Pleurisy

She was engulfed in the flames of her youth. Beautiful she was, yet unfaithful to those she loved. An arsonist in cold ice. A dragon buried beneath a stone mountain. She was silent and unmoving with only the blazing light to expose her skin. The burning sinking into her lungs like a thousand cigarettes. Her eyes dry with tears which could not seem to reach the surface.

“Do you feel it?” The man said, teasing her with a slight grin. It seemed almost easy for him to smile at such a time. He was so relaxed and easygoing as though he had done it a million times. The girl sighed in disbelief. How could this pain even compare to that of which he has caused her? He has stripped her of her only dignity and forsakened her of her sanity all together. She was once an enjoyable, boring, and normal girl. She attended school like every other person, worked to learn, strived to reach a dream, and got paid.

She was so at peace before and now her world flooded with red water and burned with crippling rage.

All those bodies.

All that precious blood.

All that madness.

Their limbs contorting and entangling into one another. Their faces exploding in laughter. Their clothes shredded and crackling beneath the flames. Their voices loud in laughter and screams and the echoes of true hell.

That was all she could see.

“I feel like hurting you” she replied solemnly. The man scoffed and stared directly at her, thinking of how many times he’s heard that exact phrase.

“You can’t.” His smile dropped and he slowly crept towards her, the sound of his boots vibrating through her body, and she could feel his warm breath against her ear as she tried to slow her heartbeat. It felt as though her blood would crawl up her throat and trickle down her chin from beneath her lips. It felt unsettling yet pleasant.

“You’re too feeble.” The burning intensified and she felt the sharp pains of the flames digging into her upper arm muscle. She could feel it licking the sides of her face as it ate her gently. She let out a small shriek and she could feel her legs trembling. He turned his face towards her and pressed his forehead against her temple, whispering as though he were trying to comfort her, yet saying such harsh words.

“You’re blind to reality and all you know is bloodshed.” She began to scream as the blood on her lower back began to flow down to her legs. Dying was all she ever wanted since he came along but now she was afraid.

She was afraid of giving him what he wanted.

Her suffering.

“You can’t defeat it.” She tried to hold her breath, realizing that her heartbeat was abnormally high and she would die if she didn’t slow it down.

“The real test is seeing how far you are willing to go,” he paused, “before you kill everything that moves in that enormous kingdom filled with darkness.”

She screamed once more, allowing her vision to blur and her voice to become shaky. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to suffer because of him anymore. She wanted to live, not like before where her life was one huge lie, but rather to live in the future she dreamed of living. One where she wasn’t completely sane but not completely insane either and she could cry and laugh and scream and sing as though she had never done so before.

One where she wasn’t constantly struggling to survive. One where no one had to die by her hands just so she could keep her cold heart beating.

One worth living.

“They will hunt you.” She sighed, enjoying the burning in her bones and the black smoke in her lungs, yet still thinking about dragging the man to hell with her.

“You will die a thousand deaths and then live to die a thousand more. You will be thrown about in the depths of a grave and driven so insane that you will lose all sense of identity, reality, and sympathy.” The flames were licking her face now, slowly burrowing under her cheeks, and leaving burns across her jaw.

“You will burn with me.” Before she could even look at him, he too was engulfed in flames. She stumbled to the ground, prepared for what awaited her, and watched as he laid beside her, staring into her black eyes, and he smiled once more before perishing into the blaze.

“I will burn your stone heart.”

Author's Note

Not for the faint of heart. This is written in the perspective of an insane killer driven insane after killing an older boy during high school when he tried to attack her.