“You will always be the little mouse, and I will always hunt you. I’ll patiently wait until you’re ready for me to touch you, but make no mistake, Adeline, it’ll still hurt when I do.”
An icy chill washes through me at his ominous words, colder than the ghosts who haunt this manor. Before, that might have scared me. Even more, after being hunted by the cruelest of humankind, I should be tired of it.
Yet I feel nothing but a small thrill and… comfort. Somehow, Zade has managed to warp our cat and mouse game. Now, I find solace in the knowledge that he will always find me. And knowing this… despite me not being quite ready for him yet—it makes me want to run.
Just so he can catch me.
With tension polluting the air, he grabs my hand, spins us around, and points the knife at the mannequin.
“Stop picturing all the people you want to kill and picture the people you have killed. Recreate that night in your head. Replay it over and over until stabbing that knife in their necks feels liberating.”
It takes too long to pull my headspace away from the predator standing behind me, but eventually, I manage it.
The moment that night replays in my head, I want to curl in on myself. Remembering how I plunged that pen into Sydney’s body until the life was snuffed from her eyes. Or slashing my knife across Jerry’s neck and watching his eyes bug from his head.
I was protecting myself. Yet, I still carry their deaths on my shoulders as if they were innocent.
For the next hour, I continue to struggle. I’m growing frustrated with myself and picking myself apart to figure out why I feel guilty, particularly over Sydney. Is it because she was a victim too? She was forced into the same things I was, enduring the brutality of sex trafficking that ultimately sent her into a psychotic break.
Over and over, I turn it in my head until it clicks.
Sydney may have been deranged, but she was broken too. She deserved my sympathy, but that doesn’t excuse her from her actions. It doesn’t give her the right to hurt other people. And it doesn’t mean I was wrong for ending her life.
Though, with Jerry, Claire, Xavier, and all the others who decided I was nothing more than an object—they don’t deserve anything more from me than what they’ve already stolen. Not my sympathy, remorse, or guilt. It wasn’t my decision to be raped and brutalized, but it is my decision to slit their throats for it.
As I come up to the second hour, going through the movements with Zade becomes natural. Sliding the knife into the dummy’s neck feels just as he said it would. Liberating.
Others may believe it is never okay to take a life under any circumstances. We are not the judge. At one point, I might have even believed that, too. But then I came face-to-face with true evil. People who are not human at all, but vile things that will continue to destroy this world and anything good that inhabits it.
Now, I realize that choosing to look the other way and let God handle it is a fucking cop-out. It’s allowing evil to continue to live because they believe the afterlife is scarier.
If it’s so scary, then why wait to send them there?
Now, I realize it’s selfish. They’re too fucking scared about making it into heaven to condone murder, even if it saves innocent women and children's lives.
Doesn’t that make them just as evil?
Condemning those who are capable of being the executioner doesn’t make them better people. It makes them compliant.
By the time the third hour passes, I’m panting heavily, sweat pours down my face and back, and I feel invigorated.
When I face Zade again, it feels as if I’m viewing him from a different set of lenses. I wonder if he sees me differently, too, and if he’ll be able to let go of who I used to be and love the person I’ve become.
“Adeline, I feel as if this house is taxing your mental health,” Mom announces with finality, brushing off imaginary lint on her Calvin Klein jeans. It's not very often I even see her in anything other than a dress, skirt, or pantsuit.
I feel so special.
“Why do you say that?” I ask, voice monotone and un-fucking-interested. I’m rocking in Gigi’s chair, staring out at the gloomy landscape. It’s storming today, and the windows are foggy from the rain. I tilt my head, fairly certain I’m seeing a handprint forming on the window.
Aside from the creepy hand, sitting here brings back a sense of comfort and nostalgia. Where a different version of myself would stare out the window, my shadow lurking in the darkness and watching me. Where I loathed every second of it, yet I would war with the fact of not knowing if I hated it because I was scared or if I hated it because I enjoyed it.