𝐀 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞 ║Tom Riddle ✔ [EDITING]

Chapter Forty-Three: A Pool of Red

I was getting hot.

It felt like my body was on fire. I was sweating. Ripping off my shirt, I scream again.

Whipping my hand out, I send the bathroom stalls all crashing into one another until they blew up in a union. They slam into the walls so hard, the architecture quivers.

The scars on my back were pulsing.

I felt every whip.

I felt every attack.

They start to bleed, and the liquid oozes from my back in a river of red. My legs collapse from under me. They'd been shaking too much. I grab onto the wall, and my hands trembled.

"STOP IT!! STOP IT!!!" I yelled at my hands so loud, my voice cracked. "Stop trembling!!!! STOP SHAKING!!! WHY ARE YOU STILL AFRAID!?!" I scream.

"W-why a-am I still afraid?" I sob, covering my face with my bloodied up hands. They shook tremendously.

I cried.

I bawled my eyes out, salty tears escaping me in oceans. I fall to my side, covering my eyes with my arm. I cried so hard I felt my soul try to escape. I sobbed like my spirit was being ripped away from my body.

My scars were reopening, my blood pooling around me in a way eerily similar to that day in the orphanage.

All I could think of was Raine.

All I could see was her mangled neck.

All I could hear was that deafening crack. All I could smell was the rustic sent of her blood mixed with salt and booze.

I could see her eyes. Her brown, dead, dead eyes. Never had I seen brown eyes so lifeless before.

I could feel the skin of her hands. The ones I'd grabbed in a desperate attempt to save her. The ones I'd cried over for days. The ones I had refused to let go. The hand that had held my hand when I was having a nightmare. The hand that had been my rock.

The hand I had to let go.

Just like the pink rose, I'd let drop to the top of her coffin. I could still hear the thud of the stem when it slammed into the wooden box.

My upper body and shoulders wrack with every sob that forces its way out. My chest rises and falls unevenly with every gasp of breath I try to take.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I ball my hands into fists and scream. Again and again. Over and over.

Until my voice was no more. Until I was reduced to a whimpering mess.

Until I was alone.

Alone to face my demons. Alone to face my fears.

"You are never alone." Abaddon chides me gently. "I will always be here to love and protect you." He whispers in my ear like a loving parent.

"Do you feel better?" A voice gently asks.

I was so tired I don't even bother answering or voicing my shock. I had no more voice anymore, anyways.

"I always come here to cry too." The voice says again. The stranger steps up and goes to sit crisscrossed by my head. I was still lying on my floor. My back to the ground and my eyes staring emotionlessly at the ceiling.

The voice belonged to a girl.

She sat in the pool of blood, not even caring about her clothes. She looked as miserable as I did.

She was short and stubby with a curvy stature. One might even say she was plump. Her face was covered in stress pimples, and she wore thick-rimmed glasses that covered the majority of her face.