I blinked hard, forcing myself back to the present where I was finally walking toward the bedroom.
The hallway stretched before me.
Quiet.
Empty of staff.
Just the guards remained and the twins.
Getting to my bedroom door felt longer than usual. Each step was a battle between the man I was trying to be and the monster I had become tonight.
The smell.
Sweet, sick, and wrong.
Burning hair and cooking meat.
The stench of urine and the chemical mixture of Mami’s perfume igniting from the flames.
And then the noises that would live in my nightmares. The sound of her skin crackling like pork on a hot grill.
The popping.
The sizzling down of her melting cheeks.
The way her fat liquefied and dripped onto the floor and plopped like bacon grease.
Sako had been screaming her name, thrashing against his chains, begging me to stop even though he'd already given me everything I'd asked for. . .
I shoved the image out of my head, stopped at the door, and gestured to the twins. “Get some rest.”
“Will do.” One nodded.
The other followed. “See you tomorrow.”
With the rest of the guards behind me, I stood in front of the door and held my hands in front of me, making sure they didn’t see them shaking.
No one could.
I'd hidden it well down in the prison. Had kept my voice steady, my movements controlled, my face carved from stone as I watched four people I'd cared for confess their betrayals and then suffer for them.
But now, alone in the silence of my own home, the tremors had started and wouldn't stop.
“Kenji!! Forgive me!!” Then, Sako’s tongue swelled and caramelized, pouring out of his mouth as his lips peeled back and skin gurgled. Blistered. Frothed and foamed, then fully opened like overripe fruit, and beneath it the fat sizzled, popped, and oozed like yellow custard between the cracks of red muscle and darkening flesh over-cooked and glistening in the firelight before it too began to blacken and curl.
And the obscene smell of rotten peaches filled the air.
I gritted my teeth, and yearned to press my palm flat against the door and steady myself.
One of the guards spoke, “Sir, are you okay?”
“Yes.” I sneered. “Give me space. I’m thinking.”
They took a few steps away and gave me their backs.
Breathe. Just breathe. You can’t go in there like this. She can’t see this.
I closed my eyes.
