Final Truth

Chapter 47: That First Step

"So you're going to starve him to death?" I demand, ignoring the searing heat that her hand left across my face.

"Slowly but surely."

I let loose some sort of strangled cry from my throat, not understanding what could drive a person to be so unspeakably cruel, so incomprehensibly devoid of any empathy to human beings. Raging fury begins to build within me, so powerful that I feel as though it could snap me in half.

Henley grabs the back of my neck and forces my head back in Peter's direction, pushing me closer to the glass.

"Take a good look, Julia. Look at how frail he's becoming, how he resembles a corpse more than a person. Look at how his body has been forced to cannibalize itself to compensate for lack of necessities. Look at how much he shivers, trying a last ditch effort to stay warm. Look at what you've done to him."

Henley continues to point out more of Peter's physical detriments, but I'm looking closer at him and finding things that she would never catch.

I see his chest rise shakily with each small gasp of air he takes in, almost as if his very lungs were on the cusp of giving up. Despite his shivering, a few droplets of sweat gather between his eyes and plaster strands of his dull hair to his forehead. His skin is so translucent that the veins underneath have become unhealthily defined, almost as if he were covered in a bluish-purple spiderweb. His eyes, despite the fact that I know he can't see me, have found mine and yet reveal no inkling of a person who is alive on the inside.

His upper arm, despite being mostly hidden by the chains on top of it, still bears the wound he got from a grazed bullet the last time I was here. Dried blood coats that arm almost all the way to the wrist, cracked in some places while still fresh in others.

They never even treated it.

"You gave up on him; this is your fault. You sent him down a path of confusion where he lost his mind. Now he lays lifeless because of what happened days ago, too confused with the war going on inside him. It's your fault," Henley hisses in my ear.

My heart swells with blinding pain for him, and my knees begin to shake as I feel my organs attempt to excavate my body all at once. I've never wanted to vomit so much in my life.

For the first time in weeks, I don't see a monster on the other side of the glass anymore, for even that part of him has now died. I see the boy I love literally stripped away from all the warmth the world could offer him, forced to lay on the floor and accept his death.

"Please...you have to let me heal him," I beg.

Henley just scoffs at this, continuing on her monologue of how it's my fault, how his situation falls solely on my shoulders.

I try so hard to ignore her words, stepping closer to the glass and pressing my ear against it. I want to hear him heaving with his intake of breath, want him to give me some sort of proof that he hasn't turned into the corpse he so nearly resembles. Over Henley's voice, I swear I hear something, almost like a low whimper coming from him. I pull away from the glass and look at his lips, watching them try to form a word.

"All your fault," Henley continues.

Peter's lips...he's trying to say, "Help."