-A
A? There was another person living in this place with the initial ‘A’? I wondered who it could be. We saw other people here from time to time. Saw them in the halls, in passing. Saw them being punished or escorted out. I had even been taken outside with groups for punishments before, but we never learned each other’s names.
I wondered who this could be.
I took the card off and found a beautifully crafted silver pocket watch connected to a silver chain sitting in the center ofthe small box. Beautiful designs had been etched into the metal and polished over. I had never seen anything so beautiful.
I took it out and immediately clicked it open, the sound of the hands filling the room as the gears turned. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
I felt a smile touch my lips for the first time in some time. “Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock,” I hummed softly. “Tick tock goes the clock, watch the seconds go by. Tick tock goes the clock, these hands will never die.”
Present Day
“I know what your assignment is,” Red said, her voice low.
I spun around, grabbed her wrist and slammed my antlers around her narrow throat, pinning her to the wall.
She was heaving, her teeth bared as she flexed her fingers, my grip so tight, I was sure I had cut off her blood supply.
The smaller tines of the antlers dug into her neck, breaking the skin everywhere they touched.
I pulled her arm out, pulling her body taut as I stepped up to her, her eyes wild, her free hand wrapped around the end of my cane, just under the head of the deer. “Careful, deary,” I sang quietly. “Treading steps still find crumbling bridges.”
Even after all these years, there was still a flash of fear in her eyes, but it quickly disappeared into the deadly challenge she always carried with her. “Why are you keeping it a secret, Azrael?” she asked, her voice clear. “We’ve taken down pedophile rings in the past.”
I pushed the antlers in a little more, earning a warning snarl. “Shall I congratulateThe Familyfor killing a handful of picture possessors?”
Her knuckles turned white around my cane. “I spoke to Olivia, and I know you.” She heaved. “You want to get every damn root, that’s what I’m here for. Why won’t you allow us to help you?”
I knew that wild rose is starting to step where she doesn’t belong. Perhaps we needed to have another chat. “I don’t need your help.”
“I won’t let you kill that girl.”
I felt that smile stretch wide, a soft chuckle leaving my lips, causing that blip of fear to rise back to the surface of her bright blue-green eyes. “I won’t let you control my world,” I told her. “If you must insert yourself then so be it, but this life you’re stepping into isn’t someresortof an assignment that Malachi plucked out just for you,Red.”
“I’ve seen Hell.”
“This is so much worse,” I sang, hearing that light lilt that caused most to run in fear. “If you’re so desperate to be where I am, then come to the Church of Daylight on Sunday morning. Don’t speak to me, don’t sit near me. You are attending service, nothing more.” I jerked my antlers out of her neck, removing myself from her completely. I didn’t like being pushed, especially by the likes of those who called me family. They needed to start being careful or I might just add them to the list I was making for the end of days.
“It’s at a church?” she asked, rubbing her neck, spreading the blood that had bubbled the second my antlers sliced into one side of her neck.
I turned for the hall. “Where else would a successful pedophilia ring be but within the walls of one of the holiest places in the world?”
I twirled my cane once and pulled out my phone, finding the picture I had saved of the little sinner late last night. She had been lying on her stomach on the ground, her brushed hair falling around her in waves, her face split in two as she admired her new painting.
I could see the painting clearly.“Tick tock goes the clock,”painted haphazardly all over the border of her twisted image.I was already becoming a thought she couldn’t escape. I had infected her. She would never be able to rid herself of the idea of me, which meant that I would soon have full access to that little, fractured mind of hers and get exactly what I needed to finish this mission.
This picture was snapped a second before she realized that the door to her house had been opened. I could see Thomas’ face clearly.
I had stopped watching just after that. There was no reason for me to see what happened next. I knew what happened next.
I closed the picture and pulled up the picture of a daffodil. They were wrong. She wasn’t losing herself in that cracked mind of hers, she was flourishing.
Some flowers needed water and sun to thrive, others needed shadows and blood. It wasn’t up to them to decide what was right for all those in the world.
She picked up just as a gunshot went off. “Busy,” she said through her teeth.
I smiled wide, feeling my fingers twitch in that quite rage that forever lived within me. “You told your brother about my little secret.”
