remember our vow from all those years ago.
If one is caught, the other needs to run.
I made that mistake before. I ran away without looking back.
That day, I lost my only sister.
But I’m not a kid anymore. We’re not running away with Mom.
This time, I’ll save her like she once saved me.
Energy buzzes into my veins as I charge forward. My fists are balled by my sides. My hair is in disarray around my face, the blonde strands sticking to my temples with sweat.
I’m only a short distance away when Reina shrieks, “Noooo!”
Something hard and heavy hits the back of my head. I fall to my knees with a thud.
Black stars form behind my lids as they flutter closed, filling with tears.
Through the small slit, I stare at the burning cottage. Her loud, pained screams filter from the inside. The sound is raw and…lethal.
“R-Reina…” I croak, reaching out a weak hand before it falls limp in front of me.
All sounds disappear.
Reina is no longer screaming.
No longer shrieking.
No longer…fighting.
A sob lodges at the back of my throat as darkness swallows me whole.
Decimation is an interesting process.
It starts with one crack. Then two. Then everything crumbles and falls apart.
The art lies in starting that first crack. It has to be precise and to the point.
It has to be unmistakable and with the purpose to hurt.
Better yet, it has to come out of nowhere. Victims are easier to handle when they’re ambushed, when their world is flipped upside down in a fraction of a second.
Today, a process of decimation has started.
Reina’s life is now mine to own.
Mine to torture.
And mine to finish.
One week later
Help!
Someone help!
Please help me!
“No one will help you, monster.”
I crack my eyes open and wince. The back of my head feels as heavy as metal.
Constant beeping. Smell of bleach and coffee. Classical music.
The moment blinding white light penetrates my eyelids, I screw them shut again.
I’m obviously at the wrong place in the wrong time.
Isn’t there a song about that?
“Reina?”
Someone’s fingers force my lids open and shove another blinding light into my line of sight. My pupils burn with the intrusiveness of it.
“Miss Ellis, can you hear me?”
“Reina, honey, open your eyes.”
Reina? Who the hell is Reina?
There’s something wrong about that name. Completely freaking wrong.
Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong name.
The voices continue drifting in and out around me. Someone calls me Miss Ellis. An older voice keeps calling me Reina. And then there’s another presence, someone I can’t quite pinpoint.
His masculine voice is like a dark forest in the middle of a starless night. It’s deep and rough around the edges as if all the ruthlessness in the world has been injected into it. It’s scary how much a voice can relay.
It’s almost crippling how much a voice can become a subject of nightmares.
All the other voices keep asking if I’m fine and telling me to open my eyes, but not him.
No.
The nightmare voice is calm, unlike them. He’s composed and speaks with chill-inducing purpose. “Wake up, monster. You don’t get to die just yet.”
His words register slowly. It’s my brain. The useless thing understands with delay.
My heart thumps loud and hard at the threat in those words, at what he called me.
Monster.
This can’t be true.
It’s a dream—no, a nightmare. Soon, it’ll all end and I’ll go back to normal.
Only…what’s normal?
I’m not Reina or Miss Ellis or whatever the hell they keep calling me. I’m someone else.
I’m…I don’t know who I am. Reina is familiar, but it isn’t me.
Wrong. Everything is so damn wrong.
My trips in and out of consciousness become exhausting. It’s like I’m playing hide and seek with the darkness; only I’m not sure if I’m running away from it or sprinting toward it.
There’s something enchanting about the darkness…a push, a pull. It’s like a haunting lullaby with ever-changing lyrics.
I keep trying to avoid the blinding light and the voices. So many damn voices surround me like audible torture.
They keep heightening and magnifying, and there’s no way I can stop them from assaulting my senses.
They’re like an unreachable itch beneath the skin.
Then, one day, when I think I’m about to go crazy, my eyes open. Or maybe my brain finally catches up to that fact.
The back of my head aches, and so do my limbs. It’s as if someone beat me up with a baseball bat.
Wait…is that what happened?
The blinding light renews the urge to close my eyes again, but I don’t. I keep them wide open—as wide as I can considering the circumstances.
If I close them again, I