✓ DYING MOURNINGS, original

twenty-four : i know the end

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𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘-𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 

𝐈 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐍𝐃

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There was blood dripping into my eyes, making my vision cloudy. I could barely look up for long without straining my shaking body. It was like everything in me stopped responding to whatever he was saying above me. All I could focus on was the blood on my skin and the dead body.

God, was he even a person anymore? He was just a body now. A shell.

No longer a home to even a heart.

"Are you even listening to me?"

I wasn't.

"Surely you can't be this torn up about him," he said before laughing. "Ha! Get it? Torn up? Anyway...weren't you going to kill him? Shouldn't you be thanking me?"

Would I have still killed him? I wasn't so sure now. He'd been speaking to me, so close to saying something we both needed to hear, but had been cut short. I would never know what he was going to say. I would never know if he would've been a good man after all of this.

"I'm going to allow you to leave, Blaire."

This got my attention only because I assumed I was going to be taken back inside the mill to die.

"I'm going to let you leave here because tomorrow you'll be meeting me at the barn."

"Why–" I swallowed thickly, the back of my mouth dry. Not even the tears still streaming down my cheeks could wet my lips. "Why would I do that?"

John smiled when I finally looked up. "Because it's my last parting gift to you."

"I don't want anything from you."

"There isn't much time left for you, for us," he said, echoing his words from when he'd visited me not long ago. "I think it's best if you spend the night with your loved ones. It's what I would've done if I had any."

"You're going to kill me," I murmured, wiping my nose with the back of my bloodied hand. "Why let me go when you can chain me up inside like some animal?"

"I'm trying to be kind."

I couldn't stop the tears or the snot. "You're not a kind person, John. It's not nice to lie and pretend."

"Go home, Blaire."

My head was pounding. "I can't leave him here–"

"You will, because he's not yours to deal with anymore." John nudged Ace's arm with the toe of his shoe. A strange look passed over him. I couldn't tell if it was indifference or sadness. "He's my dead to burn."

Gray was threatening to collapse around me. "No–"

"Tomorrow night, you will meet me at the barn at eleven. There you will surrender yourself or I will burn your home down, then the stupid church, the school, and finally the cabin with all your cute friends inside. I will make sure every single one of them dies." He was smiling again, as if imagining what he was going to do. He reached down and took my chin into his hand, forcing me to look him in the face. "Sweet little Cassandra in that big house alone because her parents go out to dinners on Friday nights or loyal Luke who's little brother will answer the doors to anyone. Perhaps even Victor and Monroe in their little apartment with the shitty doorman who takes his breaks at nine P.M. and doesn't return until thirty blissfully unaware minutes later. Maybe I'll tear their hearts from their chests too and gift them to you in a box one by one until you come to me."