The Night

Night of Lies Pt (4) Monster No Longer.

Lincoln craned his head backward to catch a glance of Dace, who was resting peacefully in a deep slumber, finally allowing her body to get a bit of rest for the next day's ventures. He knew he really had to stay awake now, with his second pair of eyes unavailable he had to to be on extra on guard. It was nearly impossible though since Lincoln currently was struggling with the huge urge of going outside. He wanted to see the man he killed. He wanted to see the damage he had done.. he wanted to be face-to-face with the soulless man, yet he was stuck hiding behind the oak walls of his home, as if it will change what he had done.

So instead of walking outside and facing the consternation that was building in his body and mind, he sat down at the dining room table and closed his eyes. He tried to calm his unstable nerves, not knowing why the guilt hasn't yet left his heart. 

"He was going to kill you, you know that right?!" He yelled to himself in his mind.

Lincoln tried to reason with his self-reproaching tendencies, but positivity in the murder he had committed? There was no such thing as that. It wasn't the circle of life if you manually stopped the circle. These thoughts weighed on his mind crushing his thought process and pain rode his back. That it was a kill or be killed situation, it wasn't his fault. Lincoln couldn't stand to think of himself as a murderer. 

"Was it really murder if it was self defense?"  He asked to himself.

Lincoln looked back at Dace, anger filling his core, and a tinge of jealousy striking in his heart as he shook his head from side to side quickly. 

"How is she living with herself?! She has so obviously killed someone, hell she just did so tonight without even a flinch!"  He was getting a headache with how much he was screaming in his head. 

Lincoln was so angry at himself, and he couldn't keep it together. Why does she get to rest peacefully? Knowing that she killed a man that probably had a family, consisting of a wife and kid.. A child who he probably promised he'd come home to. How was it not weighing on her mind like it was his? How did she numb the pain? 

"Maybe there is a way." He tried to convince himself.

Lincoln knew what he had to do so that this reoccurring thought would get out of his head. He swallowed the fear that was in his heart, he stood up and stormed across the home, and opened the back door. Taking his sweet time to step around the front of the home. Step by step nearing the foul smelling bodies that were on his front door step. Scared of the inevitable, even though he kept walking knowing that it would be directly in front of his face with just a few more movements. So with a final gulp, he rounded the corner of the cabin, and what he saw made his feet freeze to the ground.

The corpse was that of a man, yes of course, from the velocity of the scream, he knew it had to be. What surprised him though was as he began getting closer.. the damage that had been done seemed to be more gruesome than the movies that he thought would teach him about what to expect. It was all wrong.. you didn't just stand over a dead body emotionless, just because the person who controlled that body had wronged you. It wasn't as easy to just walk away and not think of what you had done. 

First thing Lincoln did was look at the mans figure.. he was strong and burly, likely to be in his mid-thirties at most. Next, Lincoln's gaze traveled up to look into the man's pale blue eyes, they were so striking. A little tear drop was beneath the human's left eye, showing he wasn't new at this killing business. This man has struck someone down before.. but that didn't wipe away the guilt from Lincoln. His eyes traveled about 6 inches downward from his previous destination, was where he saw the abrasions alongside the large gash of bundled up and snatched off flesh, just to see his large bloodied dagger protruding from the man's thick neck, and it took him a moment to register the gory sight the laid before him.

Once Lincoln did register it... he vomited. He couldn't take the sight without throwing up the nothingness that was in his stomach. Tears began to break out of his eyes, letting open the flood gates, and the waterfalls were let loose. He was sobbing and hacking, as if something was in his throat. Lincoln looked back over the man, and it made him throw up once again, looking as the blood was still streaming from the mans neck, soaking on to his plaid shirt, and drying onto his brown leather jacket.

The way the man's blue eyes stared so emptily into Lincoln's, it chilled his bones, as if the man himself was crying out to him. "Why did you do it?! Was there no other way?!"  This only beating the criminality of Lincoln's actions further into his brain, as if there was a ghost of the man haunting him. Lincoln couldn't pull himself out of the nightmare he was thrown in, and he was stuck going over the male's state. He crouched beside the man, and between sobs, closed the eyes manually, the man's skin warm to the touch, showing the death was still fresh. When he removed his hand and looked at the man's body this time he seemed so much more peaceful.. as if he was resting. 

But there was one last thing to do, and it was retrieve his knife. Lincoln wrapped his hand around the handle of the murderous object, and closed his eyes tightly. Gearing his head backward as to keep his face away from any mess this may make. He gulped once, before yanking at the handle, and the sounds of flesh and blood mingling with one, gushing together  was all that was heard, before a bloody volcanic eruption decided to burst the hole gaping open, the pierced esophagus over running the man's body with a fresh coat of red liquid. Blood made it onto Lincoln's clothing, and specs of it was on his hands. 

He leaped back feeling the unfamiliar liquid on him and realized the blood was on his hands. Physically and metaphorically. He dropped the dagger in pure fear of himself, of what he looked like, turning his head and coughing up the rest of his disgust. He looked over to the bloodied corpse once more.. and he knew what he had to do. But he couldn't do it alone.. he would need help, and he knew where to go. 

Lincoln tiptoed into the home, so he didn't wake Dace up, at least not too abruptly. Once he was close enough to stand over her, he tapped her shoulder, and like a kid who was up too late at the sleepover... he quickly whispered- "Psst... Dace wake up!"

Daces eyes popped opened as if she was never sleeping and looked over at Lincoln raising an eyebrow, and speaking. "Yes Lincoln? Is everything alright?" She said, her voice groggy with post sleep hoarseness. 

"I need your help, please." He begged, not realizing how desperate he may sound to her. 

Dace knew he was probably too frantic to sleep from the deaths of the marauders. But she was shocked to hear what was next. 

"Please, help me give these men an honorable send off." He inquired. "They may not have been ones to honor.. but what if they had a family.. this could have been for them. They died for something, we can't leave them outside to rot. We must allow them a proper burial. Please.. I beg you." His voice urgent and strained. 

Dace nodded, knowing that this may be the only way to rid him of the immovable guilt that sagged on his shoulders. Realizing that it was plaguing him way to much at this moment. She placed her hand on his bicep, and pulled herself up. She stood still for a moment to make sure she wasn't dizzy, stretching her body out and letting a large yawn out, cracker her knuckles and neck. With that, she hopped into action heading to the backdoor to the corpses he wanted to clean up.

"You comin' or what?" Dace said quite harshly, wondering why he was still standing there.

You didn't have to tell Lincoln twice, he was up and gunning for the back door, ready or not here he goes. 

He refused to be this monster in his head anymore.

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