"Aw, fuck!" She exclaimed loudly.
The drops of blood falling to the floor weren't getting smaller; it brought a sickness to her stomach to watch the red drip from her feet. She was gently pulling out pieces of broken glass from under her foot, and although the biggest pieces were the most painful, they were also the easiest. The small ones, the ones she couldn't even see, only feel, would be the worst.
Chloe had placed herself on the toilet in the upstairs bathroom, having calmed herself enough to at least let out sounds again. Sounds of pain, albeit. Her heart had settled on a dangerously slow rhythm, no longer having the energy to alarm her body. She felt tired but growled at the thought of sleeping. She was hungry but had no appetite. She thought of what to do next, but it got her nowhere.
All the broken pieces of her life were shattered on the floor in her room and she only had ten minutes before she had to confront Max's father. Ten minutes before she had to lie again. There would never be a break longer than such a fleeting amount of time until she finished what every nerve in her body still screamed at her to do.
Do I really have it in me to kill Ethan? Does the thought of revenge control me that much?
Gently rubbing her feet with the palm of her hand, Chloe felt a moment of perspicacity. Her thoughts guided by what Max said only minutes before the incident.
She told me I was in the wrong. That killing Ethan wouldn't fix anything, and only make me more messed up… I still don't agree, but that doesn't mean that I am right.
Chloe got up on her feet to feel the slight sting from the remaining pieces of glass, quickly brushed it off and walked over to the sink. A glance in the mirror showed what she expected, although marginally worse. Her face was pale- a sick grey color spreading from her eyes that had heavy bags under them. The mascara was smeared all over her cheeks, her lips were dry, her hair messy and grotesque.
Should I just give up? If I do, I'll never see Ethan again…
Taking her attention away from the mirror, Chloe looked down to see her dirty hands and found several stains of blood on her fingers. To her surprise, when she used her thumb to rub it off, it showed to be dry. This was not blood she had gotten from the glass under her foot. This was not recent.
This was Max's dry blood on her hands.
I'll never see… Max again.
An inching chill ran up her spine, prompting her to turn her head and ended up looking at the shower to her right. The white ceramic glaring in the reflection of the bathroom lights, and although she had taken a thousand showers in there, the only one she could truly remember was the one with her friend.
Because of Ethan.
She remembered they told each other what makes them happy. Max's last sentence stood clear in her mind, the one thing she said that made Chloe's heart skip a beat and urged her to say, for the first time, that she loved her. But although she remembered the answer, she couldn't repeat those words in her head. It would be too painful.
Instead, she hastily substituted her thoughts to recall the event that was always stuck in the back of her head. The tornado that destroyed Arcadia Bay.
All this time, she had classified that single event as the worst day of her life, but it had slowly changed into something else. Transformed into a different stamp. It was the time Max eminently proved how much she loved Chloe.
Max had to live with the guilt of being responsible for hundreds of deaths. She did it for me.
I will never be able to repay that… but it's my turn now. She sacrificed an entire town for me.
The least I can do is the kill the fucker that was responsible for where Max is now.
I love her. And he took it away. Took my life away. Took hers away.
I'll take his away.
Empty of rage and instead overwhelmed with a sense of exhaustion followed by her breakdown, Chloe slapped her right cheek with an open palm a couple of times to get the blood flowing, to regain the energy needed for her to follow through. She gave herself one particular hard slap before biting down on her lower lip and grabbing her phone she had brought in from her room. With the pain having alarmed her body, she could force out the spleen and leave out all the rest. She no longer wanted to be afraid, no longer wanted to fear her own mind. With her left hand, she grabbed the collar of her black shirt that had traces of dirt almost all over. Her jeans were a lot worse, however, with her behind and thighs covered in dry mud, and the knee area mostly torn to pieces. It was all details she decided to shun as she focused on dialing a number on her phone. A number that stood so clearly in her mind. 208-887-0760.
He had called her several times, but it would be the first time she had called him. It was not a sudden impetuous action. She knew exactly why she called him, and exactly what she wanted to say. Word-for-word.
As she hit call, she felt the bubble around her becoming smaller; her world receding, and her body being left alone.
"…Hello?" Ethan answered after a short hesitation.
Chloe swallowed in the forthcoming of anger from hearing the gruff voice once more, but the resentment didn't come. Not the one she was used to at least. It was like hearing the voice of someone you'd want to forget; a pest that kept coming back.
"Where are you?" In contrast to Ethan, she spoke without pause. Without hesitation.
"Yes, it would be stupid of you to answer, but you know I will find you, and I figure instead of the constant fear of death, you'd be better off just getting the real thing right now. Don't talk around it, don't lecture me, and don't mention the greater good. Just tell me" She shook her head dourly, not wanting this conversation to be just another. She was too tired, her eyes dreary while looking at her left hand curling her own thumb.
"Chloe. I'm- I'm glad you called, but can we… can we just talk like two regular people for a second, please? I won't try to mislead you or anything, but the police came to my house and started asking me incoherent questions. They didn't try to arrest me or anything like that, so I figure you didn't call them, but they won't tell me what is going on…"
It did nothing for Chloe to hear his voice turn to fright, and she markedly scoffed when he suggested they'd talk like two regular people. Neither of them was regular at this point, but they weren't the same kind of messed up either. They couldn't stand next to each other and not be distinguishable.
"So you are at home… and you called the cops on us, maybe it has something to do with that, you cocksucker"
A sharp urge to hang up the phone came to her. If Ethan was at home, they would be no reason to listen to his manipulate words and obvious facade.
"What? I didn't call the police at any point. They've spoken to you as well?"
All he did was confirm Chloe's wariness with his feigned question.
"Yeah, so much for not misleading me. Save your bullshit, I don't care. I'm coming for you, and then I'll deal with that fucker Ted, you've been working with" With mental images popping into her head, Chloe quickly turned around and closed her eyes, but still saw everything she wanted to forget.
"What… what does Ted have to do with any of this?" He wanted to avoid it, but the mention of Ted provoked his reluctant voice with all the signals that stemmed.
"Maybe something about the fact that he shot Max" She responded annoyed while taking two steps closer to the bathtub, her aching foot stepping onto a towel that had been tossed on the floor.
"What?! He shot her?! Chloe, I- I never told him to do that, I swear. Is- is Max alive?" Ethan's voice rose to a yell, to then turn into distress. It confirmed what she had believed but brought no comfort along with it.
"So he was working with you all this time, huh? You needed some kid to do your fucking shit for you?" Frustrated about the inevitable mention of Max, Chloe kept her focus on the white towel and replaced the images of demise in her head, with a remembrance of when she had tossed the towel.
"He did help me out, yes, but Max... is she alright?" Another worried mention of her name with a sickly perturbation to his breathy voice.
And just then, Chloe realized how the towel ended up on the floor and it made her vision flicker while shoving a sharp twinge through her stomach.
"Stop sounding so fucking concerned about her! You're the reason this happened to her!" The angry yell was forced out because the white towel brought back the memory that it was Max that tossed it when she went to hand it to Chloe in the shower, but Chloe grabbed her instead and pulled her in with her. Two images collided, the one prompted by seeing the towel, and the one forced into her head by Ethan. The image of Max's pale body on the ground.
"No! I've told you countless times that I just did what I had to do to save my daughter! Why would I want to kill her?! And I didn't! I didn't! I never called the police, and I did NOT order Ted to shoot Max! Fuck!" Something had clicked as Ethan's cold exterior had vanished, if just for a moment, and Chloe could tell he wasn't faking it. That he wasn't acting to sway Chloe in any way, but she did not care.
"Whatever! What the fuck does it matter?! Ted probably called the cops then, who gives a fuck?! You were the one that tried to force Max to save your bitch-daughter, and you were the one working with Ted, who was the one that shot Max. You set all of this in motion. Don't try to free yourself of the blame!" She marked the last word as she bent down and picked up the towel in one swoop.
"I'm not his fucking boss. I didn't force him to do anything!" It was clear that he was struck with guilt, no matter how much he tried to deny fault and because of that, his words bounced right off Chloe, until she heard his voice settle and slow down as he continued to speak.
"Listen, I've known Ted before any of this happened. He was a patient of mine, just like you were. He dealt with a form of schizophrenia that got severe when his father died, and his mother almost killed herself in mourning. He couldn't distinguish reality from fantasy, and it nearly made him go insane. I worked with him for over a goddamn year, trying everything I could to get his life back on track. He fought so hard, and I never gave up on him. Through that year, I also talked with his mother, Joanna, and even though I was their psychologist, I still befriended them. After Ted got his schizophrenia under control, I still talked with Ted and Joanna once in a while… and after the storm killed my daughter and my wife left me, they… they tried to help me, as I had helped them. I think Ted… in his fantasy world saw me as his father. Of course, I didn't condone his conviction, but he is such a good kid, so I tried not to question it"
A pause entered, and although he wasn't finished with his obnoxious story about his past relationship with Ted, Chloe had stood still for too long and she had to force herself out of her numbness in fear of letting Ethan get to her.
"God, shut up! I told you to save the fucking bullshit. I don't care about your background with some freak. Don't talk to me as if you still have a chance of redemption here!" She made the last sentence especially loud as she leisurely threw the towel from her hands, onto the side of the sink. Ethan had some way, some rhetoric way to get a person to listen to him, but this one time, she didn't want to grant him the opportunity.
Yet, Ethan took a quiet breath and used a few seconds to respond in a manner that staggered Chloe.
"…Then let me talk as if these were my last words"
The way he said this short sentence earnestly portrayed his desperation to explain. As if he had wanted to explain his affairs with Ted for a long time. Not because he was trying to manipulate Chloe, but because this was something he had no one to share with, and so desperate he must have been for this girl to be one.
"…" So Chloe stayed quiet but didn't let her guard down.
"Thank you," He said in the absence of a response, which in itself, was a response.
"When I started talking with you, Chloe, and found out the true cause of my daughter's death, I knew I had to try to… to do something! And Ted helped me… he said he wanted to meet his sister. So he, eh, he contacted you over Twitter after I said I had released information about you and Max on the… I mean, online. He acted as if he was trying to help you so that when you met at the bar, Red Feather, you would trust him. He kept me updated about your whereabouts and your plans, so I could go about everything in an unassailable manner. But here's something I want you to know, Chloe… through all of that, he actually came to see you both as his friends. He didn't want to see either of you being harmed in any way, and neither did I. I just- I just did what I thought necessary, with the least amount of maltreating. And apparently so did he… but he was forced to… to… he did what he thought necessary to save his father"
As he finished his story, Chloe wanted to scrutinize the voice he used to speak these words one more. He was appealing to her emotions, the very tilt in his voice so clearly showed this, but what was more important was the very thing he said. Chloe had been staring at the towel on the sink through the story, simply recalling her experiences with Ted, with Max right along-side her. However much she wanted to oppose it, Ted did actually manage to become a friend to Max through his attentive approach. And what she wanted to repudiate, even more, was the fact that she, herself, actually liked Ted, despite having met under such dire circumstances. When would she learn to distrust? When would she learn that the world would always screw her over? This was her life. But it no longer felt like it. All of that was just a camouflage of what mimics rage again.
"Alright, but here's the thing. Ted is not my friend, and it sounds like you took advantage of a mentally unstable kid, so fuck you and fuck him. Maybe you didn't want us to get harmed, peace with that bullshit, but you DID harm us. You killed Max!"
She so incompetently aimed the light at him and found it to have no meaning, and so she ripped herself free from her stance and walked out the bathroom with a flicker in her vision.
"So… Max is dead?" Still wanting to know the fate of the girl that would tarnish his own, Ethan didn't take a break.
"I- I think so" Chloe simply responded breathily while walking across the hall to then enter her room once more. The same room. Her befouled retreat.
"What do you mean?" As if he wanted details, he continued questioning while Chloe was perturbed by all the destruction in her room and broke free from the bubble that the conversation had created. The world presented itself with all of its foreboding.
"What do I mean?! It's not like I could fucking go on a ride-along with the ambulance with the police pointing guns at me, could I?!"
Hearing her own voice so clearly pass through her eyes made her body more alert.
"She went limb. Blood was pouring out of her. Her insides were probably fucked up!"
She took two prominent steps across the floor in her room, her feet hurting when hitting the flat surface, aiding in the anger she wanted to release.
"And it was Ted that shot her!" Freed in the yell.
"That's what I know!"
It took but another flash in her vision to regain it with a blur. She was locked on, not deterring from having control this time.
"Alright, I'm sorry…" With his hands empty, Ethan had no intention to dispute Chloe and backed away into his weak words.
"Chloe, I know what you're feeling. I'm- I'm really horrified as well, but please… don't harm Ted because of what I have done" It was harder for him to keep it together.
"To him and to you" His frail voiced accentuated his dismay clearly.
But a pleading was mute to Chloe's ears.
"Don't worry, I'm going to kill… KILL you!" She repeated the word, marked it for Ethan to hear as to eliminate any doubt and because her body wanted to convince itself of its own will.
"Then you won't even be able to worry about Ted! You won't be able to do anything, because everything you are, from child to fucked-up adult… that will all be erased. Every emotion and every thought will be meaningless!" All the time spent wondering about death with a frightened mind could finally emanate from her brain to slip out of her pitiless tongue in a yell. Everything would become nothing.
"Chloe, listen to what you're saying, you-"
"Stop saying my name!" The aggravated girl interrupted after only a second, wanting to draw the distance.
A breath was heard through the phone as a result of having been cut short.
However, Ethan did not desire to provoke the girl but still had the valor to continue speaking.
"…You're not a murderer. You're a girl who've been through so much trauma" His words had become strained around the safeguarding, speaking so softly it almost broke the illusion of care.
"You're heavily sleep-deprived with your body having been in hysteria for so dangerously long" Everything around him was quiet.
"People can't handle stuff like that, without something giving" The air kneeling.
"That's why I prescribed you that medicine. Bromazepam. When you first came to me, you were delusional. You saw things– heard things, that weren't real" He caught the strings of the past and now weaved them with a shaking hand.
"And now it's happening again. You've stopped taking the medicine and with all of this happening… you're not of a sane mind, and you need to be aware of your actions" Advice tarnished with fear, becoming nothing more than a reach to save himself in Chloe's mind.
"The actions you might regret for the rest of your life"
Regret. The word resonated in Chloe's head and weighed it down, making her look down on her body to see her muddied clothes. Dirt she carried with her from the yet another event that would stay like a pin in her brain.
"Giving up is what I'll regret. Not killing you is what I'll regret" As the certitude passed from her dry mouth, Chloe walked over the table where she had placed Max's notebook and looked at the open page but refrained from reading a single word.
"Please stop. I- I know what I've done, and it's wasn't… it wasn't right. I'm sorry. I never wanted to be the cause of anyone's death" He wanted to yell, she could tell, but he knew it would make his words seem less sincere.
"I will turn myself in. I will come clean to the police and tell them everything, letting them know that all the things you did were in self-protection, so you won't be arrested as well" It was more than a compromise he offered. It was a way to be done with everything, without the tracks of her deeds catching up to her.
She stayed quiet.
But the short silence wasn't an indication of a consideration, merely a moment to watch her reflection in the pool of where hope for a future was lost. It had never been deeper, never more unobtainable.
"Tell me how it felt when you lost your daughter" She simply stared into a darkness that felt like home and asked this question without a touch of emotion.
"What?" Ethan questioned the unanticipated request, his mind was in another place and needed a second to travel to another part of his brain.
"Tell me the thoughts that rushed through your mind. How many sleepless nights you've spent with a beating heart. Tell me how many panic attacks you've suffered through. Tell me that you're terrified of life"
A touch became a grip, a reach for information in which she could look upon and use however she pleased.
"I- I…" His voice scattered as his eyes would, unprepared but willing. He took another breath, this time from the bottom of his stomach to lift up the feelings that were so very private.
"I felt like a failure when I lost my daughter. Knowing she wouldn't ever come back- that I would never see her again, crushed my entire world. Life didn't feel the same anymore. It felt like something to… something I had to struggle through. I spend countless hours, just thinking about death and what it meant. I was scared. I am scared"
The very words created the tremble in his voice that told who he really was.
Exactly what Chloe wanted.
"Life is a fucked up thing sometimes, isn't it?" The girl questioned to elicit out the answer as she saw the headlights of a car shining through her window, briefly replacing the darkness.
"…Yeah. It is" Ethan hesitated to confirm the truth, but knew that if anyone were to know as well as him, it would be Chloe.
"Why did you want me to tell you this?" The question prompted nervousness, apprehensive wonderings about the answer.
"Because fear is something every person has felt. Everyone in the world comes at some point to suffering. It's just what it means to be human"
Chloe looked out the window as she spoke, saw the car approaching the house with Max's father inside it. The father looking for his daughter, oblivious to all that pain.
"And I want to know that I have killed a human when I shoot you. Not an emotionless robot. Not a devil. A scared human, just like me"
Chloe closed her eyes, feeling her chest rise in preparation.
"I want to know what it feels like"
A cold voice from a last-gasp girl.
Ethan took a moment as a prerequisite to ward off the scared chill that went through his spine.
"Chloe… I don't want to die. I can't! If you want justice then I will just turn myself in!" He yelled in the eyes of a present death, down on his knees if it would make a difference. His instincts for survival striking fear throughout all of his body.
"I don't want justice…" All of her thoughts and beliefs left her in this very moment to admit the detachment from her past being.
"I want revenge" And it felt good.
"Please…" All that could be uttered, the single word that could be whimpered from his trembling lips.
"Welcome to the fucking nightmare you trapped us in" The last words she wanted to say. The last words she wanted Ethan to hear.
She removed the phone from her ear, gripped it tightly, and disconnected the call.
Left with a silence that awaited the end.
After a short pause, she grabbed the gun that was lying on the table as the only whole thing around her and placed her phone to replace the empty spot. A car door slamming shut sounded from just outside. Max's father had arrived. Ryan was here to pick up his daughter.
Chloe had several thoughts rushing through her mind as she placed the gun in her back pocket and left her room to go downstairs, all of them being speculations, imagining what would happen as soon she went downstairs to confront Alfred and Ryan. But she couldn't foresee it clearly, every scenario could be altered by a simple action and a single word. She could only imagine walking straight by them, saying as little as possible, and then just begin running.
Not stopping until she reached her goal.
Not slowing down until it was over.
Not dying until she had killed.
