IT ALL SUDDENLY SEEMED UNFAIR TO HECTOR, the cruel mockery of fate playing with his mind, tossing and turning him like a rag doll, taking a toll on his mental state as he felt the sanity slipping from the cracks within his skull.
Hector sprawls on the white rug—it's hue not less pale than his hallow drained face—beside the telephone table, awaiting a ring to rescue him from this dread or push him further into a bottomless pit of insufferable anguish.
For a moment he thinks he's dying.
But the reality strikes him, each time harder than the last, and sends a static pain shoot through his head making him think his skull would explode any given second now, like a cosmic explosion but not nearly as beautiful, spilling its contents all over the pristine parlor, staining the rug with a violent red.
For a second, he wants for it happens. So that he can get over it for once and for all.
But only if things worked the way he wanted.
He glances at the watch on his wrist, its hands ticking—nearing the end of his time. 5:41 it reads.
Hector can hear the drained voice of Louise from earlier this afternoon when the horrifying spiteful words escaped her quivering lips in a hush, seconds before she broke down crying on Hector's chest, while Hector stood there stone cold, with every ounce of blood drained from his face, unable to comfort the sobbing girl when he himself felt sick to his stomach.
He wrapped his numb arms around the petite frame of the weeping girl at one point feeling his own throat tightening. He stood there like that for a few moments before his muscles ached and he pushed the girl away when he found it hard to breathe as if the ivory walls were caving in around him, seconds away from trapping him within till he suffocated under the weight of the bricks.
Hector snaps his eyes shut gripping the roots of his onyx curls wanting to rip them out hair by hair. His eyes burn as if a heated needle is piercing the thin layer of cornea covering his scalding irises, drawing out blood which drips from his sockets dampening his hallow cheeks like tears.
Murad is missing. He has been missing since the night of the party. He never reached home. It's been two days since then. And there's no trace of him.
It has also been three days since Troye marched out the manor leaving behind the bitter threat hanging in the tensed air of their living room.
Hector glances at the watch on his wrist. 5:54, it reads.
Hector cusses himself for being so foolish. For not knowing better. For not stopping Troye when he had the chance to. For lurking around aimlessly dragging his miserable self everywhere whilst indulged in the ghastliest thoughts of what could and what couldn't happen yet doing absolutely fucking nothing.
This is all his fault.
Hector checks his watch again. 6:01. It's time.
He stands up longingly staring at the telephone praying for its loud ring to pierce the deafening science.
It doesn't.
He grabs his coat.
***
THE cold air wraps around Hector's body like a chilly blanket freezing his bones. He slowly walks ahead, ignoring the sick feeling building within his stomach as the leaves crunch beneath his boot clad feet with every step he takes.
His fingers are wrapped around a torch which helps little in lightening his dark surrounding as it flickers.
His teeth clatter, whether from cold or from the dread inching his skin—he can't tell, but the thin silk shirt and tweed are doing less in keeping him warm.
The night is darker than usual with no sight of the moon. The forest seems unnerving the deeper he walks in with still trees and dark edges but he continues, chest heaving as each shaky breath leaving his parted lips cloud before him. His eyes are aware of every slight movement seeking any sinister signs yet completely dreading finding something he wouldn't like.
“Murad?” He calls, his voice raw and hoarse sounding nothing like himself.
He gulps the sinking feeling down and moves his torch around him seeing nothing but trees.
He walks in deeper.
The ways all look the same. He doesn't know where he's going. He doesn't know what he'll find. But he doesn't stop.
An owl hoots somewhere above him and something else flutters in the trees, a bird perhaps, alerting the lost boy further of his not so safe surrounding as he begins to lose the feeling in his fingers.
Suddenly a familiar feeling crawls at the back of his neck, making his skin prickle as he halts his steps, holding his breath.
Someone's watching him.
He turns around flashing his torch through the narrow ways between the trees, and squints his eyes. The torch flickers. He pauses a second for any movements. None.
He slowly turns back to his original quest, the feeling of someone's eyes on him still lingering. He could be wrong. But Hector's never wrong.
He slowly reaches for the knife perched in the waistline of his pants with his free hand and walks ahead.
His eyes feel scratchy and his throat dry. He could collapse on the fallen leaves any second, curl into a ball in the shivering cold and slip away into unconsciousness and maybe even die.
A pathetic and disgraceful end to a glorious legacy. Shame.
But he walks further and deeper refusing to give in. “Murad!” he calls, louder.
His call is only met with nothing but silence which he despises not less than the hoots of the owl.
Before he gets to think, a sharp crack of a fallen twig pierces the silence. Hector snaps his neck back at the sound but before the light of his torch falls on the intruder it gives out.
Hector cusses beneath his breath, alarmed at the sudden lack of visibility knowing someone is close to him. His heart pounds against his ribs sending chills down his bones as he blindly searches around. He staggers wanting to get out of here but knowing he can't.
His grip around his knife tightens as he halts, holding his breath to hear any sounds. He waits there standing completely still.
Crack.
He freezes.
Crack.
He releases a shaky breath. Hitting the side of his torch.
Crack.
He hits his torch harder praying it'd just work.
Crack.
He releases a shaky breath as the sound is too close to him hitting it one more time before it finally flickers on. He flashes it before him expecting something standing there. But there's nothing.
He frowns.
“Huh,” he whispers feeling his shoulders loosen.
He turns around and comes face to face with a person.
He gasps, staggering back, fingers digging into the torch as it illuminates the figure.
Fucking Rodrick.
A shit eating grin is stretched on his lips, eyes squinting for the light Hector holds at his face damn near blinding him. Cedric moves the torch on his face with the tip of fingers. “Hi.”
“What the fuck, Rodrick?”
His smile drops for a second. “Rodrick? Really?” His pats his chest over his heart, “Got to say that really hurt. It's Cedric.”
“You are fucking stalking me?” Hector spits through gritted teeth wanting to flip out his knife and end the fuckery of the twat right there.
“Stalking you?” He asks rhetorically in a nonchalant tone, oblivious to Hector's boiling anger. “No, more like looking for you. And oh!” he smiles flashing his wolf like teeth. “Look I found you.”
Hector tightens his jaw and turns around withdrawing from his fruitless search and Cedric, to Hector's unfortune, follows suit.
“No, I swear. I was worried.” Cedric goes on with no hint of the slightest worry in is voice whatsoever. “We all were. You drifted so long ago, so Mr. Henderson sent me to look for you.”
Of course, Hector thinks. Mr. fucking Henderson, head of the search party had sent the leach after him to suck the blood out of his veins.
“I mean after all, there's some psycho killer lurking around. It could be anyone. Thought you'd be scared.”
Hector abruptly turns around halting his step and so does Cedric, only inches apart from Hector's fuming face. None of them move a muscle.
“Aren't you scared?” Hector draws out under his breath.
Cedric holds his stare with a foreign glimmer in his eyes. “Scared? Of the killer?”
Hector hums. “I mean he's lurking around, isn't he? Could be anyone.”
Cedric raises his brows trying his hardest to keep an impressed smile from breaking out.
Hector returns to his step.
He hears Cedric's footsteps right behind him, not as annoyed at his presence as he should be but the never-ending words spurting from Cedric's mouth irks him all the more.
“What were you even doing here?” Cedric asks.
Hector frowns. “We're here to look for Murad. Or have you forgotten?”
Cedric snorts. Hector halts and snaps his head towards him with tensed brows and hard eyes. Cedric widens his eyes sinking his teeth into his lower lip as though he's trying to hold back the smug smile he wears so proudly from stretching over his face.
“Have I said something funny?” Hector inquires, with a foreign look over his demanding eyes—an illusion to veil how truly weak he's feeling, with his edges crumbling and limbs beginning to give out.
“Well, I mean,” Cedric pauses.
Hector's throat tightens. “What?”
“You know..” Cedrics dark eyes are unreadable and any traces of his smile, which Hector has grown to despise in the span of two days is nowhere in sight. “It's quite obvious that he's—”
“Hector!”
They both turn their heads at the shrill voice and meets with a gray-haired man walking in long strides toward the boys.
“Oh, thank god you found him Cedric! Hector, dont you wander off like that ever again, you scared the living hell out of us.”
Hector mentally scoffs at Mr. Henderson's tone, speaking to him like a toddler lost at a fair. And whats the point of the search party if they're only going to look at the outskirts off the woods and not deep into it. Surely Troye wouldn't—
Hector stops in his trail of thoughts. No, Troye didn't do anything. He couldn't. He promised something bad but Hector prays it isn't this. Troye is his own brother and gruesomely cracking the neck of a cat he could forgive. But doing something to Murad.
He gulps down the sick feeling heightening in his throat.
“Did Troye not come?”
Hector flicks his eyes up at Mr. Henderson, the color draining from his face. “I—um no he's—”
“Yeah I haven't seen him in school either.” Cedric says.
Hector looks at Cedric opening his mouth to say something only for nothing to come out. “He's—”
“Looking for me?”
All three of them turn their attention to the intruders voice.
Hector's blood runs cold.
“Troye! You're here.”
“Yes sir.” he glances at Hector with a sly smile, “I'm here.”
Mr. Henderson says something but Hector can't hear his voice anymore. His limbs are frozen in place, feet drilled to the cracked ground. His eyes are locked on his brother standing there with his tousled hair over his gleaming face not a hint concern over his striking eyes, a stark contrast to Hector's miserable self.
Hector scans Troye for any hint of involvement to their current situation but he knows well enough his brother won't squirm under the watchful eyes or fiddle with his hands when he's guilty of something no matter how horrible that may be. They're good at this. They're good at pretending. Pretending to be good, and innocent, and beautiful when they're anything but. Though there isn't a single crack on their colorless skin but their insides are oozing out their unforgivable sins rotting their minds into something unthinkable.
Though, Hector wishes he could know what he's been dying to since the day Troye walked out the door. He wants to grab his collar and scream at his face. Scream until he confesses. Did you do it? Did you do it?
Reality caves in as Mr. Henderson leaves to the other volunteers and police. As he's about to ask Troye he realizes Cedric still stands beside him.
“Troye.” Cedric nods his head in greeting.
Troye frowns. “Who the fuck are you?”
Cedric rolls his eyes. “Does being an asshole run in the family?”
Troye looks in between Hector and Cedric before he shrugs one shoulder and walks past them brushing Hector's arm. “I'm gonna go look near the lake.”
Hectors mind is all over the place and he doesn't follow Troye. He stands there staring where Troye was standing seconds ago.
“You okay?” Cedric says.
“What were you saying then?”
“What?” Cedric asks, confused.
“You said it's obvious,” he looks at him “what's obvious?”
Cedric breathes out an oh under his breath. “Its obvious that he's..”
Hector feels his eyes stinging and his throat closing knowing exactly what he wants to say but hopes he wouldn't. “He's what? Finish for fucks sake.”
“That he's dead.”
Hector feels his insides churn. “He isn't fucking dead.”
“Sure.”
Hector looks at Cedric furious and fazed at his nonchalant voice. “No one knows for sure. They haven't found him yet.”
Cedric gives him a look like he's a child, living a fucking fantasy when its all crystal clear.
But it can't happen, Hector thinks. Troye would never do it alone. Troye would never do it. Or would he?
Thats when Troye's heavy voice breaks his thoughts. “Mr. Henderson! Chief! I found him! I found Murad!”
Hector's legs start walking towards the direction of Troy's voice, before he can even realize what's happening.
He reaches Troye expecting him holding a staggering Murad but instead finds him looking down at the lake covering his nose with the sleeve of his coat.
As he nears him a horrible stench of something rotting hits his nose making him gag. The smell is so strong he can nearly taste it at the back of throat. His breathing picks up and he stands beside Troye and follows his eyes down to the shore of the lake where Troye holds the torch. Then he sees it.
Murad. His corpse.
Hector's stomach churns and he tastes the bile at the back of his tongue. He turns around and pukes. But the stench hits his nose again and he pukes even more. His mouth tastes disgusting and he cant breathe. His head feels light and his eyes water.
The police begin to gather there and one of them helps Hector and starts to drag him away. But he looks back one more time and sees Troye standing there staring back at him. Hector glances down at something he sees on his shirt but Troye swiftly folds his trench coat tighter against his chest, shielding his view. But that split second was enough for Hector to see it. To see his white shirt covered in blood.
He throws up again.
***
sooo that happened lol