PSYCHOPATH

chapter 20: part 1

Chapter 20: PART 1

A SINISTER SERENADE

~ "I want to run my fingers through his pelt, matted with mud and with blood. I do not want smooth marble castles. I want mortar eaten away by nature. I want the smell of wet moss and wood rot. I want the leaves and bugs in his fur. I want the deer he catches between his teeth, the men he breaks beneath his claws. I want kingdoms to tremble when they hear my name entwined with his. I want my marriage to be a war cry.

I do not want to teach him how to be a prince.

I want him to teach me how to be a monster." ~

'what princesses really want' – rebelle society

In those after moments, all in one intense rush, Ella realized that she had just done something that separated her from the human race, and it was something that could never be undone. She knew from that point on she could never be like normal people. She must have stood there in that state for twenty or so minutes, and he was there with her for it, a silent presence that was taking a secret delight in her dissociation, her becoming. She had never felt an emptiness of self like she did right then, and she would never forget that feeling. It was like she crossed over into a realm she could never come back from.

She tore herself away from him and stood in the space of her living room, looking at the world as if on an alien planet. Chest rising and falling in rapid bursts, a lodged bubble of anguish stuck in her throat, unable to escape. Eventually, the feeling passed, and she understood her circumstances with an inevitable dread.

Ella was a traitor, blatantly spitting on the oath she took upon becoming an FBI agent. She was not protecting the United States Constitution from any enemies, instead she was fucking those same enemies. The Code Killer sat there on the top ten most wanted list and here she was letting him hold her hand after sex. After sex – because yes, she just had sex with him.

And yet, Ella was exhausted, because for some reason, right then and there, so close to her sworn enemy, she felt safest and standing beside James Grey, a man of myth and legend back at the bureau, who would protect the nation from terror as he hunted those of ill intent, she felt maliciously scared.

She was at the crossroads of fate it seemed, finally, inevitably. Would she take her place by him, within the shadows and let him continue to ravage the world? Or would she betray him once again and crawl back to the people who handed her this mess in the first place?

And which choice was betraying herself? The consequences of her actions were the hardest to reconcile with, so there she was, fighting to find a clear-cut path through her hazardous emotions that swung from one extreme to the next.

When it was all said and done, he held out one gloved hand to her.

She knew what it meant. No, she wanted to scream. It's not supposed to go this way. There were tears on her cheeks, remnants from the sex or of actual sorrow, who knew. It could have been tears for the lost man in front of her, for herself, for what she knew was about to happen.

I was supposed to find you, catch you, kill you. Instead, I was the hunted one and I've made it so, so easy.

Despite having already willingly crossed the proverbial point of no return, doubt and self-loathing began to take root, infesting and digging into her organs, filling her chest with an empty sense of hollowness. Dumb woman. Dumb girl.