Hope (Enoch O'Connor x Reader)

Chapter 27: Can murder be 'accidental?'

I walk through the twisting corridors until eventually I come to the dining room of the ship. It's full of tables, all occupied by the dead. Skeletons sit frozen in the last moments they had before the ship sank and killed them all. It's a wonder that they are all still intact, or seated as a matter of fact. You would have thought that the ocean would have disintegrated their bones, or that some creepy-ass bone eating fish would have come along and eaten them. But apparently not.

Enoch walks towards the table directly in the centre of this huge room, sitting down at a table of skeletons. I follow him and sit down in a spare seat. The skeletons range in sizes at this table, some big, some small. I think this may have been a family, all having a nice dinner, when the ship decided in was a Titanic wannabe and sunk.

I look at Enoch. He is staring at the small child's skeleton beside him. His face is void of emotion, but I know he's sad as his eyelids droop ever so slightly over his beautiful eyes.

"Did you convince someone to leave the loop?" I ask, my voice a raspy, hollow whisper.

He looks at me and I can almost feel the sadness radiating off of him.

"How do you know that?" He asks.

"So it's true."

"No, it's not true. Who told you I did that?"

"Millard."

"Technically, I didn't do it. But theoretically, yes... I... I guess I did."

I stare at him, my jaw starting to shake with... anger? No, not anger, is it... fear ?

"Tell me exactly how you 'guess' you are technically not responsible but theoretically are for someone's death?" I say, my jaw clenched, trying to prevent showing my jaw shaking.

"Look, it's not what you think. There used to be another little kid in our loop called Sophie. She'd been living here for about maybe, sixty years, forever the age of seven. One day, she asked me why I was always so angry or something and I told her it wasn't her problem so she shouldn't worry about it. But she was one of those people that love to help others. A little ray of sunshine, everyone called her. So she kept asking me why I was angry. Eventually, I lost it with her and told her why. Because I was forever stuck in a place in which nothing will ever happen. Nothing will ever change. That there was a big, wide world outside the loop that I would never get to see."

Enoch pauses and looks away from me. "Somehow, I... inspired her, I guess. I opened her mind up when I told her that there was more to the world than just our loop. Then one night, she just disappeared. No one knew where she went. We looked all around the loop, but we couldn't find her. Then Emma checked the loop entrance and found little footsteps in the dirt floor of the cave leading out. She told Miss Peregrine and Miss Peregrine lost it. She went out to look for Sophie, but came back with a handful of ash. Sophie's real age had caught up with her and she had disintegrated. Everyone accused me of killing her, forcing her out of the loop. But I didn't. She wanted to see the world I had told her about, so she went out to try and look at a glimpse of what I wanted. Technically I didn't kill her because I didn't tell her or force her to leave the loop, she left to her own accord. But theoretically I did kill her because I told her about the world, not why I couldn't see it, why she couldn't see it, or why anyone else in the loop couldn't see it. I thought she knew what happened if she left the loop. If I knew Sophie didn't know that she would age and die if she left the loop, I wouldn't have told her about the world, wouldn't have sparked her curiosity to leave. But people make mistakes. Accidentally killing Sophie is one of my biggest mistakes. And it is most definitely my biggest regret."

He looks down at his lap, avoiding my eyes. I can tell he is actually sorry he killed Sophie. I feel bad for making him relive the horror. But I haven't finished my questions.

"Did you kill your parents? Technically or theoretically." I ask him.

"Technically, I didn't mean to."

"But theoretically?"

"Theoretically, it... happened, I guess. My parents owned a funeral parlor and I used to bring the dead back alive. My father thought I was cursed, so he hurt me. Tied me down, made me powerless and tortured me. My mother loved me very much and hated Dad hurting me, but she was also very religious and thought I was being possessed by the Devil Himself. So she never tried to stop my father's abuse as she thought it would 'make Satan leave my body' and 'cause my spirit to be clean and pure afterwards'. One day, I was playing with my peculiarity, bringing some corpses that had just come into the parlor back alive, when my father came into the room and started to hit me for it. My screams attracted my mother's attention and she came and watched. The bitch just stood there and watched. In my pain, I screamed for someone to help me, someone to care. And someone did answer my pleas for help, for once in my entire life. The corpses that I had given life to fought my father and mother. They defended me. They killed my parents right in front of me, then collapsed to the ground, their job done. I then buried the two corpses who saved my life, which to this day I still remember the names of. I left my parents in that room, to rot and burn in Hell. After my little, unofficial funeral for the dead who saved my life, Miss Peregrine found me and brought me to the loop. And I have been there ever since."

I look at him. The shit he's experienced is just as brutal as mine, yet I feel his pain worse than my own.

"So I guess you now think I'm a monster?" Enoch asks, his voice miserable, his eyes not meeting mine.

"No." I tell him, and he looks up in surprise.

"I think you're human."

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FEEL PROUD OF ME I WROTE A CHAPTER! Sorry it's soooooooo late, but I do have a life outside of Wattpad and Youtube and the internet (apparently).

I'll write another chapter today maybe, but if not, I promise to write another one tomorrow. Okay, see all ya squirtles later!!

~Tamika