Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,96

“I don’t want to think about that now,” I said to the empty room. “I don’t want to think about it.” My eyes went back to my bedroom door, and in the midst of the familiar sights and smells of my childhood, I smelled another.

Zack’s cologne.

I walked to the bedroom door and looked at the bed where I had lain when he woke me up the first time. My prince. Not with a kiss, but his very presence, jarring me awake. And I’d hit him for it. In the groin. I pulled the door closed, put my back against it. “No,” I whispered. “No— no— no...”

I drew a deep breath, the ghosts of memory plaguing me. I tried to separate myself from it, from the smells, from the sounds, the phantom thoughts and memories that wouldn’t stop. “Fine,” I said, “just fine, be that way.” I walked ahead, to the old, wooden door, and turned the handle. The steps led down, turning on a wooden landing below, though I couldn’t see it. I knew every step by memory, having walked it a thousand times, and I closed my eyes and felt for the handrail. I heard the creak of the floorboards and the rattle of the water heater over in the far corner of the basement, but I didn’t care. All these sounds were familiar, but they weren’t intimidating. I didn’t fear them.

I didn’t have much left to fear.

When I reached the bottom step, I took a few more forward. The neighbor’s porch light shone in through the window I’d had replaced almost a year ago after Reed broke through it while making an escape. I could see the light through the snow, the definition gone but the light remained, just a little bit, almost like moonlight shining through the glass. It caught my face, and I turned, looking toward the corner for it, for the shadow.

It was there, pushed against the wall, not in the same place it had stood for all my life, but near enough. The box stretched to a foot over my head, forbidding, dark, the door hanging slightly ajar and open, still bent from the last time I had been in it, when I had broken my way out. It was only a few hours before the memory, the one I wanted to forget, desperately, to believe had never happened—because if it hadn’t, if he hadn’t come, then I wouldn’t have met him and we wouldn’t have—and he would still be alive, and not dead and—

I ran my hand across the pitted metal surface. I tugged on the door and it opened with a squeal, still hanging off its hinges at a broken angle, twisted. “I never should have left you,” I whispered to the darkness within, and it felt like the darkness answered me, like it moved inside, welcoming me back. I took a step in, and turned, facing my back to the open door, then grasped hold of it and pulled, dragging the door shut behind me. It fought me only a little, then I heard it creak into place, and the darkness surrounded me once more, only the faintest lines showing around the door where the lamplight came in from outside the window.

I stood there, alone again, in the dark, the quiet, the peace, the solitude. Just stood. Breathe in, breathe out. I liked the dark. The quiet. The solitude. I didn’t mind alone at all. Breathe in, breathe out. It smelled like home. My legs gave out a moment later, and I slumped, my back sliding down the back wall of the box. I folded in on myself, pulling my knees close as I dissolved, finally, the emotion coming now, here, in the darkness. This was where I belonged, where I deserved to be. Where I never should have left. Back in the box.

And I resolved I would never leave again.

An Apology For The Agony I Just Caused You, The Reader

Yeah, I know that hurt. A lot. It hurt me too, honestly. I finished writing that scene - yeah, that one scene, you know which one if you finished reading it, and yes, it broke me. Killing characters like that is painful for the author, too, I promise, and I didn’t just do it to be cruel. This is book 5 of a 10-book series. We’re now at the midway point, and things had to take a turn to get us where we’re going. I promise it’s all for good reasons,