If I had ended it back then, I would have never met Perry. I would have never found my purpose in life. I would have never known pure joy and happiness. I would have never felt fulfilled. I would have never known what real love was. I would have never know the pleasure in having hope for the future. I would have never known any of that.
And so, killing myself in order to preserve some of that, it didn’t seem like that crazy of an idea. Of course, dying sucks. Dying when you have so much to keep living for has to be the worst joke God has ever played on people.
But sometimes, you have to do the shitty fucking things in life. Sometimes those things mean death. If this meant I could save Perry and everyone else, well, there wasn’t much to consider. I mean, we’re talking the gates of Hell here. We’re talking about the love of my life.
That didn’t mean, though, that when I fell to the ground and felt the blood pool around my head, that I didn’t feel sorrow. I felt absolute sorrow. Because I just wanted to back in time. I just wanted to be at Perry’s parents’ house in Portland, editing, happy as a pig in the shit because my woman just agreed to marry me. I wanted to go back to that and hang on to it and yell at myself for not breathing in every single second. I wanted keep living that joy over and over and over again.
That’s why I had asked her to marry me. I wanted joy, forever. I wanted her forever. I wanted all the wonderful things that life was giving me and I wanted them over and over and over again. I wanted to live.
I just wanted to live.
And now, well that just wasn’t in the cards. It wasn’t a choice I could have made.
For the first time in my life, I did what was best for everyone.
I stepped into the sword. I stepped into the abyss.
I would miss Perry more than anything.
But the fact that this way, she would go on living, that was worth it for me.
I died with tears in my eyes.
I died with love in my heart.
I died knowing that, after everything I had been through, life was still good.
Life was still good.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Perry
I don’t know how long I just stood there for, seconds, minutes. I yelled and yelled and yelled inside my head but I got no response – not from Maximus, not from Dex.
Finally, the bedside lamp flickered and I felt a giant whoosh go through me, like something was powering down and I was being emptied. Tears sprung to my eyes for no reason and it felt like my whole body was losing something. I fell to my knees for a moment, trying to breathe, to make sense of what was happening.
“Come with me.” I heard a whisper.
I looked up and saw Little Michael standing by the door. He waved his hand at me, frantically, trying to get me to follow him.
I managed to get to my feet, feeling off-balance and hollow. He grabbed my hand and led me out into the hallway. I heard growling, snapping sounds coming from behind me but he gave me a firm tug and hurried us along in the opposite direction.
“Don’t turn around,” he said. “Keep blocking yourself. He doesn’t know you’re here.”
I was stunned. How did this boy know what I was trying to do? More than that, it was actually working?
Before I could ask him, he brought me into a room at the end of the hall. It was dark in here save for a light in the bathroom. There was a shadow underneath the door – someone was in there. But the boy paid it no attention. He closed the door to the hallway and pointed at the king-sized bed in the middle of the room.
“Go hide under it,” he said.
“I have to find Dex,” I told him. “Your brother.”
He shook his head, looking saddened. It made my breath hitch.
“No, you don’t want to find him,” he said. “Go hide under the bed.”
He tried to push me down until finally I dropped to my knees and slid underneath. Mattress stuffing hung down beneath the wooden plats, brushing against my face. He then crawled in beside me, but further back, until I could only see the glow of his eyes.
“Who are we hiding from?” I whispered.
He held my eyes but did not say anything.
The door to the bathroom creaked open, flooding the room with pale yellow light. I held my breath and heard the soft smack of footsteps on tile.
A foot slowly came into view, then another. White, laced with dark veins. I could only see up until mid-calf, but I knew they belonged to a woman. A very dead woman.
This was a house of nightmares, Dex’s nightmares to be more exact. I knew who this woman was and I knew why Michael was hiding.
The feet turned toward me. Creepy, crawly bugs began to slither down her leg and fall onto the carpet, as if she were brushing them off. They crawled right toward me and I stiffened as their tiny legs got tangled in the lengths of my hair.
They were no scarier than the feet that had taken a step toward me.
She knew I was here, she knew we were under the bed.
She walked, slowly and with deliberation. Her pale toes flexed.
Dex’s mother stopped at the foot of the bed, facing my direction.
I waited. One second stretched on and on.
She began to drop down to her knees.
One knee, then another.
One frail hand. Then the other. Both of her palms were covered in blood and bugs crawled out of her broken nail beds.
The scraggly black ends of her wavy hair floated down into view.
I went rigid. Ready run, to fight, to scream. I didn’t want to see her, what would have been my mother-in-law had she still been alive.
Her white face appeared inches before me and I was hit with a blast of cold, feral fear. Her lips were cracked and bleeding, maggots writhing in them. Her eyes were black, just a Michael’s had been.
I expected to feel animosity slither off of her, just like the insects. I expected for her face to contort into fathomless anger, all directed at me. Wasn’t that always the case with in-laws?
I did not expect her dead features to crumble and for inky tears to fall out of her eyes, dripping onto the carpet.
“He shouldn’t have come here,” she said, her voice metallic and weak, like listening to a lost transmission. “I tried to tell him, to warn him.” She reached out and grabbed my hand, slick with cold blood. It grew translucent, until I could see the bones shining through. “It is too late.”
I licked my lips, trying to speak, but nothing could come out.