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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE when the world goes blind
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
NOBODY GOT ANY SLEEP that night. How could they, when the mutilated corpse of the man who owned the house was sitting in the living room? How could they, when the knowledge that they'd all survived on sheer luck was fresh on their minds? They hadn't yet figured out who'd broken in and murdered Elliott, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that if Nadine had been there—or, God forbid, if Molly had—then it was likely she would have died alongside him. She had no faith anymore that her abilities would save her. Not when they were so useless.
Not when she was useless. Not when she was in way over her head.
She didn't know what Luther and Diego did that night, but she knew that neither of them had touched Elliott's body—or the message scrawled with his blood. She'd heard them talking, though, voices hushed and worried, and occasionally the bustle as one headed to the kitchen or the bathroom. After all, the gut-churning dinner with Reginald Hargreeves hadn't exactly left them in a stable frame of mind. Which made it worse to come home and see the body of the man who'd given them everything—a roof over their heads, a bed, the full extent of food in the fridge. It had shut them all down.
Molly hadn't seen Elliott's remains—Nadine had warned her not to go anywhere near the living room—but the description of what had happened to him had been enough for her. As soon as Nadine had finished telling her the story, she'd rushed right to the bathroom and thrown up. She could be heard retching for almost ten minutes after that, and Nadine couldn't blame her. She'd just poured her a glass of water and stroked her hair, quietly trying not to fall apart herself.
After that, the two of them had showered (as if there wasn't a dead man in the living room), brushed their teeth (as if there wasn't a dead man in the living room), and bid the others goodnight (as if there wasn't a dead man in the living room). In the wake of this tragedy, Nadine let go of her grudge towards the Hargreeves for not sticking up for her at the tiki lounge. It seemed so petty and inconsequential, now that there was a dead man in the living room.
They were both bone-tired, but it was obvious that sleep wouldn't find them tonight. They locked the door (thank God it had a lock), climbed under the covers, and just held each other, thinking about Elliott and the people who'd killed him. It didn't feel real. It felt like a horror film, where each protagonist died in a horrific way only alleviated by the hokey special effects and fake blood. Nadine had seen dead bodies before—Harold Jenkins was just one example—but never of someone she'd really spoken to. Never someone she'd had a strange sort of fondness for. It was like any minute now, she expected Elliott to knock on her door, offering coffee, or to hear him rambling conspiracies to Luther and Diego through the walls.
She didn't cry again, though she came close. Molly did, though. She sobbed for hours, and this time, it was Nadine's turn to hold her until the bedsheets were wet with her tears. "I could've been there," she kept saying. "If I hadn't been at my grandparents, I would've been there."
