IT ALL SUDDENLY SEEMED UNFAIR TO HECTOR, the cruel mockery of fate playing with his mind, tossing and turning him like a rag doll, taking a toll on his mental state as he felt the sanity slipping from the cracks within his skull.
Hector sprawls on the white rug—it's hue not less pale than his hallow drained face—beside the telephone table, awaiting a ring to rescue him from this dread or push him further into a bottomless pit of insufferable anguish.
For a moment he thinks he's dying.
But the reality strikes him, each time harder than the last, and sends a static pain shoot through his head making him think his skull would explode any given second now, like a cosmic explosion but not nearly as beautiful, spilling its contents all over the pristine parlor, staining the rug with a violent red.
For a second, he wants for it happens. So that he can get over it for once and for all.
But only if things worked the way he wanted.
He glances at the watch on his wrist, its hands ticking—nearing the end of his time. 5:41 it reads.
Hector can hear the drained voice of Louise from earlier this afternoon when the horrifying spiteful words escaped her quivering lips in a hush, seconds before she broke down crying on Hector's chest, while Hector stood there stone cold, with every ounce of blood drained from his face, unable to comfort the sobbing girl when he himself felt sick to his stomach.
He wrapped his numb arms around the petite frame of the weeping girl at one point feeling his own throat tightening. He stood there like that for a few moments before his muscles ached and he pushed the girl away when he found it hard to breathe as if the ivory walls were caving in around him, seconds away from trapping him within till he suffocated under the weight of the bricks.
Hector snaps his eyes shut gripping the roots of his onyx curls wanting to rip them out hair by hair. His eyes burn as if a heated needle is piercing the thin layer of cornea covering his scalding irises, drawing out blood which drips from his sockets dampening his hallow cheeks like tears.
Murad is missing. He has been missing since the night of the party. He never reached home. It's been two days since then. And there's no trace of him.
It has also been three days since Troye marched out the manor leaving behind the bitter threat hanging in the tensed air of their living room.
Hector glances at the watch on his wrist. 5:54, it reads.
Hector cusses himself for being so foolish. For not knowing better. For not stopping Troye when he had the chance to. For lurking around aimlessly dragging his miserable self everywhere whilst indulged in the ghastliest thoughts of what could and what couldn't happen yet doing absolutely fucking nothing.
This is all his fault.
Hector checks his watch again. 6:01. It's time.
He stands up longingly staring at the telephone praying for its loud ring to pierce the deafening science.
It doesn't.
He grabs his coat.
***
THE cold air wraps around Hector's body like a chilly blanket freezing his bones. He slowly walks ahead, ignoring the sick feeling building within his stomach as the leaves crunch beneath his boot clad feet with every step he takes.
