My eyes caught a form.
A shape.
A body.
Her body.
I stopped cold, falling to my blood-soaked knees, my breath locking in my chest, my pulse thundering so loud it drowned out the silence and became a buzzing hum.
She was there.
How long had she been left here to rot?
She…had…been…alive.
I had left her alive.
Didn’t I?
But now she wasn’t.
It hadn’t been long, and time had not chewed at her.
Her skin was soft, not sunken, and the bones weren’t pressing against stretched flesh. Her clothes clung in tatters, stained with earth, blood, and weather. But all of that blurred as my eyes drifted to her face.
And what had been carved into it.
Her lips were cut wide, slashed deep into her cheeks. Pulled into a grotesque grin that stretched too far, too wide, and much too cruel. The cuts didn’t stop at her skin. They burrowed into her mouth, the flesh carved back so it would never close completely.
It mirrored my mask, a warped smile. It looked forced and permanent.
A smiley face was gouged into her flesh like a joke. No, it was not a joke. It was a message.
My stomach churned as bile scorched my throat, but nothing came up.
My eyes burned, but I couldn’t look away.
I dry heaved on the ground, my hands soaking in her thick sticky blood, blackened with time, and turned into an oozy sludge.
I remembered her voice, soft and frantic against my fury. Now it was gone, stolen, and replaced with this obscene mask.
Someone had done this knowing I’d come here.
Carrington?
Is he playing tricks on me?
He wanted me here. Wanted me to see my biggest mistake, and shine light on it for all to fucking see.
The carved grin stared back at me, the empty eyes hollowed out, yet still staring into my fucking soul, like the forest was whispering nothing but one name.
My name.
Shiloh.
Idon’t know how long I stayed there on my knees.
The world narrowed to dirt, blood, and the obscene grin carved into her flesh. Every breath scraped my throat raw, like the air itself didn’t want me to live in this place. My palms dug into the earth, my fingers curling around roots, as if the ground could somehow anchor me without him. But nothing held me anymore. I was like a lifeboat without anyone to save.
