Femme Fetale

Twenty Nine

It's been four months since I disappeared from that burning house on the edge of the cliff in Punta Canoas. It's been four months since I'd seen anyone from that night, and I missed my friends desperately.

I'm not sure when I made friends, but I did, and now they'll forever be embedded into the rotting stone I call my heart. It grows heavier each day, and sometimes I wonder if it'll just drop right out of my body.

Zane had led me to a back entrance to the house as he pulled the fire alarm. It led down through the basement, and into the cliffs. With every step, the air grew mustier and more humid as I neared the vicious waves.

It's as I left that my mind wandered to things I hadn't thought about in a long time. Like the yelling of my younger siblings as we played 'Queen of the Castle'.

In a perfect life I would have been in college.

As a little girl I'd always wanted to be a dancer. I wanted to sway and move with the music, to get lost in the rhythm. To let the music wrap around me like a barrier from the world. To make it freeze time so I can live in the blissful moment forever and never have to return. I wanted to make people smile and laugh and feel. To let the music move the people around me as much as it moved me.

In a perfect life I would be graduating my performing arts program with flying colours because I would have been doing something I love.

But perfect worlds do not exist.

I live in the dark, and dirty reality where a little girl looses her family in the blink of an eye. In the reality where people kill other people for money, greed, for fun. We live in the reality where horrible things happen to good people, and good things happen to horrible people. This warped reality where home is to lost souls like mine.

I'd spent months and years pondering death. After the loss of my family. The loss of the woman whom I'd loved like a mother, I wondered 'why do these things happen to me? Why do I keep loosing the people I love most? I thought it might be best to never love anyone again. I'd spent years and years thinking about the beyond. Does it exist? Would I ever have a chance at it? According to some religions, I am salvageable. I am not a lost cause.

But according to myself, I deserve to rot in whatever form of hell exists after this life. For all the things I've done, for all the people I've unknowingly hurt. Someone more selfish than I might argue that it's the world's fault for making me this way. That my path was destined to this and it's all the fault of a higher power. But I have no belief of a higher power. Maybe I'll be lucky and the only thing that follows death will be empty darkness.

I suppose I'll have to wait to die to find out.

The sun's rays pierce through the newborn leaves of the tree that I stand under. A small breeze blows past, bringing with it the promise of new growth and warmer days. But I will not be here to witness it.

Across the large expanse of space is a small gathering of people. A close lidded coffin. A portrait of me, the photo taken with me off guard. I wonder where they got that picture from. Maybe Parker had taken it without me knowing.

Parker.

My heart breaks at the thought of leaving him behind and I wish I could have run my fingers through his hair just one more time. Though this separation is for the best. After all, I'm truly nothing but a curse to those I love. Breathing hurts for a second and my vision blurs. Instead of giving in, I steel my emotions to focus on the happenings. A brown haired man stands beside my coffin, bent of over slightly as if speaking to the large wooden casket.

Killian, I suppose. He strokes the polished wood, and then straightens up and returns to the grouping of people.

The man I'd pined after for years, wondering what I had done wrong. If what I am had scared him off. The man whose scent haunted me all those restless nights. He'd been my first romantic love.

The people stir around the coffin, someone stands and begins speaking.

They're only a handful really. Nothing too big. I can just make out the dark hair of Parker from back here, and my heart gives another ache. I ignore it. A caramel man stands close to Parker, a tall elegant woman next to him.

Zane and Philomena.

Somehow, I'd harbored a friend in Zane. For him to help someone who'd been paid to betray him....

I doubt I'd have been able to do it, had the roles been switched. He'd readily helped me escape, promising to never let up that I still live. Promised to keep me a secret from the Cartel, no matter what. Telling me he'd be forever grateful to me for not turning in the sensitive information I'd uncovered. He'd said I might have saved thousands of lives with that single act.

The woman next to him touches his shoulder, and I hope I haven't hurt him too much. We'd been friends, but I hadn't thought he'd show up. For the express reason that he knows I'm still alive and they're burying an empty coffin.

My breath stops when my gaze lands on the blonde man. Tall and lean, just how I remember him. Despite the distance, I know those stormy eyes hold nothing but hatred and anger. Anger at me, anger at Beatrice, anger at the world. He hadn't always been this way. But from the day Beatrice had died on the floor of that bank, he'd grown colder and colder, withdrawing from the warmth and settling into his cocoon of ice and darkness. He'd surrounded his heart with frost, and kept everyone a great distance away.

The man who'd wanted me dead so badly, he'd crossed miles and miles. Though I suppose it had only been a matter of time before he'd found me.

If only I could see into his mind for a moment. Does he truly believe I'm dead? Even when there is no body? Will he let up this game of cat and mouse and leave me behind?

I hope so, or else this has all been for nothing.

I slink back into the shadows, my gaze still on the people surrounding my empty casket. They disperse slowly, until only a lonely figure remains. He's on his knees beside the coffin, touching it, as if hoping it'll pop open and the person who's supposed to be inside would walk out.

I could signal to him. Somehow call his attention, bring him away and tell him why this had to be done. Explain to him that this is the best way to protect him, to protect everyone. That it's best if I disappear for a while.

My heart breaks again, as I watch his shoulders shake.

Is he angry at me? If I tell him all of this, if I reveal myself, would he still love me?

Knowing Parker he'd vow to protect me.

My hand glides down to my growing abdomen, and a sob latches itself to the back of my throat. Soon enough, I'd begin to really show. You wouldn't notice the swell unless you really looked, but it's there, and inside is something too amazing for this world.

I don't dare try to think farther than the five months remaining. For the first time in my life, I haven't anything planned. Every time I begin to think on what should be done, what needs to be done, my mind blanks.

I know Parker deserves to be told. He deserves to be in this baby's life. His baby's life. And I know I shouldn't be making these decisions for him, but he's better off this way. I have to believe that. At the very least, he'll have a chance at a life without being constantly on the run.

My vision blurs and I turn away as he rises to his feet.

'I am the wound and the blade,

both the torturer and he who is flayed.'

The End. For Now.