“Skylenna, does J—your dad lock you down here often?”
Her breathing is labored because she has a runny nose.
“Uh-huh. He gets real mad a lot,” she says with a voice like fairy dust and wind chimes.
That breaks my heart. Jack was a good young man in prison. I could sense that deep down he wanted a family just as bad as Sophia did. It’s not fair that they made him a villain against his will and to his own daughter.
“Will you do me a favor? As your imaginary friend?” I ask.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure. Okay.” She snorts, most likely wiping at her nose again.
I exhale softly. “Always remember that your father isn’t himself when he gets angry. The real dad behind that mean, angry mask is your daddy who loves you so much. He’s fighting a battle that you cannot see.”
“Okay, Imaginary Friend,” Skylenna chimes sweetly. “My daddy does love me.”
The cellar ceiling makes a snapping sound, then a metal door groans and swings open. “Kane’s here! Kane’s here!”
I sit up. “What?!”
A downfall of heavenly light is dumped into the room, illuminating a little girl with long, blonde curled pigtails and a white summer dress.
A young boy’s tan arms extend into the basement, reaching for the little Skylenna to clasp. She giggles and jumps up and down excitedly. Her small hands clap at an inconsistent rhythm, and she begins to hum and sing out of pure delight.
“It’s my best friend!”
I fall against the wall with my hands masking my sobs of joy and long-enduring, all-encompassing love.
My parents. So happy. So innocent. Finding each other so young.
And to my immediate astonishment, the Nightlung opens its vast mouth and swallows me whole. I tumble into a tunnel unexpectedly, whirling down a long, windy canal, and being discarded in a room in the middle of the Demechnef Mountain.
60. Death Would Be Kinder
Niklaus
Pain comes second. The lonelinesscomes first.
I never realized how loud loss could be. And you’d think I’d manage to be much louder than it, but I am not. Two people rush me through the muggy halls to the stadium. And I don’t scream. I clutch my mangled wrist to my chest with a sopping rag, holding the dismembered fingers in my right hand as twisty vines of blood lace in a webbed pattern down my arm, dripping from my elbow.
I have stopped to vomit three times.
I have stared ahead as my heart, mind, and soul go numb.
I have asked God to let me die.
I have passed our cages on the way, and they are so much bigger without her here.
Two familiar voices speak to me and to each other, holding up my weight, and attempting to add pressure to the open wounds. I come in and out of the monstrous zaps of pain bombing into my hand, all the way to my shoulder. It’s a blast strong and loud enough to wake me from this daze of survival momentarily. Each time it unfurls the zing of fire and live, angry wires within me, I can’t even make a sound. I hunch forward and take it.
“She—left—me.”
“We will find her, Niklaus! Just hold on!” Sophia’s voice.
I’m slung over the stage where inmates come and go from my vision. The black and red ceiling spins and duplicates as my hand is worked on.
I should die here.
She left me.
