Douglas was in front of me.
His angelic face, surrounded by a beautiful light, was inviting me to come towards him, to a world of peace and affection. I got closer, and his smile became more luminescent with every step of mine. But as my lips touched his, it changed. I was kissing the rotting, putrid corpse of Darrell, and around me was nothing but fire. His decaying body had an empty, black abyss where the eyes were, from which suddenly jumped a storm of worms that assaulted my face and entered my cavities. In the meanwhile, the arms took my hips and got me even closer against the corpse, while the flames already burned my feet. The arms then elongated around me, and I lost my breath while Darrell laughed cruelly...
***
I woke up, and screamed for maybe one whole minute.
There was a white light, and I was surrounded by white walls. A bad smell of sanitizing alcohol hurt my nostrils. Voices were speaking, hands were touching me. My scream continued. A hand was put in front of my mouth. Out of instinct, I pulled the arm violently, releasing my scream again. Then something pierced unto my right arm. I wobbled, and thought no more.
***
“He’s waking up again.”
“Be ready with the sedative, just in case.”
“Of course.”
Slowly, I opened my eyes. Two figures, a man and a woman, both in white robes, were looking at me.
“Sir?” The woman asked me. “Are you feeling better?”
“Where...where am...I?”
“You’re in Brixham Hospital, in Torquay,” she said. “My name is Elisa Pierrick and this is my colleague, John Scott. We are transferring all the injured people from Plymouth to all the hospitals in Devon. We found you in relatively harmless conditions, but there are still some burns we need to monitor.”
Torquay...it was around thirty miles away from Plymouth. I had come plenty of nights there to do my job. I was there for some burns? Bah. If I only could tell folks what I am...
“We did not find any documents with you, sir,” the woman continued, “what’s your name?”
“Hayden...Hayden Darce.”
“Residence?”
I told them the manor’s address. It wasn’t a secret place anyway: the real undisclosed part had always been the dungeon.
“Do you have someone there we can contact?”
Miss Ward...there was still her. I didn’t recall ever seeing her driving a car, but she could activate the Order and do all that was necessary. Then I remembered the other Darkfire who had appeared last night. She had to have called him. Maybe that guy would come up here...?
I gave the doctors Miss Ward’s phone number. I stood there, in a white bed of a hospital ward, watching the woman making the call. It was a good thing my body was too tired to do anything. If I just let my emotions rule my brain, the hospital would be already engulfed in flames, and me with all of them.
It all had happened because I fell in love. Because I let Douglas enter my life. I was the real scum of the Earth. Not even one thousand successful battles would fix the destruction I caused. And I had wasted the last opportunity I had to live the rest of my life with him.
If only I could let myself die, to join my parents and Douglas, and stay with them without any consequences...but those like me were the last who were allowed to die.
“She will be here in one hour,” the woman told me, interrupting my thoughts. I just nodded, divided between annoyance and relief.
They gave me some magazines of questionable quality to spend the time. None of them was a newspaper, probably not to remind me of what happened.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Finally, she arrived.
“Miss Ward,” I said weakly. It was then that I realized she was the only human left that I personally knew. A mere entity whose only scope was to be the legal owner of the house where Darkfires could hide away.
“Hayden.”
“I...I am sorry...”
“We’ll talk later. I have ordered the doctors to let you go now.”
“But...they said they’re going to hold me for days...”
“You are good at what you do, but, ahem, you always have suffered a weak personality. I’ve witnessed it several times.”
I swallowed and just nodded, accepting her venomous remarks about how pathetic I was. I deserved it totally.
Eventually, we went out of the hospital and into a car. The panorama of Devon crossed my eyes, but that was far from being enough to cheer me up, implying I was ever allowed to cheer up.
If Darrell had been on the wheel, he would have done remarks about the atrocity I had caused the whole journey. Miss Ward, however, didn’t seem to be inclined towards that kind of behaviour, preferring silence: which was exactly what I needed. It was probably the nicest thing she has ever done to me. She didn’t even scold me for closing my eyes when passing next to Plymouth.
Then we reached the manor. The manor that only two days before I had thought I’d leave forever.
“Enter,” she ordered.
I did. The entrance stood there as always, giving me its silent, despicable welcome back. She followed immediately after. We sat in the living room.
“I...I am sorry,” I said, just like in the hospital.
“Being sorry is useless now. The Order is working like mad to cover the disaster in Plymouth. The only useful thing you can do right now is not leave this manor for a long time to come.”
With that, I exploded.
“I HATE YOU ALL! Fuck you and the Order! Why do you keep me here anyway? This world is just a huge pile of shit! Just let me set everything on fire so nobody has to suffer again!”
At this point, I expected her to counter-attack. To do something Darrell would do – shout me back, even close me in the dungeon for days like he did. I was hoping for it: I was burning so much with hatred, I would be glad for a fight. Instead, with my great disappointment, she just shook her heads.
“You and Darrell were so stupid. I used to serve so much better elements in this Order.”
Me and Darrell...? I could see why I could be called stupid, but Darrell?
“If he hadn’t waited ten years to tell you the truth, he may have taught you properly to control your emotions, instead of just making you those speeches about disdain and so on. But no, he would never leave behind that part of him that still saw you as a little kid to entertain. How idiot. I don’t regret him.”
“What do you mean?” I shouted. “He hated me! He only befriended me when I was a kid so he could take me out and grow me here as a little obedient Darkfire! He has tortured me for days when he found out I had dared get a boyfriend! And...and...he planned the murder of my parents!”
She just replied with a scornful sound.
“Before I tell you how things went, let me ask you something. When you fled, did you ask yourself why he didn’t stop you immediately, when he found out about that guy you had sex with? Why he just wasted time in spying you instead of just blocking you, as he should have done?”
I remembered when I asked the same thing to Darrell. He had left that question unanswered, and proceeded with describing what he would do to make me resume hating.
“Then I’ll tell you why. He didn’t feel like depriving you of some happiness. He wouldn’t listen to me at all, when I kept telling him it was stupid, that he had to intervene, but no, he kept blabbing just a little amount of love wouldn’t be too hurtful and that you deserved it. Like if he wasn’t taught anything for all his lifetime.”
Even if I had something to say, I doubt my mouth would manage to open up. Darrell...had just let me meet Douglas? Out of affection?
“And what’s worst, once he finally listened to me, once I convinced him to stop loving you that much, he didn’t even say the whole truth!” She shouted. “First, he lost his mind completely and kept you prisoner in the dungeon for long, while I had told him repeatedly that putting you under observation would have been sufficient. Then yesterday, he finally told you the truth, but decided to deform it, out of despair.”
“How do you know it? I killed him before he could even leave the dungeon.”
“He announced me his intentions the morning before, like always. I alerted him, but I am only Miss Ward, and he is – oh sorry, was - the great Darkfire, eh?”
“What is the truth, then?”
She watched me, grinning.
“The truth is it was me who planned the murder of your parents.”
I stepped back. This time I wasn’t even sure if I would take it as a joke or not. I expected my body to tremble, some sense of horror coming; but nothing came.
“I remember that night I planned it with the Order. Darrell came here to speak to me in person, to convince me to abort the mission. Like if it was the first time the Order did something similar. We have always sacrificed a pair of civilians to continue our noble work. I had to threaten him to kill you in front of him if he didn’t find a pair of criminals. Thankfully, people in love are so easy to manipulate, something he missed observing when he had to correct you.”
I listened to all this with complete indifference, like if she was just commenting the weather outside. I finally realized it. It couldn’t matter to me who had really done it. So much had I endured, that the death of my parents had become old. It was nothing compared to the fact the love of my life was killed by my same hands. Nothing.
The big news was that Miss Ward’s role within the Order was not just the keeper of this wrecked house, and she was the real responsible for my misery. I didn’t even have the force to kill her anyway. Besides, there would be big trouble if I did. In the end, with the powers I had, if not her, wouldn’t someone else had come for me?
“Interesting,” I said.
She watched me badly.
“What do you mean, just interesting?”
“I just don’t care any more. I am a member of the Darkfire Order, so whatever shit can rain on me, it won’t make things any worse. Therefore, I’ll just forget this world exists when I can, since I cannot even kill myself without making the apocalypse fall on Earth.”
I got up towards the door.
“Don’t you dare leave again!”
“Leave? I know I can’t. I’m just going to my room. Call me when it’s dinner.”