Evan Farrington's Confession | ✔️

eight

The air smelled heady and damp. The clouds were hanging low as they always seemed to be. Evan swallowed great lungfuls of them as she walked. The inhales sat deep in her chest like stones. She wasn't too far from her house, a couple of streets at most. The forest crouched on either side. Evan took care to keep some of the road between her and the thick trees, walking in the middle of the street. Every one of the occasional cars that grumbled past warmed her prickling arms a little bit. They overlapped with her footfalls and made them sound less isolated, less echoey.

The shadows

(emperors you know they're bleeding emperors why can't you just accept the fact that you're done for you're mad you're as mad as a shitting hatter)

hadn't shown themselves today. Not shadows. Hallucinations.

('wicked')

Evan drew in a small breath through her nose and swiped a hand roughly across her mouth. The gesture felt wrong but something stopped her from pinching her lip. She turned into her driveway and trudged down the path. Pebbles crunched under her shoes.

The house was entirely empty apart from the living room. It was occupied by its usual inhabitant. Evan didn't switch on any lights when she entered, preferring to wander into the kitchen through vaguely numbing darkness. She left her warm hood up while she rifled through the cupboards in search of a half-decent chocolate bar. Her eyes darted up to Suzanne's Secret Cupboard every now and then but she made no move to open it. She knew she would find more than a Snickers or Bounty. Evan hated the fact that she wasn't likely to find a Bounty anywhere in the States. Apart from the Emperors and the Maths teacher murder, that was one of the worst things that had happened since they moved.

Evan grabbed a couple of Oreos from a packet and closed the cupboard. When she turned around a small shriek escaped her lips. The biscuits dropped to the tiled floor. The Emperors were behind the counter that jutted out into the room. They were the clearest that Evan had ever seen them. She could almost make out the sharp sneer of Caligula's mouth. Commodus was in the middle, positioned slightly in front of the other two. The way they stood reminded Evan of some kind of boyband that her friends back home would have liked.

Evan stood frozen. Her glasses felt heavy on her nose and her t-shirt suddenly bunched up underneath her dress. She didn't fix it. Instead, she kept her eyes trained on Commodus. His expression was dangerous in its calm. There was no way he had the scissors again, she had checked her bag as soon as she had a second of privacy at school and the two pieces of critical evidence were still safely stowed away in her backpack.

Evan wasn't sure if she would have stayed there forever, staring down the shadows that ruined her already crumbling life. Maybe she would have. But she will never find out because the old front door loudly announced the entrance of her brother.

"You have to go away right now," she hissed. The Emperors didn't reply and frustrated tears began to burn Evan's eyes. They felt real. Like a verdict.

"Fine. You're not going away, I'll have to make you." She swallowed fiercely and grabbed a knife from the drawer nearest her. It slid out with a noise like unsheathing a sword. Evan had never heard that in real life but she had watched enough television with Marcus to know the sound. Caligula put his weight on one foot and folded his arms like a sitcom character.

Evan turned around, gingerly brandishing her weapon. It felt like ice in her grip. Her breaths were quick and her heart hummed. But none of the Emperors looked scared. None of them even flinched when she raised the knife, lifting her left hand to tighten her grasp. She was going to throw it at them. She really was. At that moment in her life, Evan had forgotten that she had a brother who spent the time he wasn't in his basement bedroom foraging for snacks. But thankfully Marcus had picked up a family size bag of potato crisps on his way home and was crunching away at them, already on his way downstairs. Evan wouldn't have known any better if he had waltzed into the kitchen and offered her one.