Page 36 of Freedom’s Inferno

The door creaked open, too loud in the quiet, and the familiar tick of the grandfather clock met us like a pulse. Tick. Tick. Tick. The brass pendulum swung steady, unmoved by disaster. 1:15 a.m.

Every inch of me was coated in ash—my hair, my clothes, the sweat on my neck turned gray with soot. Charlie wasn’t any better, but I didn’t think either of us had the will to bathe.

Charlie exhaled through his nose. “Too late to go anywhere tonight. We’ll check into a hotel in the morning.”

“Right,” I said, the word dry on my tongue.

He nodded toward the staircase. “Don’t stay upstairs. If Costa decides to finish the job, you’ll want to be closer to an exit.” He said it with a half-smile, the kind people use to dull the edge of fear, but there was no humor in his tone.

The air in the house reeked of smoke.

I leaned against the wall by the door, the cool surface biting through my clothes. My knees gave out until I slid to the floor, the hard wood cold against my thighs. Grounding.

Charlie hesitated before lowering himself beside me. His burned hand hung between his knees, the bandages darkened with blood.

“I could grab some blankets,” he said after a long pause. “Pillows, maybe. Make this a little less miserable.”

“Why bother?” I muttered, staring at the pendulum’s slow swing. “I’m not going to sleep.”

He gave a quiet huff that might’ve been a laugh. “Yeah. Me neither.”

We sat there for a while, that damn clock steady and smug in the corner, counting down time we didn’t have.

Then I asked, “What happened to you back there? When you just… disappeared inside yourself.”

He didn’t answer right away. His gaze stayed fixed on the floor, on some invisible point between his boots. The silence stretched long enough that I thought he might not answer at all.

Then he said, barely audible, “I killed someone, too.”

The words slid like a blade between my ribs. I turned my head, studying his profile. “What?”

He swallowed. “My father. I was twelve.”

My mouth went dry. “How‒”

He let out a small, humorless laugh, shaking his head. “You know, I get why you were so offended when I asked you about Richard. I really do.”

The air thickened between us. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I shut it again.

Charlie ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time I caught the stray streaks of gray in the brown.

“It started as an accident,” he said. “My bedroom caught fire. Candlelight and shag carpets don’t mix. I got out, but…” He trailed off, voice catching on the memory. “He was drunk. I locked him in because I didn’t want him coming after me. I could’ve opened the door… I could’ve let him out, but I didn’t.”

He laughed again, low and broken. “Looking back, I can’t remember if I made the choice to walk away or if I froze and my body carried me outside. I can’t decide which is worse.”

The words sat heavy in the space between us, the weight of them pressing down on us both, pulling us lower, deeper, into the kind of quiet that haunts.

He turned to me then, eyes darker than I’d ever seen them. “You said once that choice is real. But what if the choosing ruins you?”

“That’s the difference between you and me,” I said, eyes never leaving his. “I took my freedom and I’ve never once apologized for it. You,” I gestured toward him, “You wear your guilt like a second skin. It seeps through your pores like a toxin, and everyone around you can taste it. You call it punishment, but it’s a choice. You’ve built yourself a prison and named it penance, and you’re too afraid to walk out the open door. You are your own warden, Charlie, set yourself free.”

He gave a hollow laugh, a sound that wasn’t really laughter at all. “Because it’s that fucking easy…”

He said it like an accusation, but I heard the hesitation underneath it. The question he didn’t know how to ask. I didn’t need him to agree with me yet. I just needed him to stop pretending he was powerless.

“Life isn’t easy,” I said, my voice soft. “But choices are intentional. Every damn morning, you wake up and you make a choice. Who are you going to be? You can keep telling yourself this story, that you’re predestined to be miserable, or you can forgive yourself and write a new chapter.”

He didn’t answer me. Instead he stared, blankly ahead, but I could tell he processed every word I said.