Chapter 12.

"I'm gonna shoot you straight here, Missy." Kelsea holds her hands up in front of her, watching me like I'm a scared deer that might just dart into traffic if I get spooked. "You literally sound insane."

"I know!" I collapse back into the loveseat, my head leaned forward into my hands. "I know that I do, but too much doesn't make sense right now."

"Girl, you don't make sense." She tells me. "Everything else seems fine other than two girls dying. Which yeah, that's bad, but it's also life. You know? Stuff like this happens all the time, all over the world, from the freaking bible even."

"We aren't talking about Cane and Able right now." I sigh. "I'm telling you." I look up at her, hopping she can see the truth in my eyes. "They found the first girl's body in the exact same place as the first of my father's victims." I explain. "And the second one too."

Kelsea leans back against the wall and folds her hands over her chest. "Ok." She says, nodding. "That's freaking weird, but it's just-."

"Don't you dare say it's just a coincidence." I cut her off. "There is no way the first one was, much less two of them. I'm telling you, it's going to happen again. There is gonna be more."

"I know you believe that but-."

We both jump as another knock on the door makes us both share a look.

"It's probably reporters." I sigh. "Or the cops."

"Wait, why would the cops-."

I walk by here and look out of the peephole, but it isn't a reporter. At least, I don't think so. And it's definitely not a cop. Only, I don't know that for sure either.

I don't know what he is anymore.

What I do know is that the ghost on the other side of the door isn't like the ghosts of my parents I'd had the misfortune of conjuring in my mind last night.

This one...

This is one even my own twisted up brain wouldn't create to hurt myself.

I've avoided thoughts of this one more than anyone else.

Even my father.

"No." I whisper, backing away from the door but he just knocks again. "No, no, no." I mutter, going back to Kelsea.

"Who is it?" She asks me but I just shake my head.

"Ignore it."

"Who is it and maybe I will."

"Someone I cannot see right now." I hold my skull between my hands, pressing, trying to drown the world out but it's just too loud.

I can hear and feel everything and I hate it. I hate all of it. Every sensation is torturing me starting from my very blood that runs through me like a toxin, filling me up with this awful feeling.

It branches out through my body, seeping into the muscle and sinew, cracking my bones, squeezing my heart, shutting off my lungs. I feel it all. I feel the heat coursing through my body while I continue to shake and my teeth clatter together so hard I'm sure it will shake them loose from my jaw.

I don't want to be here.

I don't want to feel this.

I don't want to explain to Kelsea why I know what I know. I don't want to explain to her why we can't answer the door.

I don't want to do anything but get as far away from all of these emotions and all of this pain and all of this longing. I want to burrow into the back of my brain and hide there. I want to be free. I want to be nothing but I can't.

I can't find it.

I can't get there.

I scream out in pain as my insides tighten.

"Woah, Missy, what's going on?" She's scared, I can hear it in her voice but I can no longer see passed the angry red and black blur before my eyes.

It's fading out.

Full of static like a tv screen set to the wrong input channel.

Everything spins.

"Is there no bed!" Her voice comes through.

"Shit, I don't know let me check upstairs." His voice.

Someone is shooshing me.

I think I'm dying.

Maybe that's for the better after all. Maybe this town couldn't handle another Jacobs back in its midst. Maybe I needed to have never gotten out in the first place.

Not if coming back here turns me into this.

Suddenly I'm floating.

Like my soul lifting from my body I'm weightless.

But then I feel it.

I feel the arms that heave me up and take me away.

This could still be death.

It could be the reaper himself taking me beyond the veil of the living.

Death may be the more merciful option.

"I didn't know what else to do." Kelsea's voice. "Should I call-."

"No," His voice again. "She's just strung out."

"I knew she was taking those pills but she said it was for her anxiety."

"That's how Dad started too."

I love the way he still just refers to his father as Dad. Never my Dad, just Dad. I miss the way it used to make me feel like family.

"She looks really bad."

"She's gonna be fine." He assures her. He still demands a room. When he speaks, people listen.

"What do I do?" She asks, she sounds scared. I'm sorry she's scared. I don't want her to be afraid because of me. Not when there is so much more out there to fear. "Water?"

"She won't hold anything down." He tells her and I feel a mattress below my body. It should feel good, but instead every place it touches my skin feels like a new burning pain. "We need to find her some clean clothes, and you gotta help me get her in the shower."

My bones are too heavy for my skin to contain.

It's all too much.

When did living become so painful? How do people do this? Maybe my father was doing them all a favor.

"Holy fucking shit!" I scream as I'm pelted with ice cold water. I jolt up, eyes seeing again finally but now after the dark the harsh fluorescent overhead lights of the bathroom are a different sort or torture.

I didn't even feel that I'd been moved again, much less stripped down and put in the tub in my bra and underwear.

"I'm sorry," Kelsea says beside the tub. "I know this sucks, it'll be ok."

"Nothing about this is fucking ok!" I shout at her and she only flinches a little.

"I'm gonna help you."

"I don't need help!" I'm so angry that I feel like I could tear the porcelain tub around me into powdered dust if I tried. "Fuck you." I seethe, staring at her, fighting her hands to turn off the damn cold water.

"You're getting help anyway." She snaps back. "You smell like ass and I'm sick of it."

"Fuck you." I say again, but then I remember. I remember being in her bathroom. I remember the line of orange pill bottles. "Kelsea." I say, no longer fighting her. "Kelsea, please, do you have something? Did you bring anything with you?"

"Missy." She looks at me hard but I just cry.

"Please, everything hurts so much." I tell her. "I just need something...something to sleep. I can't sleep without something, Kelsea, please?"

"Fuck you." She says quietly. "Fuck you." She repeats. "I know what you're doing."

I thrash and scream and kick and scream some more but she's unrelenting. She continues to spray me with the cold water like a disobedient cat until I'm all cried out. I'm all out of screams.

"Please." I try again but she doesn't pay my plea any attention. She doesn't care. She doesn't care that I'm sitting her drenched and freezing and dying.

"Let's clean you up." She says instead.

I whimper weakly. "Fuck you." I whisper, drawing my bare legs up to my chest and rocking myself back and forth.

I stop fighting and let her put soap into my hair and run a rag across my body. The smell of lavender fills the air and it burns my nose.

Soon the water finally stops and Kelsea helps me out of the tub and turns away while I remove the soaking bra and panties and slip into new ones she laid out on the counter along with one of my oversized sweatshirts from my bag.

When I'm dressed again she leads me out of the bathroom and it's the first time I realize I'm in my bathroom.

We cross the hall and I'm in my room.

Just like the rest of the house, it's almost identical to how I left it. Like I walked out of this room when I was eighteen and went to get milk or something from the store.

I don't want to see it.

I don't want to remember being happy here in my bedroom upstairs while a monster slept just down the stairs.

It takes me a minute to realize he's there.

I hadn't imagined his voice at all.

Those arms that carried me.

"He shouldn't be here!" I yell at Kelsea, trying to turn to walk out again but she grips me tightly and keeps pushing me to my bed.

"I'm gonna go," he says. "I just wanted to make sure you were alright."

"Do I look alright, Aries?" I snap. "No, really, tell me." I laugh, but tears are streaming from my eyes. "Is this what you thought you'd find? Huh? You can run along now. Leave. Leave like you always do."

"I'm sorry." He can't meet my eyes and I'm glad. I'm glad he's uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable. He's here invading my space and not just my mind now.

I huff dryly as Kelsea sits me on the edge of my bed. "Oh you're sorry?" I say. "Funny, after all this time you'd think you'd have come up with a better line by now. You're always sorry."

"Missy." He sighs my name and dammit if it doesn't bring back all of the other times he's done just that. For Christ's sake how I used to love to hear him say my name like that, low on a whisper. "I am."

"You need to lie down." Kelsea pushes at my shoulders, trying to guide me back, but I slap at her hands.

"Don't touch me!" I scream. "I'm so sick of people touching me. Just leave! Both of you get out! Get out of my house and my head and my life! Just go!"

But neither one moves.

And it just makes me that much more mad.

So mad and angry and pissed off that the only reasonable reaction is to cry. I fall back into the bed and I curl my body in on itself and bury my face into the comforter and just cry.

Had I really gone so many years without shedding a tear to now just be incapable of holding them in any longer.

The dam has burst and nothing I can do will hold it back.

I don't know how long passes before I finally hear Kelsea leave the room and pad quietly down the stairs.

For a second I forget as I lay here, exhaustion pulling me down, that I'm not alone.

He's still here.

I know it when I feel a blanket slowly drift over my body to stop the chills.

"I hate you." I tell him, my voice as broken as I feel.

"I know you do." He whispers.

I feel his touch on my face, feather soft, as the tips of his fingers brush away the hair from my face and tuck it behind my ear.

His fingers linger there for a few seconds too long.

Not long enough.

Before he too, leaves the room.

I fight the sleep to try to count and listen and memorize every step he takes away from me. Until I can't hear him or feel him anymore.

Until I know he's left and I'm still here. I still hate him with my whole body but I didn't want him to leave. I never have. I don't want those to be the last words I'd say to him. I might die right here, and forever more I'll be immortalized with those parting words.

I didn't want him to go.

I don't want to be alone.

I'm so tired of being alone.

I needed him to stay.

I'd told him to leave and he did it.

And it just makes me hate him even more.