The Prisoner Project

TWENTY THREE

Then he looked down.

"Whatever the fuck that was, don't do it again."

I took that sentence as an invitation back and I moved to my chair. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, placed my hands on the table and met his gaze. I tried to convey any emotion but panic in my features but I knew it was futile. Banshee could read me like an open book.

He sat up too, slowly rolling his sleeves down. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. "You've heard it before. I hummed it once. I always heard my mother humming it." His eyes were still bare, not that there was ever any light in them. But whatever he must have felt earlier on had died. I had killed it by leaving the room.

I couldn't tell if I was relieved or dissapointed.

"I hummed it while I dug her grave."

"To mock her?"

"Mockery?" He scoffed. "Not my style. It's the only thing of hers I couldn't get rid off. The fucking song is trapped in my head. She mocks me."

It seemed to me that his mother played a larger role in his life than I had imagined. It irked me more than usual because of the relationship that I had with my mother and the dark wretched secrets that lay in between them.

I drummed my fingers on the table to hide the fact that they were trembling. From guilt? shame? terror? I couldn't pin point what exactly overtook me. "I've been meaning to ask," I began. "You once said that you regretted not killing your mother sooner, yet you loved her wildly?"

He tilted his head to the side as if to ask - so?

I gulped. "It doesn't add up."

"Aria..." He breathed. "You can't possibly understand everything."

Anything to avoid talking about me. My voice matched his. "Yet, I want to."

Banshee scowled; my question clearly irritated him. "My mother gave me feeling."

I rose a brow in confusion.

"Emotions. That's something I never fucking asked for. I used to be void of them. I could send a kid to the hospital and feel nothing. But she changed that. Once I realised I had begun to feel something for her, it threw me off. And as the days passed, it got worse. More intense." He grew frustrated as he spoke, almost as if he were reliving those moments of realisation. "Had I killed her sooner, perhaps I wouldn't have felt anything when I killed her. I wouldn't have craved what I felt. Fuck. I might never have..."

My heart stopped. "Killed again?"

He stopped short as though shocked by his own revelations.

But as quickly as his shock registered, it fled his face. "That's bullshit."

I let my guard down for a moment. Was it possible that Banshee would rather have never killed? Was that his regret? "If you could go back in-"

"Stop." Banshee interjected.

My words ended on my lips.

"Just fucking stop." He looked irritated, like I was a pest that just couldn't take the hint. "When you start something, you have to finish it. Wrap it up and place a fucking bow on it."