment cemented her headstone. Her soul died, and her body was following close behind. The eyes that once captivated me the second they entered the room, were now the cause of my worst living nightmare.

I thrashed my body against the shackles that held my limbs taut against the stone wall. I refused. I wouldn't allow this to be the time she gives up. She could give up on me for all I care for, as long as the time she chooses to give up isn't on life.

My wrists were already long raw and the first beads of blood from the freshly broken skin began painting lines down my arms. Somehow, my current physical pain doesn't compare to the sheer force of my heart being torn from my chest. I wouldn't allow this fate. I couldn't live with myself if she died here, before my eyes.

And just as my ankle felt the resistance of the shackle give in, her screams grew quiet and breathy. I lost all control of conscious thought. My bones were breaking. I couldn't differentiate if they were breaking metaphorically or literally. Most likely both.

My lips burning from restricting the screams they wouldn't allow.

Everything in this cold room reeked of things that held up forceful and depraved boundaries.

Her eyes slowly rolled away.

Her chest stilled.

And every part of her living essence relaxed.

And my lips continued to burn a fire only hell has known until now.

I took a sharp intake of air and opened my heavy eyelids. The desire to groan was futile as sleep left my mind. There wasn't much desire in my days, to begin with. There weren't any positive emotions tethered to time spent with my... friends. All I did was despise them for moving on. They seemed to enjoy every second roaming the castle, breathing in the air that she no longer could. Fuck them.