The Spare To The Throne

Chapter 26: Pending...

Mason always said, "continue to feel something- anything in good or bad, because when you feel, you're a little more human."

But all I could feel is void. Numbness. I was far from feeling human. Anything but that. Doug's tragic demise weighed a burden in my heart. But words weren't enough to express that. 

"She'll get over it. Time heals all."

"Ok, what should I do in the meantime?"

"Watch her, take care of her. I'll be back in one week. Ne laissez pas le passé se répéter. Si elle essaie quelque chose, appelez-moi. ( Do not let the past repeat itself. If she attempts anything, call me)."

The conversation carries on, but it sounds indistinct. The room doors open, and footsteps approach. But I don't bother to look. I know it's him. The scent of deep exorbitant cologne is his signification. His presence swallows my hollow one. Yet, I don't move. I feel numb.

He runs his fingers through my head. I lay still, feeling tired and lethargic. His touch was repulsive, but I felt drained. I couldn't help but feel like he won. He's held me captive in this sick twisted game of his, and he won.

"What you feel right now is only temporary." 

He manages to say this eloquently, and I can't help but close my eyes. Maybe if I don't see him, he'll vanish. Out of my life, out of my thoughts.

"I'm going away for a few days," he pauses as if expecting some kind of reaction. I cannot even begin to express the amount of care I lacked for him. But darkness envelops me from the inside, and every effort made to move or talk feels like a waste. So I lay there with my eyes closed, silently praying that somehow he won't come back.

"Here," I hear him shuffle around. It takes a moment but I hear him set something on the table. I stay unmoved. 

"He was nothing but a phase. Tu verras. (You'll see)."

There goes that word again. Phase. If only he could see me that way too. A phase. If only.

His lips brush against my head softly and I tense. He senses this and draws back. He turns away and makes for the door, his intoxicating smell fading behind him. The door shuts and I let out a breath I didn't even know I was holding. 

His presence provoked me. The more I see him, smell him, or hear him, the more I see red. His words make me feel itchy all over, and I want to shower all over again.

Darkness swarms my head and I think back to the moment it all happened. It was quick, but the moment felt everlasting.

I'm suddenly taken back. 

BANG!

I freeze, my own words now stuck in my  throat. Something drops in my belly. The sound of high-pitched ringing deafens me. Splatters of something wet, covers all of my head and clothes. It was blood. His blood. And I could taste a droplet of it on my lips. Guilt is the taste and bitterness lingers in my mouth. Tears brim my vision but they don't fall. Instead, they dry and I feel almost nothing. 

I turn my head in the direction of Xavier's hand. Like a scene out of a gory horror film, Doug laid hunched, oozing crimson. His blood spreads onto the floor, like a spilled drink. Ruby red dots decorate the back wall in sloshes of what shouldn't be. And yet, despite the graphic scene before me, my heart denies. It's not real, none of this is. 

Doug is okay. I tell myself this. But reality always had its way of being unrelenting. The bullet snugged into the side of Doug's head was proof. His resting chest was proof. His absent soul was proof. And the weighty guilt that paralyzed me was truth. 

The spreading blood on the floor eventually meets me at my kneeling knees. Chills run down my spine and I can't help but throw up. It was instant, too fast for me to decipher. I was sick. At the sight, but mostly at Xavier. But we both now owned this newfound guilt. This is your fault Farrah. If only you had found him sooner. If only you hadn't brush that night in the library off. I didn't imagine the screams I heard that evening, yet I brainwashed myself into believing I did. 

It was my job to save him. Even in the depths and thickness of this underground bunker, Doug's voice reached me. But I ignored him. My stomach clenches harder, and I purge uncontrollably. Pain erupts in my gut, and the smell of blood and bile makes me choke. 

Even with his head hunched over, succumbed to death, Doug's eyes laid open, peeking at me from behind the loose curls that framed his face. His mint green colored eyes now fades into nothingness. And Xavier's voice refutes in the back.

"You are mine Farrah. Eventually, you'll learn that."

...........................

My eyes snap open and and I place a hand over my chest. I could feel my heart, every single pound, thumping against my chest with racing speed.

Xavier's statement echoes in my head, and I feel the stagnant air of the bunker again. It is ice cold and a reminder to the nightmare I wake up to everyday. This would be my life. Xavier would continue to hurt me, but worst of all the ones I loved until I accepted him. God forbid, but Mason could be next. Maybe even mom or dad. Xavier killed spontaneously. 

I look towards my night stand. A  silver flip phone sits on the table. The sight of it is unmoving as I know better. Xavier was no daft man, in fact he's a meticulous criminal. There would be only one number on that phone, and one number that phone would operate to call. And that number would be his.

I shift my gaze to the ceiling. Something in my feels different. My endurance had now reached its peak. If Xavier can willingly take whomever he wanted, it's only fair that I do the same. His days are now numbered in my life. Because I'm now left with a choice. It is either me or him. And I choose me.