Prologue
I thought I had known all the pain in the world. I thought that nothing could possibly hurt me more than I had already been hurt and that even death itself could no longer scare me. Yet here I lay on the cool concrete of the basement in house on the hill, deaf to my own screams as I writhed in torturous pain. Between the blinding bouts of pain I could see him on the opposite side of the room, his pupils swollen black as bottomless pits. How his face could have been ashen, I was not sure, but it was.
My body was being ripped to shreds and I knew I would surely die. Death was not the reason for my screams now, though. No, Death was a welcome alternative to my current state of being. I was not even sure how long I had been like this. It could have been days or mere minutes. Time seemed irrelevant and warped as I lay here dying.
He sat as still as a beautiful statue, unmoving, unbreathing. As much as I screamed for his help, he did not move. He did not even look at me. Had I disgusted him so much that not even a hint of his former love for me could compel him to just kill me instead of allowing this?
I could almost feel the silence that lingered upstairs. No one was there who would hear my screams and save me. And even if my screams could possibly find their way out of the basement and into the main floor of the house or outside, still no one would hear me. That must have been why he chose this house of all houses.
My thoughts flitted briefly to Alice. Had she seen this coming? Had she known and still had not warned me of my demise? Even if he had forgotten what he had claimed to feel for me, had she, too, forgotten our bond of friendship?
And then there was Renee and Charlie. It hurt worse than the physical pain to know that I would not survive to protect them, to make certain that this did not happen to them next. I never should have said goodbye to them. I had no way of knowing that, for me, it truly would be goodbye.
The pain heightened then and I screamed louder than I had before, the sound finally breaking through to my formerly deaf ears. I was being overcome by what was being done to my body and I could no longer fight it. I was never very strong, as much as I had tried to prove otherwise. I could only fight for so long. And now my body, my mind, my very soul was giving up; giving in.
I forced open my eyes and searched through the blinding pain to find his. In my moment before death, I wanted, no, needed, to see him. I needed to try one last time to plead for my life. I needed him to save me. He had saved me so many times before, I was disgusted by myself for wanting more. Even if he could not extend my life, he could surely end it more quickly. He had to have at least a small amount of compassion for me, enough to make this pain stop for good.
As my eyes finally focused upon him, his eyes finally found mine. His expression was unreadable as it had always been. I detected anger, disgust, and hatred in his face. But I also somehow saw sadness, grief and—love.
I had no time to decipher the meaning as my back arched in pain and I fell limp back to the floor. The smell of my own blood infiltrated my nostrils as I forced myself to breath in and out. And then it stopped. As I closed my eyes one last time, I knew it was finally over. Death was glorious.