Soulless

Fourty One | Two months

Lunden Evergreen

The voice echoes around the vacant space. My father dead just three feet from me and as the lights go out. I know Verena is gone and I'm met with a new opponent.

I wait for more words to greet me. But I'm met with silence in the darkness, like I was a doll in a play house. But instead this one felt like glass that would shatter and fall down on me.

It was haunting in a way, not being able to see a thing. Even the vents that opened to the lights outside were now closed and I was left in the complete darkness and chill of this place. The smell of sanitation and the sound of nothing.

Verena didn't secure the place, the voice did.

Then a more haunting thought fills me, what if they were dead. The two people in my life who I found myself not being able to live without, could be dead. But I can't give in if they are, I'm not allowed to let go and go with them. I have to fight for the last piece of us, me and Atlas.

A bright light burns my eyes as it flashes quickly like head lights driving towards you. But my eyes shut and I try to recover from the blinding light.

As I open my eyes I instantly regret it as fear becomes my new reality. The blood trickles down the chairs and as I turned away the bile left my throat. My chest began to give at the sight of them, the glimpse of their dead body's on chairs.

Josie. Where is Josie.

I turn back to face it, the view that would burn my brain for as long as I'd live.

Linda and Brian, Josies parents, were on a stage before me. Both lifeless with a bullet through their heads that killed them instantly. The life and color drained from them, they seemed to have been dead and as I look around, Josie's nowhere to be found.

As I turn a clapping noise fills the room and another light shines. Then I'm faced by him, the best friend of the man I love, Cade.

But it's not him that scares me, it's her. White braided rope wrapped around her torso that restrained her in the metal chair. With her extra closed I prayed she was asleep.

"Ah my favorite game! How to catch a killer, but special edition... my best friends girlfriend!" His laugh is cynical as he speaks and I realized who I was dealing with.

A man with no feelings, but a drive to hunt. He was paid by the government to hunt a predator but they made him one in the process. Because he'd go to lengths to find me and cover up the bodies that helped him get here.

"You know I always found Atlas to be an idiot at points. He makes me not believe in the IQ tests or standard scores, because man he beat me by a mile. But he couldn't figure out that the woman he loves was his killer," His hands clap together as he moves around the stage.

"It's almost comical, he's spent years trying to find you. But he's so cluelessly in love as you sit in his lap, or on his dick. Well obviously," His hand draws out to my stomach causing me to clutch it, "I mean he disappears and doesn't believe I'd find him? Rather find you," He sighs in disappointment and steps towards me.

I don't move, there was no use.

"He betrayed his country and his best friend. I knew you were alive, but everyone still believes you're dead... which makes this way more easy to cover up," he scans around the room, not a soul behind those eyes. He lands back on me with a smirk.