Page 36 of Remnants: Disruption
The sink’s stainless-steel splits between my fingers.
“Power isn’t worth this,” the room shudders with the twisting darkness. “Go home to your boyfriend.”
I don’t look up as the door shuts softly behind her.
The lights shatter. Glass sprinkles to the floor as the room falls back into darkness.
Fuck.
Bodies multiply by the instant. Voices begin like the chittering of a thousand bugs. Their overlapping, overwhelming noises make the worst headache feel like a gentle massage.
They’d waited until I was at my limit. At my lowest.
Bastards.
I fall forward, my face narrowly missing the countertop by a fraction. My dinner threatens to make a reappearance as I try tocrawl towards where I think my room is. The ache in my back is nothing compared to the knives lobotomizing my every thought.
“It would be easier to just end it,” a voice hisses from somewhere in the room. “Quit fighting the thoughts.”
“What’s the point?” another voice whispers. “You’re going to be alone no matter what.”
The taunting is new. Wonderfully, horrifically new.
My fingers grip onto something solid. An item. It scrapes along the tile of the kitchen, metal grating against the linoleum.
The knife.
Tears fall in earnest, my choked sobs swallowed by the shadows. Swallowed by their screams and jeering. I rock to my knees, sitting back on my heels.
The knife is weighty in my palm.
“Just do it,” someone whispers.
“Just do it,” another whispers.
“Just end it,” Mara’s voice echoes.
“If you don’t do it, someone else will,” Malachi’s voice reverberates.
The darkness suffocating everything but the ragged breathing tearing at my chest.
“You’re just a freak,” the voice is directly in my ear now, “no one’s going to miss you.”
“You’ll only end up being a burden to everyone else,” this time the voice almost sounds like Percy’s. “You only ever cause problems.”
The knife feels cool against my neck. The saline tears coat my tongue.
“Kill yourself,” is the command. The echo. The onslaught.
The knife cuts shallow at first, a shock of cold stirs my adrenaline. I cup one hand over the other and pull back to plunge deeper.
“No,” her accented voice whispers. Like she’s in the room. Like she’s right in front of me.
My hands shake, the blade pricking at my skin again. My eyes blink against the saturated darkness. And, at first, I see nothing. Slowly, though, I raise my head and see them.
Her eyes. Blazing orange in the pitch night. In the self-inflicted darkness.
“I have to,” I whisper back, not sure why I’m talking to the figment. Why I’d acknowledge her. This one isn’t even dead. This one is just the nightmare. Different, but still her. And, for whatever reason, she’s kneeling in front of me.
