Chapter 68.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

So much.

I can’t even breathe.

My lungs completely failed me.

My heart had been ripped clean out of my chest.

I felt crippled.

My brain collapsed on itself.

Even so, I still held myself back and prevented the formation of any more mournful tears. I desperately wished to shed them, but I didn’t want to drown myself in a bottomless well of self-deprecation, resentment, and sorrow.

Bury it.

Stifle it.

Stop feeling.

Kill your emotions.

Think rationally.

Death... is a perfectly natural event.

All living things inevitably fall to the merciless sands of time. Even I will surely eventually pass on one day. Crying won’t benefit anyone. Despairing will do nobody any good. It’s pointless. It’s all irrelevant. Just escape it and seclude yourself from everything.

Stay calm.

Clear your mind and forget.

Nothing matters.

With no one to lean on right now, I was forced to think this way.

It’s because there are sad events in life that we can feel happiness. There is always a fine balance between the two.

Feeling sad or down isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is an unnecessary thing for someone who is alone like me.

All I wish for is to live a simplistic life on my own where I can enjoy the things I like to enjoy. Nothing more, nothing less. I can’t let myself sink any further. If I do I’ll break.

Accept the facts. Adele is dead. She isn’t going to magically come back to life.

I was somehow lucky and survived; however, in my case it was suffocation, hers was poison.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust was what they said at times like this, wasn’t it?

I took in a deep, but long, drawn out breath. I’d thankfully calmed the ferocious flames of negative emotions that burned away at my sanity. Almost by miracle, I luckily ceased all the unspeakable dangerous thoughts that floated about at the back of my head just now. It really got to me far more than I’d expected. I certainly lost my cool from the weight I felt from her death.

The snake that bit Adele earlier was now nowhere to be found. After it obeyed Adele’s command and bit her, the little guy was likely released. He’d already slithered away to somewhere far off a long time ago.

Crestfallen, I carefully slid Adele’s body to the side while I held onto her carefully. I was afraid that if I used even the slightest bit of strength that she might shatter to pieces. I gently placed her down with her back to the bench and kneeled down directly by her side. I remained there and blankly stared at the ethereal pale white face of my beautiful, now deceased, psychotic ex who’d fallen into death’s embrace. She looked as though she were peacefully asleep in a pleasant dream.

With a deep sense of loss in my heart, in silence, I mourned over someone’s death for the first time in my life.

Inside the room at a standstill, time slowly passed by. Seconds, to minutes, to hours. I memorized every one of her features like this. I occasionally checked her pulse and constantly listened closely for breathing. There were no such signs of life to be found anywhere in that body of hers.

I glued my eyes to her in hope of witnessing even the slightest heave of her chest. Despite how long I observed her for, to my untrained eye she was deader than dead. The only thing that made no sense to me was how her body didn’t grow stiff. I expected rigor mortis to kick in at the start, but even after an unknown number of hours passed, her muscles hadn’t decayed in the slightest.

It was a mystery to me, but I wasn’t a medical professional so perhaps there were some other factors unknown to me to consider.

The minuscule wish for a miraculous twist was the only thought that kept my eyes glued to her body.

Maybe some sort of god sent recovery was possible was what I naively thought. However, no matter the amount of time I waited, nothing changed.

GrrrRrrrRRrrrr.

I’d been so engrossed with her, I’d forgotten all about my hunger. It was only the sound that signaled my stomach’s rebellion that finally brought me back to my senses.

I knew I needed to get back on my feet and move otherwise my health would really be affected. I forcibly struggled to my feet and turned my back to her corpse. I was finally ready to leave the mansion. I took one step away before I came to a stop. As for why I came to a stop, it was due to the electric current like sensation that ran down my back as I instinctively straightened my posture.

I felt bags form below my eyes. I slowly turned my head and my gaze traced a path along my shoulder, down my arm until it landed on a hand. A hand had latched onto my arm from behind. When my eyes followed along the familiar feminine arm to its source, my eyes immediately locked onto Adele’s face who looked directly into my eyes.

Only, her head was twisted at a one hundred eighty degree angle, it was far from the beautiful face I knew of. Two black gaping holes for eyes stared at me eerily. One long ovular black hole for a mouth bent into a jeering smile along with a creepy chiseled out hollow nose.

Frozen in shock we stared at each other in complete silence. Externally. things were dead silent, but in my head, I constantly repeated to myself the same words, ‘it’s just a hallucination.’ Everything was just a hallucination, none of this was real. When you close your eyes and reopen them everything will be back to how it originally was.

I closed my eyes and held my breath in horror. When I reopened them a few seconds later...

…

⟟⏁ ⍙⏃⌇ ⌇⏁⟟⌰⌰ ⏁⊑⟒⍀⟒.

⌇⟟⌰⟒⋏⏁⌰⊬ ⍙⏃⏁☊⊑⟟⋏☌ ⋔⟒.

⎍⋏⟟⍾⎍⟒ ⏚⏃⎅ ⟒⋏⎅⟟⋏☌ ⚌.

Adele’s face was back to normal and oriented correctly, but as if reality had denied my belief that it was all a hallucination, a hand was still latched onto my arm. Adele’s eyes, prior to this, dead and devoid of all life, were now reopened with bountiful signs of vigor.

I tried to shake her hand off and flee, but she was firmly latched on and refused to release me. After I quietly struggled for several minutes, she broke the silent deadlock and asked, “are you really trying to abandon me like a lost puppy all by myself like this? Don’t you have a conscience?”

“No no no. This and that are two different things altogether. Please let go of my hand already.”

“Aren’t you too cruel to just abandon a poor innocent girl who’s suddenly regained consciousness after collapsing?”

“Collapsing?”

“Yes, collapsing.”

“You didn’t collapse. You died and came back to life.”

“What? Are you some sort of religious cultist? Did you knock me out so you could have your way with me before abandoning me to escape being prosecuted by the law?”

“Wait. Wait. Wait! Isn’t there something really wrong with you right now?”

“Wrong with me? Like what?”