Amaryllis

Chapter Four: Chasing Hearts

 

A/N: This is also unedited. Please note that this has never been proof-read, nor edited at all. 

Chapter Four: Chasing Hearts

 

                   The chase began. The predator was chasing its prey, the prey was chasing its predator. The girl carried her diary to her chest as she made her way back in the haunting forest. She had only an hour left before her soul was to leave the world. An hour to fix everything.

                   She was on her way. The end it. End it all. Her life. Ascelin. Fletcher. Mum. Dad. She was going to break the ties. She was going to reach for the heavens she longed for. She wanted mercy. She wanted peace. And the only way she was to get it was to fulfil her wildest dreams.

Ascelin was going to die. She was going to make sure of it.

                   She ran. Ran like never before. Determination pulsed through her veins as naturally as blood did. The adrenaline pumped her heart so fast that it was going to stop from the pain. The poison was working. It slowed her down mentally. She couldn’t think. Her focus was blurred. Her brain went into relapse. But it didn’t stop her. She needed more pain than that to give up.

                   The scars on her wrist were reopened. The shards of glass that lay on the grass were ever so tempting. The wolves will hunt me, she thought, strangely euphoric.  Blood dripped along her arms, and she traced them with her book, staining the pages with her DNA. I’m mental, she thought, I’m too far gone.

***

                   Ascelin was waiting for his sister. He watched as his sister returned to the spot where Fletcher had lay. Fletcher was gone. But not gone-gone. He was merely unconscious, heavily bleeding when he was rescued. Ascelin made sure of it. Feigned deaths needed to look real, they needed to be real. Fletcher was dishonest. He deserved the pain. He needed the pain in order to stay loyal. What’s loyalty without fear? Nothing. What comes out of nothing? Nothing.

                   Nothingness was nothingness. With it, or without it, they were useless. Nothing was nothing. Nothing is nothing.

                   He didn’t feel guilty. Whether Fletcher would die in the near future or not determined on Fletcher’s strength. It wasn’t the first time that any of them have been in mortal danger. The hospital scars on their hands, the cuts across their chests and the bullet holes on their shoulders were their battle marks. The marks that weren’t just ordinary scars. Even the most trained had scars. The ones with the most were the strongest, the ones with the least were the stealthiest. Ascelin lay in the stealthy spectrum, Fletcher was in the strong spectrum.

                   My dear little sister, she wouldn’t survive in our world.

***

    

               Fletcher was awake. Lying on the ground, covered with the fallen autumn leaves. The airwas misty. Cold to the touch. His wound was covered with bandages. The bleeding was slowed down to a minimum. But the pain was still there. He remembered how Ascelin had picked him up after stabbing him, gingerly placing him on a fallen tree, and attending to his wound. He was smiling, happy with his work. The girl was gone. She ran away. He felt a strange emotion in his heart as he noticed this. After so long, they’ve come back for her.