All that is dark | ✓

8| conscience

THAT NIGHT SHE WOKE up with his screams. They haunted her, no matter how many sweet nothings Nathan had whispered in her ear when she cut in his flesh. When she had started, all she could do was continue, with Nathan's hand guiding her straight through the skin. His blood was hot around her fingers, making her nauseous to the point of vomiting, but she kept it in. She could feel his panicked eyes burn straight through her, but she refused to look at him. Even when driven to the point of killing, she was a coward.

Still, had it even been real? She pretended it wasn't, simply to keep her sanity somewhat, but she couldn't get his anguished voice out of her head. Was she a murderer? Nathan had said she wasn't, that everything she was doing was justified. What had happened to her that she was listening to the words of a serial killer? What was going to happen to her if she wasn't? After all, that would make her a heartless killer, wouldn't it? Could she live with that on her conscience?

When she closed her eyes, she could see his dissected body in front of her, but at one point, it had ceased to be him. Autopsies always had been that way, a bit chilling at first, but as soon as you cut through the first layers, it wasn't a human anymore to her, simply organs surrounded with dried up blood. This hadn't been an autopsy however, not when he still had been alive. That didn't matter in the end. She knew she would keep pretending it was, just like she had when she kept on cutting into him.

When she had finished, she had stared numbly at her blood-stained hands, Nathan happily interlacing their fingers.

"My lovely Helene," he had beamed, so warmly that she couldn't look away from him, from what they had done together," you did so well."

"I -" she began," Zion -"

"Who's Zion?" he smiled, pulling her along upstairs," we simply finished dissecting terrible scum together. You didn't do anything wrong."

He had gently tucked her in bed, proudly placing a kiss on her forehead. Afterwards he had lied down beside her, sleeping soundly within seconds. When she had glanced at him, he had looked so innocent in the moonlight. Her eyes had turned to his neck, Zion's carotid arteries pulsating still vivid in front of her eyes as she cut through them, and for a second she imagined cutting through Nathan's. She didn't though, because she was a criminal now, and who else would accept her except for him? No one would forgive these sins of her. She had realized everything she had done yesterday, the world would know that the moment they laid their eyes on her. If she got out of here, she would just end up from one prison in the next. At least in this one, she had someone on her side.

No, she shouldn't think like that. She was cleverer than this, wasn't she? Everything he was saying was to make her believe he was the only one on her side, so she'd start to trust him completely. But wasn't he the only one on her side? Why else had she felt so lonely, all these years? When she had woken up with a jolt from her nightmares, all these thoughts had started racing through her head so fast that she had gotten nauseous. Her skin was feverishly hot, but still she couldn't help but shiver from the cold. She glanced over at Nathan nervously, praying she hadn't woken him up. If he saw her like this, he'd be disappointed. Who did she have left if he abandoned her too?

Ever so quietly she got out of bed, making her way to the bathroom with her heart beating out of her chest. She washed off the blood on her hands almost in a trance, staring numbly in front of her as the water turned red. Her eyes slowly trailed up to the mirror above the sink, but only a ghost looked back at her. Gaunt, that was all she could think of to describe herself, if she even was still looking at herself.

"Who knew you'd grow up to be even worse than me?" her father whispered behind her, his face as cruel as she remembered it to be. As if hearing her, he leaned forward, hands heavy on her shoulders. "I think that's your own cruelty you're thinking of, my daughter. I have never murdered anyone."