Forgive and Forget Me (A Jeff the Killer Story)

Chapter Thirty Three~*

1- Jamie

I run out into the forest, the afternoon sunlight blinding me. For a second, I’m disorientated and I stop to hold up a hand and shield my eyes from the brightness. Sometimes, I forget how much time passes by when I’m in the mansion. I could have sworn that it was still night time. Nearly two days have passed since the day Jeff left and I dimly remember that I’ve had only about four hours of sleep since he left. It wasn’t a reassuring thought to think about while racing off to go and save my mom.

But, my own health didn’t matter. I didn’t know if Gabriel will hold true to his threat, but I don’t want to sit around and wait to find out. My legs carry me quickly through the Slender Forest until I reach the Gateway Trees, where I don’t even stop to think before running right between them because I don’t have to. I’m heading home and whether the trees can read minds or they just simply know what they’re doing, I come out in my hometown’s forest.

It’s completely dark here and, once again, I become dizzy and confused. A wave of nausea washes over me and I stop, crumble my knees, and throw up everything in my stomach, which isn’t exactly a lot. I stay on the floor a moment longer with intense pains radiating from my stomach through all of my body, making my muscles feel weak and useless. For a few horrible seconds, I can’t will my body to move. My vision doubles, then triples, before going back to normal.

“Look at you, you’re pathetic,” A small voice whispers and I’m almost positive that’s my inner voice speaking to me.

“Shut up,” I say, attempting a strong, confident tone. I can barely even hear myself wheeze it out.

“You have no manners, do you? Is that really how you’re going to greet me?”

My head snaps up and I catch sight of a woman in a black dress with a white mask and black spaces where her eyes should be before she kicks me hard on the side of my head. My whole body flies to the right and I land face down in the dirt.

“Nearly three years of training and this is all you’ve amounted to?” Jane lets out a cold bark of laughter. “How pitiful.”

“Shut up,” I growl. My stomach is still hurting, but nothing will stop me from kicking Jane’s ass once I get up.

She sighs and her footsteps crunch through the dead leaves and she kneels beside me before grabbing hold of my hair and holding my head off the ground. “No, Jamie, that’s not how this conversation is supposed to go. See, I say a bunch of rude, demeaning things to you and you respond with a few snarky comments and then we fight, making you lose time and giving Gabriel enough time to go and kill your mother.”

An icy chill spreads through my body.

I choke out, “What?”

“Oh, honestly, haven’t you ever seen a diversion before?” She sighs once more before letting my head smack against the ground. “Can you get more hopeless then this?”

“You’re working with Gabriel?” I question, scrambling to my feet, all thoughts of the pain gone.

Jane smiles at me over her shoulder from her position a few feet away. “Honey, he works for me. He has been since the very first day I met him back in . . . Oh, what was it?” She faces away from me for a second to contemplate. “I’d say it was about ten years ago.”

Nothing she could have said would have affected me as much as her words then. They’re like a bullet in the heart paired with a knife in the back. I stumble back, wanting to be away from this wicked woman.

“You’re lying! He-he would never . . .” I trail off. In truth, I don’t really know Gabriel. Not when he was my boyfriend and definitely not after we stopped being a thing. I’m no one to say what he would and wouldn’t do.