Page 213 of Coal Hearts

Please eat!

Soak up the liquor.

Don’t let him win.

A gust of icy paranoia clawed at my spine.

What if he wants to be drunk so he can finally be free?

What if he planned this, and he’s been lying this entire time?

No.

He wouldn’t.

He—

Memories of him chasing me outside the castle came fast. Bruises on my spine as he shoved me down. Flames on my lips as he kissed me. He’d held nothing back out there. I’d seen the truth.

He wants this...

A vision of myself strung up and bleeding corrupted my mind. Droplets of blood dripping out of me, one red bead at a time, falling onto Henri’s tongue, him lapping up my lifeforce just like he lapped up my tears.

He’ll eat me alive.

That’s not true—

A loud, delusional laugh echoed in madness. Laughter as he cut me, then mounted me. His savage grunts as he took me, all while bleeding me dry.

My grasp on reality unravelled, faster and faster, crazier and crazier.

The clock on the wall ticked louder, louder. Things came alive all around me. Animals stared. Birds fluttered. Spiders skittered down the wall.

I tripped into mad hallucinations.

I saw things I knew weren’t real, but I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t stop seeing hunters with khaki camouflage, cocking their rifles, and slaughtering every miserable creature in this place.

My ears rang with gunshots and death calls.

The screech of a deer.

The bellow of a rhino.

So, so much death.

All around me, above me, below me.

It crushed me into a grave made of bloodstained carpet and misery.

The white and red carpet suddenly transformed into tiny nasty mites, burrowing into my flesh and devouring me.

I heard them inside.

The loud scritch, scritch, scritch as their gnawing little teeth devoured me cell by cell.

I scratched my arms again, deeper this time, harder.

I tried to reach into my veins and pluck their nasty carcasses free.