Hellbound - 001/Henry Creel/Peter Ballard

020

Eve

The air is sharp and cruel, it punches my lungs and fills them with needles that poke holes in them until I'm a deflated balloon. Life fills my whole body like electricity, spreading down my veins, rushing to my every cell, restarting what I tried to end. 

Everything feels heavy and cold. My arms are shivering, my legs are numb, and I don't think that I can feel them. Pain spreads behind my eyelids like fireworks of death. A machine beside me beeps rapidly, like a warning, like a welcome to life. 

"Love?" I hear his voice and I recoil. The memories rush in, the nightmare in the other world, the corpse in the hallway, my suicide attempt that has very much failed, and the blackout. 

I'm alive again, I almost died, I woke up, I tried to die, and woke up again. I wonder how many lives I have left, how many more times do I have to try and die so I can finally rest six feet under in peace. 

"No." I utter just a word, but that word holds more meaning to it than a hundred would. It's me denying his love, denying him. It's a plea to be left alone, and I hope that he'll listen this once. 

"Please." His voice breaks, and I can hear the tears falling down his cheeks without seeing them, I can hear the misery, the heartbreak in him. I can hear him breaking, and a part of me breaks with him. 

"Henry, no." I open my eyes and look at the broken lights overhead, the lights that I broke. I remember the day clearly, but it feels like it was centuries ago, as if it happened to someone else. 

I was Five then, I was just a number without meaning, I was a lab rat, running around all day in circles, but even then I was more sure of my heart, I was more sure of my future, I had hopes for something better, I was so innocent, so full of hope, such a child. 

I'm Eve now, I'm a person, but I'm not my own person, my name is not mine, it's Henry's, he gave it to me, he has given me all I have, and I'm thankful for it, but I'm still trapped, I used to be imprisoned in a rusted metal cage and escaped only to enter a gold cage, but a cage is still a cage and I'm still a prisoner. 

"Eve please, if you just..." He tries to hold my hand, but I pull it back before he has a chance to touch me. "You said you loved me." He looks wounded, the cold and stoic mask he always had on has fallen and I get to see him for the first time. 

"I didn't love you. I loved the Henry that I had carefully constructed in my head, I loved the Henry that will never be you." 

Every word is like a stab to his heart, with every word I'm worsening the crack in his heart. 

"I know you hate me now, I expected it after all that I've done. We leave tomorrow at dawn, we're going to Hawkins." He gazes at me for one last time before closing the door behind him, leaving me alone in this room. 

I should be happy that I'm finally getting what I've wanted for so long. We are finally leaving the woods behind us and starting the attempt at a normal life, but I never wanted this. I never wanted my new life to start like this. I always imagined it to be with Henry but in that version, we were both happy and in love. 

I rise from the bed and glance at my nightstand. He left a glass of water and a note under it with my name on it. 

I read the three letters and it makes my skin crawl. Eve used to mean freedom to me, it was the promise of a better life, but now it just feels like another weight added on my shoulders. 

I don't want it to be Eve anymore.  

I lean towards the small wooden table and lift the glass, grabbing the yellowed-out piece of paper. 

Dear Eve,

It's been two days. It's been two days since you fell unconscious in my arms, since you tried to remove your own life for the things that I did, you tried to relieve your soul from my sins, and you punished yourself for my crimes. I don't know if you're dead yet love, I don't know if you're alive, and it's torturing me. This must be my punishment, this is my personal hell. Seeing you bedridden, in that dusty lab bed, barely breathing, your heart barely beating, it's destroying me. You are the most addicting drug a man can get obsessed with. I need you, Eve. I want you to wake up, to shout at me, to question my morals, to call me a murderer, a monster, I want you to hate me because if you hate me you'll be well awake and alive.

I'm writing this as you lay in bed, the monitor beside you beeping steadily with the rhythm of your heart, a heart that was once mine, a heart that will never be mine again. I look at your every now and then, I looked at you right now, as a matter of fact, and I think of those three godforsaken words that you spoke at me, I wonder if you'll ever tell me that when you wake up. The thought is driving me crazy, everything about this situation is driving me crazy, I am losing the last speck of sanity I had in myself seeing you like this. I don't know how much more I can handle this torture before I collapse.

I think that it is quite ironic how I found a way for us to venture into society finally, but once I did, you fell into a coma. We are so close Eve, so close to getting what you've always wanted. Wake up love, wake up, just wake up and everything will be alright. I promise.

I don't care if you'll hate me for the rest of eternity, I really don't, I just want to get you out of this hellish place, I want to save you even if it means that I'll never feel your lips on mine again. Open your eyes, curse me all you want, kill me if you will, just open the eyes that I've always loved. If you're reading this right now it means that you're awake, and you've made me the happiest man on earth just by returning to life, but I also know that the moment that you wake up and realise everything you'll hate me, and I'm okay with that. But before you run away again, let me give you the life you always wanted. I don't expect you to build your new life with me, I don't want you to if that'll make you miserable. Just let me do this one last thing for you, as a thank you for making me feel like a human and worthy of love. 

I love you too.

Your Henry. 

**

A.N. Hi! Sorry for the small chapter but I had to post this one and reassure you all that I had no intent on killing Eve, I just wanted to lay the ground for the things to come. I love to hear your thoughts on each chapter so don't be shy and comment on what you think will happen in the next chapter! Love you all <3