“The end is my beginning.”
My father’s smile clings to my neck like a blasphemer spitting curses at a deity.
I run from it, heels clattering as the carpet ends and the hard floor begins, carrying me down the long corridor.
I have left the banquet behind—left the suffocating silence that descended when the false god entered. Now I stand here, alone, weeping before the chamber where I will end it all; no mascara streaks my cheeks—only tears; I washed the paint from my face in the bathroom after fleeing from this hellish place, and taking the rope, I had hidden in there earlier. I plan to leave this hellish place after all. Thɪs chapter is updated by novel fire.net
In my palms, I clutch the rope; my feet feel almost weightless, as though with a single leap I could shatter the ceiling and break free of this world. But I do not leap. I push open the chamber door. No guards; no one except for me. Only me, the hollow corridor, and the rope.
I breathe evenly, almost serenely, as if my body already knows there is no more need for anxiety.
I step inside; the room is dark, lit by a single candle, always a single candle on my birthday. Everything stands as my mother once liked it: cushions of burnt sienna, heavy wooden furniture, the faint lingering scent of her. A memory of a woman I never met, a ghost I’ve only known through other people’s sins.
Sick bastard. My father preserved all of this, not for her memory, but for himself. He has lost his senses, and perhaps I have too.
I peel off my shoes and socks, leaving my feet bare against the cold floor. The wardrobe squeaks when I brush past it; my eyes dart to the sound, then return to the window. Closed, but the moonlight still seeps in, thin and misty, mingling with the flicker of the candle.
Each step feels like a countdown. My breath hitches at that, slow and shallow. I fling the rope upward with both hands, looping it against the bed’s frame. My heart beats sluggishly, as if I have already accepted the end.
I drag a chair forward, pressing my toes against it, and climb, my hands knotting the rope, my fingers trembling, yet steady enough.
One last circle formed, wide enough for my head. I lower my gaze through it and find the picture on the wall: my mother, my siblings, my father; her belly swollen, whole with me—the curse. They are smiling, all of them. And I wonder if it is my fault they lost it.
Their smile. Maybe I am the sin, born at the cost of their joy.
I do not smile back; I cry.
I once imagined that this moment would bring laughter—that I’d grin in the face of release, that I’d be giddy with freedom at last. But there is no joy in me, only misery as vast as theirs. Still, I lower my head through the rope and kick the chair away.
The sound is sharp, a crack of wood, a creak of fibers tightening, the rush of air cut short in my throat. Pressure swells, and my lungs claw for breath. It will take minutes, I know, unless I force the air out, hasten the blackness.
So I exhale—long and ragged—until nothing remains inside me.
Thirty heartbeats; each one faster, each one squeezing the blood through my veins like molten iron. My skull pounds, my eyes feel as if they will burst from their sockets.
My legs convulse. My vision swims, and I glimpse the candle on the table—the same cursed flame I have stared at every night while my father forced himself on me. I always hated it. He lit it because it reminded him of her. Of my mother.
Thirty more heartbeats; my veins scream, and my body begins to rupture. And though I feel a strange holiness in enduring the agony, I regret one thing—that I did not blow out that flame. Its orange light, my light, blinds me even now, stabbing through me in a final cruelty.
“Faster,” I mumble, my throat thick, saliva spilling from my lips. “Make it fas—”
But then a shadow shifts in the corridor.
The door—I left it open; I wanted them to see. I wanted them to walk in and find me cold, lifeless, swinging. A message written with my body, but I had not thought it would be him. Not so soon.
My senses are fading, darkness closing in. I almost pass through, almost cross into heaven, where a saving light waits instead of this blistering flame. But before I can let go, something grips me—hands pulling my legs upward, releasing the pressure around my neck.
Air floods in, and my body collapses in confusion, nerves numb and screaming all at once. But the flame still burns on the table.
For a moment, I think—perhaps a mistake—that I am saved. But then fingers crawl between my legs, my garments being ripped away, torn as quickly as the breath I just gasped in.