The place they lorded over us our entire lives.
The reason behind every choice we were supposed to make, because bad boys and girls turn into bad adults and bad adults don't get into Heaven. If you aren't good in this life, you'll get sent to Hell, which means an eternity of misery.
Maybelifewas the eternity of misery, though. Because right now I feel more free than I ever did in life.
"You're no Saint, Nick." I speak the words slowly before him, so that he can watch my lips move to affirm every one.
In hindsight, it's kind of funny how low the bar was set for him his entire life.
The old church ladies called him a good kid and Saint Nick because he did the bare minimum to not be a shitty human... at least in public. Clearly, deep down, he was always rotten, festering.
A boy can obey his father and we praise him as good, even if what his father has him do is objectively not.
A kid can show up to church every Sunday because their family made them, and we herald them as devout.
A teenager can hide the darkest parts of their soul, covering pain with drugs, and we applaud them for not being difficult.
I suppose Nick is a monster who was created. It doesn't make me forgive him or excuse his shitty choices and the bad company he kept, but it does make me pity him. His own father never loved him, and once his mother died, he had to learn to live without all of that. Sure, he may get praise from the community, proud croons from my mother, assurance from the congregation that he was good.
He stares at me, like I just ripped a band-aid off of him without warning.
"Nikki..."
I loved him... as a friend, a cousin, maybe even at times as a brother. I loved him, and he rejected that because it wasn't the type of love he wanted from me. That's when he became friends with Brant and Cole, and I lost a little more of him by the day.
"I know it hurts." I soothe, brushing my thumb over his face. "Realizing just how far you've fallen from grace? Has it even really sunk in yet?" I tap his forehead with one finger, like maybe I can help speed up his digestion of everything that's happening. "Ten commandments, and I think if you're honest with yourself, you've broken them all, haven't you Nick?"
He swallows, shaking his head as he prepares to deny til the bitter end. Of course, I didn't expect him to relent so easily.
"Honor thy parents. Do you think your mother would forgive you for what you've done?" I don't give him a chance to answer, letting that revelation spear him as I load my next weapon. "You shall not covet. We know how that ended." I snort, still a little overwhelmed by his delusion that all of this was just some misguided act of love for me. It's obsession, if anything. "You shall not bear false witness. That ship sailed when you walked investigators right past my body all day."
Nick blinks at me, the fight and indignation abandoning him as the reality sinks in.
"Thou shall not steal. You fucked that one up, too, I'm afraid, when you raped me."
He closes his eyes now, like he can escape me. But he's not getting off that easily. I grip his cheeks and yank his head back so that his eyes snap open, locking against mine. "You raped me, Nick. In a fuckingchurch."
"Nikki..."
I swallow, trying to tamp down the rage so that I don't rip his head off right here and now. I don't want to kill him before it's time. "And then you let your friends do the same."
"Stop..." He pleads, his voice so pathetic and broken that if I was connected to my body, it probably would have made my heart twinge in sympathy. But my body is trapped beneath ice, bobbing among hibernating gators, swallowed in darkness and plunged in a cold that there's no coming back from.
"It's almost over." I promise him. "I'm sure you've broken all the commandments, committed all the deadly sins, but there's one last one I think I'm forgetting. Help me out, Nick? My head's feeling a little... fuzzy."
Nick blinks and then screams when I shift slowly back into what I must have looked like last night, when he killed me. Pale as a ghost, covered in blood, the deep gash on my forehead from where he hit me with the snow globe.
I don't know how things would have ended if he hadn't managed to snatch it away from me. I wasn't strong enough to kill him, even if that's exactly what I had wanted to do in that moment. I think I was dying even before I tried to hit him... everything had disappeared. The pain, the shame, the disgust.
It's like my brain powered off, and then my body decided to follow.
His scream tapers off, turning to sobs as I straddle his lap, covering his body with my incorporeal one.
Beneath me, Nick trembles, his breaths coming in sharp gasps as the cold sinks into his bones.
"N-N-Nikki--"
"Thou shall not kill." I tell him. "I think that may be the most important one, don't you?"
