Ptolemaea | Henry Creel

Purity

YALLL HOLY SHITTT IM SO SO SO OOOO SORRY THIS CHAPTER TOOK TWENTY YEARS TO COME OUT???????? 

THIS IS NOT THE FINALE! next chapter will be.

I'm gonna save my yapping for the end of the chapter but also i have spent more time writing this chapter than i have writing any other chapter and i only got to 6,700 WORDS WHAT THE HELL LIKE I ACTUALLY SPENT 5 CONSECUTIVE DAYS ON THIS 

okay im done complaining i love you thank you so reading

ALSO ONE MORE THING, REMEMBER SIXTEEN HAD A KNIFE STRAPPED TO HER CAUSE I KNOW ITS BEEN 10 YEARS AND U PROBS FORGOT 

~

I remember that last day so clearly.

It was stamped in my mind beside visions of bloody walls and broken bones. I would never forget the moment I stepped out of the Lab. How those metal doors swung open, their threshold a divider between birth and death. Waiting beyond them, the afterlife smelt like oil and magnolia trees. Even five years later, I remember how I clung to that scent all the way to the front gates. Half-alive and unsteady, swaying with the late summer breeze, my eyes had scanned the laboratory windows for signs of life. It was dusk, then, and the sky was still dark-- anticipating the sun's ascent, but it never came. The world stood still that day. All was quiet.

That quiet should have been a comfort. After all the slaughter, and bloodshed, and noise the massacre had made, I should've been thankful for it. Instead, though, I prayed for an interruption. Briefly pious and awfully desperate, I prayed there would come another cry from somewhere inside. Prayed that, even after all he'd done, Henry would stumble out of that building. Six, too, because I couldn't be the only one left. There had to be others. 

No one cried out, though, and Six never showed. My prayers went unanswered. 

That was maybe the worst moment of my life. I had thought 'the worst' would be finding Six broken up on the ground, or hearing Henry's cries for me to stay with him a little longer, but instead, it was that moment of silence.

Cruel and indifferent, it confronted me with the reality of what was and now wasn't. It reminded me of the empty spaces that used to be filled, and demanded I feel the absence that remained. In death, there was no sound. Only sleep, and that day Six, Gloria, and Henry had closed their eyes for good.

I remained awake, though. My eyes were wide open. 

I never thought I could miss that silence. 

But it was hard not to; especially when it was replaced by the roar of Henry's footsteps, slamming against the rotten floors of his rotten home. Now, thunder roared somewhere in the distance, reverberating through the Upside Down's blood-red sky. Whatever quiet once remained was long gone, replaced by a choir of shrill voices in the back of my mind. They screamed at me to run faster, to save myself from the fate so many others had been resigned to at Henry's hands.

He took us. He's going to take you.

Tendrils littered the ground below me. They writhed in the glow of lifeless moonlight, nearly impossible to avoid. In that moment, there wasn't any time to watch my step. The only thing on my mind was the desperate, primal desire to get away from Henry at any possible cost. I landed on tendril and after, pushing my legs faster all while the vines shuddered beneath me. Light hemorrhaged through gaps of broken roof overhead, shining down on scuffed floors and specks of dust floating in the air. Through bleary eyes, I could barely see the stairwell just a few feet away, shadowed and open, calling me to it.

Faster. He's right behind you.

I didn't know where I was going. My mind was being crushed beneath a thousand thoughts, overlapping and ricocheting off each other without relent. It was so dark and I was so scared. Nothing was familiar in the Upside Down. Even if I made it out of Henry's home, I didn't know where to run. In my panic, I risked a glanced over my shoulder-- he was getting closer.