"Sometimes your heart needs more time and pain to accept what your mind already knows."
FOURTY ONE
THE HEAT WAS EXCRUCIATING. Beads of sweat trickled down my forehead and chest before settling in the dents of my collarbone. Hank had uncuffed me momentarily so I could take off the sweater I had been wearing. He was being fairly reasonable considering the circumstances and I believed it was because he had now personally witnessed the gravity of my grief.
"Is he already in there?" I queried, unable to put up a fight anymore. The words that Hank had whispered to me had taken me over the edge. Banshee was going to be uncuffed.
There was nothing else anyone could have said to me in this moment that would've brought a reaction out of me.
I was completely drained.
Hank didn't respond to me, only jerked his head in the direction of the door. "Go in and wait."
I sighed, readjusting the straps of my tank top. Gosh, has it always been this hot? I wasn't sure if the heat I was feeling was coming from within me or from the tense atmosphere. My hands trembled against the door handle and when I pushed it open, I nearly sagged in relief because it was empty.
Slowly but surely, I begrudgingly sat down on the chair and placed my handcuffed hands on the table. How ironic was it that I had become the person on the other side? I was the prisoner. I nearly scoffed. The cuffs had begun to leave bruises on my skin and I tried to focus my thoughts on the pain of it all. Anything to take my mind of what was yet to come.
I began to mentally draft the monologue I was going to present to Banshee. I memorised the script, and was determined to put on my best performance. Even if he hurt me, mocked me or broke me afterwards, I would die happily knowing that I had given my best show of my life.
This fact didn't stop me from being utterly terrified though. Banshee inherently provoked fear in me. He had me wrapped around his finger.
I glanced up to check the time and gasped. The walls of the room had been stripped bare. There was no clock, no security cameras and no window pane between me and the empty chair before me. It was as though they had packed up their props and stored it away for another time.
After all, the show was over. There was no longer a Prisoner Project to perform for. All that remained was the treacherous journey to my demise. My protection and safety had become mythical creatures.
I sagged against the chair.
I sat in that room for hours, waiting and waiting for something to happen. I glanced back at the door I had come from and felt uneasy. What was going on? I pushed back the chair and made to leave the room but something told me that I wouldn't be able to leave. This long wait wasn't coincidental. Without needing to check, I knew the door was locked. It no longer served as an escape for me. It stood like one-way ticket designed keep me in place.
The absence of the clock made everything move a little slower. A minute felt like thirty, and thirty like sixty. Why were they making me wait? I had no idea. I picked at my nails, ridding them of any polish that had coated them earlier in the day. I wanted to stand up and pace but I didn't know when those other metal doors would slide open and Banshee would reveal himself. I wanted to be ready.
Being forced to be on high-alert the whole time was tiring me out.
Hours flew by. It could've been minutes. I couldn't tell.
I decided to try.
I stood, moving towards the door I had come from and pulled the handle. Just as I thought, it was bolted shut from the outside. "Hank...?" I muttered, praying he would hear me and somehow, release me from this excruciating wait.
God, the room was so hot. I felt the material of my vest cling to my chest and back. My face was blotchy. My hair was messed up from both my hands fussing and running through it.
Hank's words echoed in my head and mocked me. Go in and wait. Of course, this wasn't an accident. He hated me. If anything, he had done this on purpose. I would wait here in constant fear of the unknown. Coward. I saw glimpses of my reflection in the silver of the cuffs and scrunched my nose in disapproval. I looked dishevelled. My hair was messy, my eyes were swollen from my constant crying and my entire face felt inflamed and blotchy. Mentally too, I was dishevelled. I had just been told that I was going to be killed.
Anyone would lose their mind.
I turned around to face the sparse room and slid down the door, leaning my head against the cold metal of my exit. This room held a terrifying amount of familiarity. It carried my deepest secrets. It held hands with my grief. Feeling helpless, alone and utterly betrayed, I cried again, a few pitiful sobs for my well-being.
Hugh would have glared at me and called me a 'pussy'. What the hell are you crying about? He would always say. When I explained that it was because I failed a test, he would rip the test sheet apart. When I had scraped my knee on my skateboard, he had broken it in half. Being young and naive, I had assumed it was his twisted way of caring about me. How wrong was I. After all, he never cared whenever it was he who caused my tears.
He didn't love me.
No one did.
I pulled my knees towards my chest and rested my head against them. Fatigue was slowly consuming me. I closed my eyes, drifting into restless sleep on the cold hard floor of the interview room.
It was altogether anti-climatic.
It must've been a few more hours that had passed before I was awoken by a certain tenderness that I had not experienced in a long while.
I felt fingertips graze my cheek and stirred. I heard his voice against my ears before I felt him. "Wake up, Aria."
I stiffened almost immediately.
My eyes fluttered open and I came face to face with the man who had haunted me in reality and dreams. His eyes were dark, almost black, in the fluorescent light of the room. He was crouched before me, one hand on my face and the other at his side, bandaged from his wrists to the spot above his elbows.
When my eyes met his, he stood and stepped away from me. Towering above, his hooded eyes assessed my position on the ground.
After a beat, his brows lifted in surprise. "You're handcuffed."
I was too stunned to act appropriately. He looked ungodly.
It was the way he towered above me. His hands were free, hung at his sides. The sleeves of his uniform were folded up against his forearms, revealing old scars I had never seen. His unruly curls fell in his face, hiding the slant of his furrowed brows. His cheeks hollowed on a frown. He had touched me. He had seen me in my most vulnerable state. He had seen me with tears streaked against my cheeks in an uneasy slumber.
I had wanted to be prepared.
"How long did you wait?" He asked, voice soft. I hated it.
I shook my head, slowly. "It doesn't matter." The script I had memorised burst to flames. Everything that was occurring had blindsided me. "I'm going to die anyway."
Banshee didn't respond to this but his frown had turned to a scowl. He took another step back and lifted his bandaged hand towards me. "Get up."
I didn't want to touch him. I wanted to rip his calloused hands apart. "Fuck you."
If Banshee was taken aback by my comment, he didn't show it. His hands dropped to his sides. "Okay. We'll sit here then." Like never before, he crossed his knees and sat in front of me. "They say you wanted to talk to me."
I gulped, suppressing the panic that was coming from being this close to him. I was grateful that he sat too far for our knees to touch. Not too far. Not too close. Just right.
My voice was petty. "Did they also tell you what they're going to do to me?"
He leaned back, arms stretched out behind him. "No." He confessed. "They didn't tell me anything. I've done my end of the deal."
His end of the deal.
I don't know why I gasped like it was some form of betrayal. Banshee had been clear about how inherently evil he was from day one. Everyone I had come across had warned me about him. His confession shouldn't have any effect on me.
Yet, it did. It really did.
"Do you want to know?" I muttered.
"I have an idea." He replied, honestly.
I closed my eyes briefly, releasing a shaky breath. "I don't expect you to care but I'm curious, why'd you do it? What did you want in return?"
Banshee's face had a hint of a humourless smile. "You wouldn't understand."
I nodded. I was no longer going to beg for explanations for his cryptic responses.
I cleared my throat. My hand fiddled with the necklace I wore. "I wanted to talk to you to let you know one thing." If the room had been hot before, it was now sweltering. "I want you to know that we are not and will never be the same. If I had killed, I did for love. You killed out of hate. Rage. Bitterness." His face remained stoic, revealing nothing. "I might be dying alongside you, but I swear to you Nicholas, I will not be dying in the same way. I will ascend, and you...you will descend to your own personal hell."
I couldn't help it when my voice shook. I didn't care if he could see into the window of my heart. If all my vulnerabilities were exposed.
He didn't speak for a moment. I knew from our previous conversation that he was taking his time to absorb my words. Interestingly, he queried. His voice remained soft. "Tell me what that means to you. Heaven and Hell."
"My heaven is never feeling anything else, ever. I'll be free from all of this."
A fascinating amount of curiosity sat within his eyes. "And Hell?"
I turned my head away from him, looking down at my scuffed trainers. "Hell is feeling everything all at once. A place where you can't hurt yourself to escape. A home built from guilt and pain. A place where you'll suffer."
He followed my eyes to his feet, long lashes sat above harsh cheekbones. He sighed, as though accepting his fate. "That's strangely idealistic."
I snapped my head up to face him and spat venom. "It's what you deserve."
Banshee surprised me by his words. "I'm aware of that." There was something gentle in the way his demeanour was. It was terrifying. I preferred his rage to this. "You're wrong about one thing though."
I rose a brow.
"You're not going to die, Aria."
I should've been curious but I no longer believed him. "I don't believe a word you say. I don't trust you."
It might have been brief but Banshee's eyes flashed as though he hadn't expected the words I spat at him. Then, unexpectedly, his eyes fell. "You don't have to. For the first time in my life, I'm okay with that."
I was taken aback.
Noting that I was confused, Banshee looked back at me. His eyes were drawn in concern and his brows furrowed in worry. When I looked at his hands, they were clamped tight in fists, veins straining against marred skin. "I know, it's bizarre but seeing you like this makes me—" He waved a hand, forgetting the word. "It's upsetting."
I didn't want to believe him.
He continued. "Before I started this Project, I asked for an ultimatum. It had absolutely nothing to do with you. You had no place in my mind. But now, I realise it wasn't what I wanted." His eyes locked mine in, daring me to escape. "I'm dying today, Aria. Before I do, I need to make things right."
The only thing I focused on in his cryptic sentence was that today was his execution. I felt something in my heart twist.
My expression ignited something aggressive within him. His eyes sparked and he looked greatly disturbed. "See what I mean. You can't keep looking at me like that."
"Looking at you like what?"
"Like you care."
I scowled. I didn't want him to know that I harboured sentimentality towards him. "I don't. I'm just surprised that you're dying today."
He smiled, silent for a moment, and then he gave me a magnificent grin. "I think I deserve it."
"Are you not afraid?" I was.
"Why should I be? I've waited a very long time for this moment. There's nothing left in this world for me. I've come to realise that."
Was I insane for empathising with a killer? Yes. "That's bullshit."
He shrugged. "When it's your time, it's your time."
"Well, I'm terrified." I whispered the confession.
"That makes sense." He muttered. Suddenly, something foreign crossed Banshee's features and without warning, he reached over and wiped a tear that I didn't know I had shed from my cheeks. It was an act that was so little but carried an intimacy that was far too much for me to bear. I wanted to recoil but I didn't. "You're terrified because it's not your time."
My face crumbled at his words, unable to feign composure. "It's so unfair." I wanted to scream but I could only whisper. "I don't know why this is happening to me."
Banshee wiped the stray tear on his orange scrubs. My tears were no longer foreign to him. "The world's cruel like that. You could be a saint all your life and yet, your demise might not differ from the worst of the lot." He rested his head against his palm. "Look at me. I'm a walking evidence of how fucked up the world is. Some hero, somewhere, is going to die the exact same time as me and his goodness wouldn't make a difference because both our lives, despite lived differently, would no longer have meaning at the same fucking time. No matter how you live, when it's your time, it's your time."
I wrapped my arms around myself, ridding myself of the internal chill I felt. His voice was empty. His eyes too had nothing within them. "You think it's your time?"
He looked up, smiled small, and nodded. "I can feel it."
I withdrew, murmuring. "You're not afraid of going to hell."
Banshee added, brightly. "I'm already there."
Turning my attention towards something less troubling, I asked Banshee the question that had been lingering at the back of my mind. "Frank. What did you do to him?"
The change of subject didn't faze him. It was his expertise. He ran a free hand through his hair, utilising his free will. "Nothing."
"You didn't hurt him?" Disbelief coated my words.
"No. I didn't do anything he hadn't already done."
My eyes flashed. Banshee noticed. He scoffed at my panic, watching me as though I were clueless. "He's a dead man walking, Aria. Even if he were to walk away scott-free, he wouldn't hesitate to end his life."
I hissed, disgusted by his words. They were jarring in my ears. "He's not that selfish."
"Selfish?" Banshee repeated. Now, he sat up. He was looking at me like he was disappointed in me. It was the same way he had looked at me when I had told him I believed in God. He had called my eyes godless. "You truly believe suicide is selfish?"
I was vehement. "Yes."
"That's your truth?"
I nodded.
He paused, taking my expression in in the way only Banshee could. His soulless eyes fleeted across my stained eyes, nose, lips and everything in between. He could see how fiercely I believed in this little fact. He could see the effect it had on me. He would soon use it as his weapon to achieve his greater good.
Banshee breathed out slowly after a few seconds and when he spoke again, it was heavy and cold. A blizzard. "You're wrong."
I pulled back.
I had witnessed my mother's suffering before she had died. I had watched her contemplate ending her pain. I had seen it in the way she hovered around the bathroom cabinet where we kept the pills. It had been excruciating pain to watch her deterioration. No matter what, I strongly believed that no matter how bad the depression gets, how empty your life has become, whether you ache for the quiet nothingness of death, suicide was never the answer. It was why I spoke so passionately.
"No, I'm not." I scooted back, pressing into the door and further away from his bitter words. "Suicide is a little selfish. It's never the answer. Most problems can be fixed with time or medication or family or something.You think you're ending the pain but all you're doing is passing that on to someone else. The pain, the guilt, the suffering. You're hurting yourself and everyone you love."
If Banshee had been gentle before, he was now catching fire. The familiar flame in his eyes ignited and his voice had become poisonous. "Listen to yourself."
I stood my ground. "I am."
His eyes narrowed, as though suddenly realising something. "Who was it?"
I scowled. He had assumed there was someone in my life that had committed suicide and that made me feel a certain way about it. This conversation, to me, felt like a non-starter.
My face remained hardened. "My mom nearly took her life."
"Nearly?"
"She didn't do it. I wouldn't let her."
"Yet, you killed her when she didn't."
I gasped, the shock of his words consuming me. "Jesus."
His words felt dangerous against my ears. "If she were really that miserable, unhappy, depressed, and lonely. Wasn't it selfish for you to expect her to live a life of misery? You are the selfish one. Putting your pain above her present one." He leaned closer. "The trope that suicide is selfish has no play in the way suicidal people think. In fact, that might have been the first selfish thing she would have ever done." He chuckled humourlessly at my despair. "You took that choice away from her and then, put a bullet in her body."
I opened my mouth but his next words were an explosive device that shot everything I could've said to hell. It set the entire room on fire.
"You should've let her do it. I think, for lack of better word, that it would've been a beautiful thing to see."
My mouth fell open in the same way my heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. The fear I felt was ice in my chest. "You don't mean that."
"Life isn't as meaningful as you think." He said with finality.
The way he was speaking to me was so heinous. I vaguely wondered how Frank must have felt if they had spoken. "Did you say this to Frank?"
Banshee smiled at my reaction, toying with a loose thread on his trousers. "No. I just told him it wasn't his fault."
"What wasn't?"
"Everything."
I was confused. "That's a nice thing to say."
"It is." He nodded. "When taken out of context, that is."
My eyes were slits. I watched the steady way in which Banshee breathed and couldn't comprehend how one could be so still, yet so disturbed. "What does that mean?"
"I meant it. Whatever he's going to do next isn't his fault. He wouldn't be able to prevent it." Now, Banshee looked up at me. His eyes held a myriad of depraved emotions. They were bright, but not in the way that was appealing. It hurt my eyes. "He sounded sure of himself. He will save you."
He paused briefly, and then he smiled with malicious intent. His voice dropped to an amused whisper. "But at what cost?"
"What does that mean?" I repeated.
A head tilt. A smile. He looked back down, pulling the thread and unravelling a small section of the torn fabric. His olive skin peeked through the rip in his scrubs.
"It would be his time." He snapped the thread.
The air in the room had evaporated.
"A lot of people would die soon, Aria." When Banshee looked up again, his smile had faded and his eyes were serious. "But you will live. Cherish that."
I was suffocating.
"When Frank eventually kills himself, you should be relieved. Everything he's done up until this moment has been one huge act of selflessness." Banshee continued, all softness in his eyes wiped away by the delusions of his thoughts. His change in speech and demeanour reminded me of his true nature. "It's why I didn't kill him. He deserves to be selfish this one time."
Jesus.
"Give him the chance your mother never got."
This was all it took.
Of all the trying times and painful conversations I had had with Banshee in the last few weeks, this one hit me the hardest. It was at this breaking point that I realised that there were some people in the world who could never taste redemption. They would never be saved. Unfortunately, Nicholas Dementia was one of them.
My eyes widened in slow motion as I began to realise that his mindset was so warped with decay and isolation that he would never see the value of life.
Even now, as I sat before him, unable to comprehend the words that spewed out of his lips, I was painfully and suddenly aware that the only reason he had not killed me was because he wanted me to die on his own terms, not because he saw value in the life I lived. My death would give him discomfort. It was no longer according to his plan.
Nicholas was no 'changed man'. He hadn't repented or seen the metaphorical 'light'. He wasn't softening towards me. I just didn't fit into his plan. If somehow, the forces of nature prevailed and Banshee was suddenly set free, he would kill more and more people until he finally decided that it was time to end his own life.
This wasn't his time. It just happened to be the day of his execution. I was looking into the eyes of a man who was truly and irrevocably insane.
The fear, like an avalanche, came rushing back into my system as strongly as it had been on the day I had first met him. The rose-coloured lenses had fallen from my eyes. I was now looking at him like the monster he was. Everything about him felt bitter. His jagged teeth. empty sagging eyes, and calloused fingers carried physical and metaphorical blood in them.
My head spun. I felt light-headed.
I had been able to see the corpses of my family when I looked at Diana but now, I could see the mass amount of death that swirled around Banshee as I looked at him. They loomed over his shoulder like horridly misshapen silhouettes. Their mouths were twisted open in pain. Their eyes had rolled back from severe trauma.
J.J Cooper, aged 32.
Jose Sanchez, aged 15.
Samrat Ashraf, aged 41.
Mike Himnovich, aged 62.
Drew Smith, aged 24.
Umari Ada, aged 33.
Xiaomen Hyung, aged 21
Wendy Hyung, age unknown.
Ndidi Ada, aged 12.
Edward James Novak, 32.
Lorraine Dementia, aged 51
Maximilian T. Fisher, aged 22.
Camilla Rose T. Fisher, aged 26.
Winston Lewis T. Fisher, aged 9.
I thought of Frank. My heart swelled in compassion.
Amarni Hope T. Fisher, aged 4.
I could see them all. Even the ones that had narrowly escaped being placed underneath his name in the file. I saw them within his piercing eyes.
Finally, I could see him.
"You're a monster." I choked out.
As though Banshee could see what I was seeing, his face crumbled like a great statue. His smile faded and the barrier that had been shielding his eyes completely broke down right before me. When civilians had torn down the statue of Britain's King George III in Manhattan, the dismantling was more than symbolic. Banshee's dismantling carried the same weight. The entire world grew still. He blinked, once, twice and a third for good measure.
His surprise was evident in his eyes and in the way his body had stilled. His eyes mirrored mine, seeing something in my eyes that he had never seen before. He could see truth. He saw his true image. The dirty unadulterated image that he had been unable to see for the years he had been chained in his prison cell.
Like a medium, Banshee saw it through me.
He finally whispered, voice barely above a whisper. "Is that how you see me?"
I couldn't respond. Nothing I would say would be justifiable enough. Without warning, I shot up to my feet and stumbled over to the other side of the room. My heart thudded in my chest. The beat was erratic as it tried to mimic all the emotions that battled within my psyche.
Banshee had been gazing at me in sordid silence. He took my reaction as a response. "It is. A monster. That's how you see me."
I was utterly confused.
"Good." He said, standing up. His frame reminded me of how much space he took up physically and mentally. "Now, you'll let me go."
"Let you go?" I managed to croak, hands like a cinch around myself.
"You were hurt. You were sat here looking at me like I had betrayed you." He looked frustrated. "But I didn't betray you, Aria, because I never owed you anything." He leaned against the door. "I'm going to die and you don't have to grieve or keep me in your thoughts because now, you see me."
I was silent, slowly understanding his revelation. In the worst way possible, he was telling me; Sometimes, you need to give up on people, not because you don't care but because they don't.
"Finally." He sighed, mimicking relief. "You see me for who I am."
I was taken aback. If I had ever tried to hide the way Banshee had affected me in the past, he had seen through it all. He had known that I cared. He had known that I still had hopes for him. He had known that I was wary about the fact that he was on death row.
He had hated it.
And in less than an hour, he had opened my eyes and showed me how unsurvivable and catastrophic he truly was. He was showing me that he never going to be the person I thought he could be. He was showing me that he was, like he had claimed, born with the Devil in him.
I needed to see that.
In a twisted way, this was the one good thing he had done in his life of great sin. I was strangely grateful.
I whispered. "You're a monster."
And he smiled, tragically beautiful. "Exactly."
____
AN:
I REALLY STRUGGLED TO WRITE THIS ONE HAHAHAHA. It was so long that I don't even know if I got my point across properly. I will edit this again before chapter 42 is posted and hopefully, it would be written a lot better and would grant more clarity so keep a look out for it. In the meantime, please let me know your thoughts!