𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑷𝑯𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑶𝑴 𝑶𝑭 𝑩𝑳𝑶𝑶𝑫 (𝑯𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒎)

Chapter Three

Will would have believed it to be normal for anyone else to feel frightened whilst watching someone drown in their own spilt blood.

What he himself found to be more frightening, however, was to be exposed to such a sight and realise he didn't feel anything at all.

Will didn't feel for her, at least. He watched, stunned and motionless, as Freddie Lounds writhed and choked on the blood that drained from her, and no matter how far he searched, he couldn't find it in himself to care.

It was a strange feeling. He was hazy from the visions of that same night and dizzy from the fall and he wondered, stupidly so, if he was still lost within the confines of his cursed imagination. If perhaps this was all just a particularly morbid dream and nothing more.

He couldn't have been dreaming. His eyes were not closed. 

Despite it, Will still didn't feel entirely like himself. He was stuck in a foreign mindset he hadn't yet left and was rather reluctant to, still chasing the feeling of power and prowess he'd felt before. It took him a while to realise that he wasn't seeing through the eyes of a killer anymore… that the eyes he possessed were his own.

That frightened Will like nothing else. For he wondered how. How could the darkness he possessed be his own?

He wondered how he could have, up until that very moment, allowed himself to be so cruel in watching Freddie splutter and gasp and plead through tearful eyes. How he could have seen her desperate search for mercy through breaths that held a threatening finality, and returned her gaze with a cold one. Purposeful in seeing her suffering and doing nothing to stop it. Making his spectacle of it known.

He thought of how he'd watched, through her eyes, as she began to lose her fight against death and revelled in it. Enjoyed the very sight. How he'd glared at her, cruel and emotionless, as though the battle she was fighting was against himself. As though it was him causing her death.

For a moment, he'd wished it had been.

For each moment after that, he knew he was damned.

Shivers ran down his spine like lightning bolts at the thought of it. And now, despite his previous indifference, anxiety tightened harshly around his throat in revelation of this new perpetual side of him like a noose of his own thought. Knowing his luck, he knew he may well wind up imagining it. He could already feel his words begin to form the tightening knot of a cord around his neck.

He closed his eyes as tightly as he could and sighed shakily, attempting to calm his mind. His heart was racing wildly at this point, and his pulse rang heavily in his ears. He'd clenched his fists at some point as well, digging his nails into the skin on his palms. It stung, but if he had caused himself to bleed he wouldn't have been able to tell anyway. With blood, his hands were already stained.

He took a suckling breath and opened his eyes again with the slightest glimmer of hope only to be met with the same grisly sight. With hands that were still dyed red with blood. A wave of desperational rage surged through him, and he wondered why he'd even held out hope that this wasn't real in the first place.

Then again, all he could really do was hope.

No more than a minute could have gone by since he'd first stood up and discovered her, but his cursed mind prolonged the moment as though it were a punishment exerted in the deepest pits of hell. All with a twisted god at his side, watching over his predicament in silent judgment. An angel of death observing, delighted, through the loss of blood and tears.

Will found himself begging to this ignorant god. Begging for him to let this all be a dream. To take his pain away. Predictably, he got nothing in return and wondered why he'd even tried. He felt irrational, though rightfully so, and he closed his eyes again. Hot tears shed and glided across his cheeks and he blocked out every sensation and thought along with them. He focused all of his attention on finding a voice of reason within himself.