murder house / h.s

twenty six.

Avery's POV

"Harry!" I screamed out, as a first instinct. I had never been very religious, but in that instant I decided to pray. I was too scared to even look where Harry stood. It would be the worst possible thing in the world if he got shot. I would never forgive Jonah. In fact, if Harry was shot I would have shot Jonah dead without thinking.

"Yeah?" he said from next to me, calm as ever. I let out a sigh of relief. That must have meant Harry shot Jonah. I hoped he was dead.

"Never mind." I dismissed it, and slowly pulled the rifle out. It was long, so very hard to manage for a girl my size. Nonetheless I held it up to where my estimate of Jonah's location was.

"Do you really think I'm dead?"

Jonah's voice sliced through the air like a double edged sword. I flinched at his words, assurance that he was alive lowering my confidence. Still, I held the gun up to the source of his voice.

"Lights out." he whispered in a singsong voice, and with the clap of a hand the whole hallway went dark. My first instinct was to scream out, but I stopped myself. I just stayed stationary, my feet held to the ground like glue. I didn't dare move.

"You're cheating." I managed to say through gritted teeth, and with a clenched jaw. It was so unfair. This whole thing was. How Jonah had the upper hand because his dad ran the whole thing.

"I wouldn't open my prissy little mouth if I were you." he taunted, and with every word he got closer. I could hear him. It was scary knowing that he had the power to do whatever he wanted. He could kill us anyway he could have imagined. But he hadn't yet.

"I'm just stating facts." I hissed. Anger built up inside of me and I feared that it would soon just spew out all at once, my words hitting him like a spitting hot fire. And he would kill me for that.

"Avery, stop." I heard Harry warn from beside me. I was about to retort, I was, but Jonah's laugh stopped me and fueled my growing rage.

"Listen to him, Aves."

I growled. Actually growled, at him. My anger was building up by the second, and every cocky word he said made me want to slice his neck in a new, different way.

"No one can call me that except for Harry." My jaw was clenched in an attempt to hold back harsh words that could have so easily resulted in my death. It was hard, but I managed it.

I could feel Jonah's heat now. He was arm length away from me, which frightened me to no end. My wittiness was most likely making him angry.

"Does that make you mad, Aves?" I heard him say, and relief washed over me when I didn't feel his presence any longer. But then another thought came into my mind.

"Stop." I whispered, tears already building up in my eyes. He wouldn't do this to me. He couldn't. "Please."

"The only one that can call you that is Harry.." he repeated my words, but they sounded wrong the way they left his mouth. "What are you going to do if there's no Harry to say that?"

I saw something glimmer, but its flash quickly left my eyesight. I sucked in a breath, waiting through the dead silence. I couldn't stop him, even though I didn't know what he was going to do.

But when he did it, I knew.

I could hear Harry let out a holler, and not one out of playfulness. It was out of sheer pain.

"No!" I screamed. All energy left me, and I fell to my feet. Jonah wouldn't do this to me. He wasn't that crude. He couldn't be. I didn't want to believe he was.