Heartless Betrayal

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Ari’s POV

Have you ever felt so close to someone, you’ve known them all your life and you feel like there’s nothing you don’t know about them? You know their favourite cereal, their biggest fear and their favourite childhood memory. You’ve memorised their voice, to the point when it sounds like them when you read their texts in your mind. You know every one of their darkest secrets, and they know yours.

It’s a dangerous kind of relationship, when you know someone as well as you do yourself, at any point it could all turn around and backfire on you.

It’s almost like when you look at them you can see every emotion in their eyes, although they keep them carefully guarded from everyone else, you can see through their walls. You were there when they went up. I had let Toby get this close to me, without even realising I knew little of what he really thought.

Sociopaths have a talent for mimicking human emotion. They are incapable of feeling even the most basic emotions such as remorse, love and guilt. They play a part so they can get what they want.

For Toby, what he wanted was me. He wanted me for the sole reason of having me.

               “I just collect things, you know that.”

At the time it had seemed harmless, though I guess coming from a seventeen year old boy I should have realised that it was a little strange. It wasn’t uncommon for young boys to collect things; bugs, marbles, chocolate bars and the likes, but that’s just it, young boys. They grow out of their bug collections, they pass on their marbles to younger siblings, and they eat the chocolate bars.

Toby never grew out of it, the one constant I remembered from our whole childhood was his collecting. He collected everything, his room was full of seemingly random knick-knacks, all gathering dust. I had asked him once, why he didn’t just get rid of it all.

               “They all serve a purpose, Ari.”

I remember once standing in front of one of the bookshelves, lined with rows of little jars. Hundreds, each filled to the brim with something or another. Completes he called them. Jars of crickets, bottle caps, buttons and the plastic toys from Christmas Crackers. There were a lot of jars, each assigned to their own collectable. I had picked one up one day, it was all the way at the back, hidden behind a few of the others. I hadn’t even noticed it before, I had turned the jar over in my hand to examine the contents; dead rats.

I remember screaming, the glass slipping from my hand and shattering on the hardwood floor of his bedroom. He’d just looked up at me from his position on the bed and sighed.

               “I’ve no more jars, Ari.”

That was it, no explanation. He knew the rats has frightened me and all he was concerned about was his lack of extra containers.

               “Did you kill them?”

I had asked, horrified at the thought of him being that violent. He just shrugged, void of any remorse or guilt.

               “I needed them for my collection.”

He had simply said. And that was it, he never spoke of them again.

One day, a few months later, I had come in to his room to find all the jars gone. He’d put everything in the basement. He said he had everything he needed, except for one thing. There was one last thing he needed to add to his collection.