Deadly Discern - Book Three ✔️

Chapter Twenty Five - Battling

No matter how hard I try, I can't get the shocking - no, not shocking, downright disgusting - scene out of my mind. I can't help but go over and over it, agonising and shaming myself constantly about what I'd done.

Again, the scene flashes before my eyes like a clip from a movie. My hands reaching out in an instant and clawing ferociously at Alex's handsome face, his eyes widening as I began scratching roughly down along his soft skin, leaving behind several nasty marks down and all around his neck.

Pulled back to the now, I hold back the desire to punish myself for harming him. What had gotten into me?! I'd become this feral animal in the blink of an eye, reacting and not thinking about where I really was, what I was doing or who I was striking out at. I'd been my worst nightmare in that moment, failing myself and Alex simultaneously.

All I want to do is cry and cave in on myself, hide my shame and my anger at myself for letting loose on him like that. How could I do that to my only true supporter? I'd fucked up again. Again! I hated myself more than ever before in that split second of mindless reaction. I'd been having an out of body dream, and though it felt so real during, I knew when I came to that it was only a dream that I'd been having. Transported back to that horrible basement, but instead of me attacking Charles, he had me as his victim, actively preparing me for the next step. I'd be chopped into pieces and frozen, like the rest of them.

A shiver courses violently through me as I sit silently beside Alex in his car. I don't know if he noticed it, but he doesn't react either way. I think I've pushed him a little too far. Though he isn't showing it right now. He is so cool headed, I envy that trait, I wish I had the same level headedness that he has always had. It's got to be the reason he is able to look beyond my deadly nature and see me for the person I am and always have been.

Because I'm better than this. Aren't I?

Alex eats his meal without tearing his eyes from the scene before us. My food sits in my lap, my hands clutching my burger tightly, but my attention isn't on my food. I now stare blankly out of the car and at the place before us.

A rundown old house with wooden panelling that is all painted white, but the paint has now begun to peel due to time and weather. There are two front windows, one large one on the right side, which is set back a little to leave room for the roof to overhang at the front as a makeshift porch, and one smaller one on the left that juts out and forward into the sad excuse for a front yard. The yard consists of dead grass and a few turned over and broken ceramic pots, dirt spills out around the broken pieces, making a mess of the ground. I imagine that the right hand side of the house contains the sitting room, which might have once been a welcoming place, though now all I can imagine is a bleak and cold space, maybe there's a sofa that's falling apart, an old television tucked into one corner or maybe there's only a ratty mattress that serves as bedding and a place to sit. The left could be the master bedroom, not as large as the sitting room, but ample all the same, somewhere an old couple might've lived out their days together, happy to live peacefully and just be. I don't believe that it would be a calm place now though, not with who now resides here. Now it would not be somewhere you would want to relax, or sleep for that matter.

Alex coughs, breaking me from my thoughts and I turn my sight on him quickly, his fist knocks into his chest twice, clearly having choked on some food.

"Are you alright?" I ask, my voice cutting through the silence.

"Yeah." He says as he gulps once more and then dives back into his burger.