Deadly Secrets *Completed*

Chapter Twenty-Nine - Love is Death

The melody drifted around the cellar, his eyes automatically fluttering shut and a grin curling at his blood-stained lips. Ryder opened his dark-eyes and spun on the balls of his feet, heading for his tool kit. As he approached, he couldn't help but feel a need for fire. For heat. To burn away the messy complications so he could revel in the darkness again. To burn away the craving to take Layla and break her. He needed to burn it to nought but ash.

His blow-torch was an option. Maybe some acid? Possibly heat his drill-bit up and sear her perfect flesh? Ryder slid his gloved fingers through his hair, slicking it back and regaining his composure. His fingers grasped the blow-torch before laying it down again. He picked up the tools he really desired and placed them on a metal trolley, then he wheeled the surgical trolley across the room until it was beside the gurney. He wanted her to see his tools, for her mind to conjure up her worst nightmare scenarios. He wanted her afraid; to find out what she was made of.

He wanted to make her scream. Beg. Fight. Maybe he could get her to defy him as Creeper had. Or show some sassy spirit, as Layla did at times. Layla was innocent, though. A romantic. He wanted to bring fire out in the look-a-like. He wanted her to burn with anger, with rebellion, in flames, and erase his desire to kill Layla in the process. He wanted to test her, to get to know Giana inside and out to see if her pretty exterior could represent a spirit which also shined with self preservation.

Ryder grabbed the pliers first, deciding to take her apart piece by piece.

He grinned widely, those devilish dimples drawing her eyes to his. He saw the fear light up like a flashlight behind her eyes causing a devilish grin to twitch at his lips. He grabbed her thumbnail first, the metal clamped painfully down onto her perfectly manicured nail and lifted it up just enough to pull a whimper of pain from her lips.

"Love is pain. Love is a weakness. It causes a darkness to develop, to stain your once pure and innocent heart as black as coal. Love brings loneliness and along with loneliness, a certain vulnerability that you'll never rid yourself of; almost like a poisonous parasite that attaches to your vital organs and feeds and multiplies by the millions per second. Love is the parasite that once it gets into the heart... it never goes away. It continues to feed on your emotions until you can't spend a waking second without your significant other. It causes you to doubt all of your decisions, it takes your free will away and makes you throw your moral compass out of the window as if it didn't even exist to begin with.

"Love awakens that icy cold fear that lives deep inside. It slowly begins to take over your thoughts, infecting every single cell and fiber of your being until you're bending to its will. It's a lethal disease — a plague that begins to turn you against your every sane decision you used to make before love leeched onto your heart. It infects your mind, creating this abyssal besmirch that will never be removed. It embeds in your soul until it drains every ounce of what makes you you.

"It buries so deep inside of you that it haunts your mind, slowly breaking you down, drawing you into that dark abyss that it creates a lost prison; one you can never escape. It causes soul crushing — heart wrenching agony, twisting your once sweet dreams into hellish nightmares. It doesn't just consume you... it devours you wholly and spits out your bloody heart - It breaks every single damn part of you. It shatters every scrap of self-worth, every fucking good memory rushes through your skull and leaves you feeling so lost and unworthy as you sit there dwelling on what you fucking did wrong!

"You blame yourself for ruining the relationship. You blame yourself for everything that went wrong. Days and nights become construed. Weeks turn into months and you're still crying over your lost true love. People say it's better to have loved than to never have loved at all. That's a fucking lie. It's better to never found love. Because then you wouldn't have to go through every waking second thinking of the person who gave you everything in one minute and at the same time stripped you of everything you once were and broke your heart. And the worst part is... you will welcome it, you open yourself up to love by giving it a chance. But you should never give love a chance. Never. It's a fucking monster, a ghoul that will steal your soul and rip your still beating heart out from your chest, leaving you empty inside. Leaving you feeling as numb as cocaine and as empty as a puppet husk.