The Keepers' Evil

Thirty-Nine: I'd be wise to keep an eye on you

Song- Carolina: Taylor Swift

Trigger warning for slight violence and death.

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"I'd be wise to keep an eye on you."

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I wanted to tear my eyes from the mess, from the body that housed the screams and the same body that was being drained of blood, but I couldn't. The world thought of addiction as a compulsion towards certain evils, drugs perhaps, alcohol. But I was addicted to my guilt, to punishing myself subconsciously for the pain I had inflicted, and that was a dependency crueller than anything the world could tempt me with.

The guard lashed his wand towards the woman who he had sprawled onto the floor beyond the confines of the bars before me, forcing the blood that desired to stay within her veins onto the slates of cracked stone to run between the gaps in the grout. He looked to us, to those who had watched the brutality unfold, as if to use her torture as an example of the power they held over the weak.

The air had become tolerant of the cries, and with each day that passed, it became slightly kinder. Fear felt like a mere touch, a distant comrade in a nearby hysteria of suffering, and perhaps that was more terrifying than what I could physically see.

The guard struck her once with his fist as if to use his brute strength to demonstrate that he didn't even need magic to have a hold over her safety, and then once with his wand's fatal laceration to her throat, to follow through with the silent promise to end her life the moment that she had attempted what we all craved;

Escape.

"Let this be a lesson to all of you. Azkaban is where you come to die. There is no escape from hell." The insensate body was dragged too roughly through the rows of cells, blood splaying into a bubbled track as she swiped the evidence of her own barbaric death over her skin as though it was a branding of her sins. Her eyes remained open as her cheek crushed against the floor, and I watched the nothingness behind her once determined pupils scrape over the frozen fear that lathered over the floor.

There was an instantaneous fear that floundered into my head as the blood seemed to grasp my breath and force it into a strenuous melt of panicked heaves, that Madeleine was going to have to break down a door that was glued together by blood and wade through an ocean of painful tears to simply find me again. I vowed to myself in that moment that if she told me that her heart couldn't forgive the terror I had inflicted upon her, I would let her go.

"Unless your name is Sebastian Sallow's girlfriend." Alexander chuckled under his breath as he saluted mockingly to one of the prison guards that crossed close to the bars of the cell that we would forever remember when our eyes closed at night. Alexander found humour in the lugubrious, light in the destitute darkness. He coped, and I couldn't fault him for that.

"I like this guy, Seb-" Madeleine had broken her promise to stay too many times, seeming to appear into my view when the air was most violent, harsh, times I wouldn't want her to be in at all. My first instinct was always to let anger fuel me into a state she wouldn't have liked, until it only cooled with a solemness that came from understanding that she was not real.

I clenched my eyes shut as if to shun them both, resulting in a laughter from Kelleher that was swiftly returned by the giggle of Madeleine that only I could find. I was sure that if Madeleine and Alexander ever had the chance to meet, they would adequately entertain one another with their stubborn mockery of me that I wouldn't have minded. If she could laugh, if he could be happy, life must've shut its doors on Azkaban.