Hellbound - 001/Henry Creel/Peter Ballard

021

Eve

The real world is a nightmare. It isn't the fairytale I expected, it isn't like the hazy memories I stored away in my mind and cherished. It is nothing like I thought it would be. A part of me wants to sink back into the woods and hide there for the rest of my life, but I know I can't live like a wild animal and abandon my dream after coming so close to it. But most of all I need to build a new life, and find out where Henry stands in all of that. 

The sweatshirt and the jeans that Henry bought for me hang on my body awkwardly, despite the perfect fit they are. I have gotten used to the stolen clothes and scraps I wore at the lab. It is entirely foreign to me, just like everything around me is right now.

Everything is unknown. I am entering a world that I know nothing of, a world that was taken away from me. 

"Eve, from now on your name is Eve Creel, short for Evangeline if anyone asks" Henry speaks to me in the softest voice that he can muster. He's still wary, still scared of what might happen if he says a single wrong word if he pushes me too far. 

The friendship we once had is gone, a ghost remaining only in the tiniest crooks and corners, reminding me of what we were and what we could have been. The friendship is lingering between us like a sour aftertaste, a consequence that we both regret. 

"Why must it be Creel? Do I have to take your last name?" A fire ignites in me, a blaze in the dark roaring so high that it might burn me alive. It's always the same conversation, always the same ending, and always the same fury settling deep in me after every fight we have. 

Just the words are enough to make me furious. Why must I take his last name? Why must I be so dependent on him at all times? 

"It was easier this way. We could say that we got married and are starting our new life away from our families that don't approve of us." He's bored, fed up and annoyed at me and doesn't bother to hide it anymore. 

"So now I have to play your dutiful little wife? Should I also wait for you to come home after your massacres and take care of you? Or is that not a part of our cover?" I huff at the bullshit that reaches my ears, "I left a cage only to enter another." As soon as the words leave my lips I wish to take them back and swallow them, as bitter as they taste. 

Henry tenses beside me and stops in his tracks. He shuts his eyes, pursing his lips and clenches his fists at his sides, tension radiates off of him in waves and I am drowning in it. "You don't mean that Eve." His tone is almost a warning, a plea for me to stop this madness. 

Maybe I should not be this harsh with him, maybe I should just shut my mouth until we arrive at our new but temporary home, maybe I should think about his letter and what he confessed to me, but I don't.

"What happens if I want to bring another boy home? Do I get to be called an unfaithful wife?" I push his buttons, and watch as his anger inflates into a monster, a monster just like him and me. 

"Eve stop it." He warns me again, his voice more clipped this time, nowhere near the softness it carried a moment ago. 

"What happens when we finally get settled? Will I be your wife for the rest of my life? Or will you be kind enough to free me from this one too?" His anger might be terrifying, but it's no match for my fury, no match to the words that leave my lips, every single one crueller than the other. 

He turns and faces me, gripping my face in his hand roughly and lifting my head up to his face. He looks down at me with unbridled rage in his eyes and what might be a hint of jealousy. "Enough of this, I have had enough. You will be my wife, but only because we have no other choice, don't act like this is what I want for us." His other hand grips my waist, bringing me closer to him, "And you can bring another man to our home, but isn't my love for you enough?"