☆☆☆ Chapter 30 ☆☆☆
It's True
*Ane's Point of View (POV)*
I felt like a fool. I felt like a fool every single time I stood right in front of the door that lead me to Jade. Every single time, I find myself afraid to open that door and see the outcome of what I had done. I'm afraid to see the bandages wrapped 'round her torso, to see her limp, fall, or wince every time she tried standing up, to watch her eat soft food and soft food only. Her body was more than just messed up now, and it was completely my fault.
I hurt her. I was the reason she hurt, just like how I hurt others.
I was afraid to see the outcomes face to face, but I had no other choice, I knew I had to face them if I wanted to get better— especially Jade. It is why I always try to come here, no matter how painful it is.
C'mon Ane, you can do this. This is not your first time visiting her.
I breathed in deep, held it in for a while, forcing my heart to slow down, and let it all out when I could no longer take it.
I can do it. I can open that door and face her head on.
☆☆☆
The blinding light from the sun hit me right across the face as soon as I walked into the room. The curtains were wide open and so were the windows themselves, with the breeze coming in and messing around with Jade's hair and robe. Jade didn't seem to mind── she was too busy staring at the contents of a plain beige bowl.
After shutting the door behind me, her attention briefly landed on me before going back to the bowl. "Why? Why are you here again?" She asked, poking whatever was in the bowl with her spoon.
Small talk, start with small talk, Ane. "What's that?" I asked, overlooking her own question.
"Some sort of rice pudding── something along the lines of... aro-ss con... leech... leche? I don't know, Roger gave it to me."
I couldn't help but giggle at her efforts. "Don't you wanna try it?"
"I don't know, it looks weird."
"If you give it a chance, I'm sure you'll be surprised."
"I've had more than enough surprises for the past few days, boob monster. I don't want any more surprises." She still helped herself to a spoonful of the rice pudding, and quickly swallowed it down. She then licked her lips and stuffed herself with a generous portion. With her mouth full, she said somethin' 'round the lines of: "I've been throwing up a lot lately, I might be pregnant, haha." When she swallowed her second helping and noticed my grimace, she rolled her eyes and said, "What? Was that a bad joke? You know I was just kidding, right? I can't have kids anyway, thanks to you. Chances are basically zero. It's fine, though. It's permanent birth control now, haha. Who wants kids anyway? They're snotty, annoying, bratty pieces of shit. Fuck all of them and their moms. Fuck my uterus, too── ha, wait a moment, it's already fucked! Hahaha!"
That only rubbed salt into the wound, but of course what can Jade do 'bout it? It's my fault. "I'm sorry── "
She banged her fist onto her over-bed table. The bowl almost dropped on her, but out of some miracle it didn't. "Oh shut the fuck up, that's just annoying! You are not a sad little bitch! Stop saying that every time you come here like a stupid broken record." Before feeding herself another spoonful, she added, "You know you meant it when you did it, and for a damn good reason."
There it is, the one thing that confuses me 'bout her. Why does she have to lie for attention?
"Why? Why do you keep saying that? Do you really hate me that much, enough to make up such crazy lies? All because I'm with your brother?" I sighed, taking out my notepad and pencil, writing a quick note and tearing the paper off with the intent to hand it over to her, but Jade didn't pull a muscle. "I know I'm not the right person to tell you this, but I know a good therapist. His name's Justice Connor, just a couple of blocks away from here. Things are still pretty iffy, but he really does his best to help me through it all, and I'm sure he'll do the same with you, so here's his phone number."
"What can a therapist do, huh? Nothing! They can't change what's already happened." While folding her arms, she narrowed her eyes at me. "I. Killed. Them. Get it through your fuckin' head. I deserve what you did to me, and far more. That's all there is to it, so hurry up and hate me already as you did before."
She knows the names of my uncle and cousin, but there is just no way she knows them for the reason she insists to be true. She just needs help, just like me, for whatever reason it may be. "It's okay, you don't have to do this to yourself. You can talk it through with someone, and don't be scared, we can take things slow, step by step, okay?"
"Why is she so dumb? Why is her sister the only one that understands?" She grumbled to herself. "Look, Imani Ane, I know I'm not a good person, but your sister── " She took a deep breath and released it. "Your sister, in her own words, gave me the chance of a lifetime. She gave me what you may know as Deep Feelings." No... no, no way. "I'm still taking it little by little, but I think you know where this is going, seeing how you look right now." No, please, no! Let this all be a sick game, a sick dream, something horribly mean but not real. "You get it now, don't you?" Then it came: a sick smile, with a new twist── a painfully dark chuckle coming right before it. "I've beaten, I've tortured, I've killed, and I've laughed... all in that specific order, or sometimes with no order at all. I've done it many times. Most of the time I got paid for it very generously, but the money barely mattered to me, really. Lying here on this bed drugging the fuck out of myself with the shit your sister gave me has made me see myself as who I truly am as of right now, and be disgusted with it. I'm not a good person. I'm not misunderstood. I'm not just a teen with teenage angst. I'm not lost. Somewhere along the way, when I was a good person, when I was misunderstood, when I was just a teen with teenage angst, when I was lost── I crossed paths with some shady people of the underworld and was trained to be something others fear. I... I've been a hitman for a long while now. Haha, nevermind that. I've been a hitwoman."
No, it's just not possible. She couldn't have── no, I don't care if she's got Deep Feelings in her system or not. For all I know she's just making more lies from her overactive imagination. Even if she did take Teresa's invention, it may just be making her compulsive lying or jealousy worse. She doesn't need help. She just needs to be institutionalized for the rest of her life.
"Stop it Jade, that's enough! I'm going to talk to your mother 'bout this."
"Oh you're so stupid and cute." Jade chuckled. "Mother, just like Father, has never done anything for me or for any of us, for as long as I can remember. She'll easily ship me off to a boarding school no matter how much she may or may not love me. She probably doesn't know what my favorite color is, or when I started having my period, because a nanny── and not my mother── was there for me instead. Hell, my siblings were all strangers to me, we all had different nannies. Both Mother and Father have been too busy being breadwinners to give us any attention. I don't care if it wasn't their intention, and I don't care if they're trying to fix it now by having us all come over here and pretend we're all a big happy family. Hell, Father left for a so-called business trip in the middle of this dumb vacation 'cause he couldn't handle our shit and there's a fine line that's already been crossed for some of us that can never allow us to be a family, anyway! So who are you going to talk to? Are you going to talk to my fake-ass mother? Why not talk to my nanny instead? Oh! I'm sorry── she's dead, and has been for ages! Nobody else could've known what to do, or how to really punish me. It's too bad, really. Besides, that so-called mother of mine already knows about me, and not even once has she stopped by to see me. You see, both that woman and Teresa know I'm a monster fairly well, they heard it come right out of me on my way here, and believed it all unlike your dumb-ass. They're smart to have done so. Anyway, nobody loves me, and that's all that matters and all there is to it, so stop trying to be the cutesy little veteran victim reachin' out to some other hurt little bitch. I fucking deserve this shit."
I stood there, processing all she had said with the headache of a lifetime. She definitely had Deep Feelings in her system and I didn't want to deal with it, but this all happened because of me. I did this, and so I had to stay no matter what. I made her this way, I made her pour out her feelings and deep-rooted tears by stabbing her, and then Teresa pushed her over the edge with a drug that unbottled Jade's pain. Why did Teresa have to do that? Now I could no longer concern myself with just Jade's relation to my family members, but Jade herself and her family. There's something here, something bigger than I had anticipated that involved my boyfriend too. Will I have to talk to him about this, to make him talk about a childhood I believed was perfect and full of adventure, after I have already hurt him more than enough?
Talking to Jade can help me get started on it. "Jade, the world isn't fair and I understand it hurts. I went through something, too. I was── "
"Don't you dare play with me like that, don't act like you can relate, and no I'm not playing the victim here either. I don't care if someone raped you right now, stop making things all about you. I'm trying to make you understand something your stupid little head refuses to undertand, for my own sake. I killed them, I killed Molly and Jesse Mayflower!"
How... how did she know of what happened to me? Why did she say such a thing so ruthlessly? Why is it always something new with her? Why does she find new ways to hurt me? What's her goal with me? What does she want from me? "Just let it go, just stop it, please!"
"I'm not gonna stop until you believe me!" Jade snapped, and this time she threw the bowl onto the wall right next to me. Some of the rice pudding slapped me right across the face. I almost yelped from the shock but not a single peep dared to escape from fear of something else happening. "Jesse Mayflower, your daddy's little brother, died from an apparent freak accident." No, please, no, no, no! What the hell! Why does she know? "I dropped that nice, gigantic bookshelf of his right onto him, and as he gasped for air he begged me to let his daughter live. I watched him meet his end, as that handsome face of his turned to all sorts of colors from the weight of it all. His eyes were strained, um, I think they popped out or something── I don't really remember, but I do remember the color of his eyes. They were so pretty, such a nice hue of brown, you know? I couldn't believe a daddy like him, barely middle-aged, could make my heart flutter just like when I would talk to my brother. Why did he not remarry with all those looks? I guess that's true love for ya. It's such a shame I had to kill that man. I would've boned him."
Such a bright, beautiful day today. Such a cruel, horrible day to feel the entire world crumble right beneath me, with birds singing outside and the perfect breeze messing with the both of us, but definitely not annoying us. Such a brilliant day to hear my uncle died from something we all believed was an accident, to hear it all in detail, to have me go back to the day I had to watch my weeping father close his brother's casket 'cuz our entire family was too heartbroken to see the popped blood vessels that were barely covered in makeup. It was the same day my little cousin Molly was caught trying to end her precious life.
That one day, during the funeral, we all knew things were never going to be the same again, and could only get worse. It was a day we all lost a bit of ourselves before truly losing Molly, before he happened.
I found myself on the ground, grabbing a firm hold of my head, with tears sliding down my face and eventually dripping onto the floor. "Stop it," I managed to beg.
Jade chose to ignore me. "Molly. Molly Desirah Mayflower, sixteen years old by the time she ran away."
"Stop it!" I begged. "Not her, please, stop it!"
"She had cute dimples and a birthmark that looked like paint splatter on the right side of her jaw. We met within days of her being on the road. I befriended her, gained her trust."
"Stop it! Stop! No more! STOP! Just shut the FUCK up!"
"She intended to come back within two weeks, it was her trip of so-called self-cleansing, to try and move on from her grief. I didn't want her to go back; I wanted to finish my job without a hassle, so I forced her to come with me on a... let's say, a fun road trip. I strangled her somewhere far from here, and dissolved her body into... haha, people-friendly chemicals and voila! Molly was wiped off the face of the Earth, with not even a single lil' bone to prove she ever even existed. Just jelly, and that's gone now, too. Can you guess what her last words were? No? It was... oh god, it's so stupid── Daddy, daddy, help me! Hahaha! God, such a lil' kid! I'm sixteen now and I would never say that── "
I slapped her right across the face with all I had. "You... you monster!"
Turning her head back to me, her face showed she was more than pleased. "Haha! Yes, yes! That's exactly what I wanted to hear from you, you lil' shit! Hahaha! All that's left now is for me to change, isn't it? You'll forgive poor old Jade, right? Right?"
The tears in her eyes── fuck them, I don't care if they're there to show remorse, disgust, or just plain madness. I never, ever, want to see her again. I want her gone from my life, gone from society, gone from the world, but I can't make it happen with my own hands. I already tried and look where I am now. Look where we are now. I'm not risking my sanity again for her, not anymore. For the sake of my dead relatives, I can't lose myself again 'cuz I know I'll only make things worse. That's it, no more, I can't take this, this is way out of my hands. I am Ane Mayflower, I am Imani Ane Mayflower, I am a grown woman, I am far above this, I can do this. I can calm myself down, I can── I can't.
Yanking off one of my heeled boots, I had not even a single drop of hesitation to beat that demon with it.
⇫⥈⤪☆⧪⥨⬍
Fighting with a helpless patient── that's what I was accused of, but little did those sad doctors and nurses know who exactly they were defending. Her face was all I was able to put my hands on, but it did nothing compared to what she had once done to my face 'cuz she knew exactly where to hit, unlike me. She was trained to be a fighter, a killer, a monster. She'll never be anything else, and I fuckin' know it. I don't care if the hospital one day catches me and calls the police on me to press charges for hitting that bitch of a minor, and if they don't dare to do it, I'll take my chances and strike again── heck, I would still strike again even after being charged!
Who the heck cares anymore, 'cuz I clearly don't and that's what really matters.
I'm sure no other human out there who just went through what I did with her survived, anyway. If I can take advantage of her injured self, maybe I can finally get rid of her. I don't have any plans to make something out of myself with college or some other bullshit anyway, it's not like my life will be ruined, y'know── there's nothing for me to live for right now, nothing.
I walked out of the hospital with a purpose. Screw my regret for hurting her, she deserved it, and as that demon said, she deserves a whole lot more.