Drip, drip, drip.

Something cold and wet slithers down the side of my face, tickling my lip.

Drip, drip, drip.

It keeps coming. Plunking into my forehead with more force. Icy cold. Slowly, gradually, I become aware of myself. My face, damp from whatever is falling onto me. My body... arms, legs, fingers, toes, all there. Somehow aching and numb all at the same time, but there nevertheless.

I let awareness rocket through me and spread in a sluggish crawl to the rest of my body.

Yes, I'm fairly certain I'm whole.

A thunderous, blaring noise rips through the air. Panic. Choking. Ears ringing.

Eyes shooting open, I don't fully register my surroundings before scrambling blindly backwards, away from what sounds like a train headed straight for my unsuspecting body.

Something gritty—dust, it seems—is caught in my throat and the next several moments are a horrifying cluster of confusion and desperation to get air into my lungs and become cognizant enough to see where I am.

Gradually, the world shifts into focus.

I'm lying in what appears to be a ditch on the side of a road. Wearing the same thing I had on last night, only now coated nearly head to toe in dirt and speckles of rain that drill down from a greying sky with increasing intensity. Every now and then a car zips by on the cracked, single-lane road.

Looking around me, the only other thing I notice is a warehouse. It's low to the ground and falling apart, certainly condemned and likely teeming with asbestos. Other than that, I'm surrounded by rolling fields and unremarkable foliage, the mountains rising intimidatingly in the distance. 

I carefully stretch my limbs, noting no sign of obvious injury. I can stand and move about just fine, despite the sluggish pull to my body and a disconcerting muddle creeping at the edges of my mind. Like a hailstorm of veiled memories lying just out of reach.

The warehouse's metal doors are locked, which immediately sets off my suspicions. Why would an abandoned warehouse be locked?

It wouldn't.

I try peering into the windows—which are thoroughly boarded—and finding a weak spot in the structure that I can break into. But every spot I could have potentially exploited has been reinforced with more wood and metal.

Eventually forced to tackle the looming issue of where exactly I am and how I'll be getting back, I turn to the road. My watch tells me it's midday, and unless I've been away from myself for longer than a full day, there should only be several hours from early in the morning to now that are unaccounted for.

The last thing I remember is disposing of the foot wrapped in Vivienne's bedsheets. Deciding to give her the ultimatum. She burst uninvited into my home, argued with me, and then... and then, I don't know. 

This is spiraling far too quickly. 

I'm not in control anymore. 

A sudden piercing pain ignites in my left eye and I double over, clutching the spot. The pain is excruciating and there's never been anything I can do to stop it. Often as a child, in the hours following a blackout, I'd get these debilitating headaches. They'd start in one eye, like someone took an ice pick straight to my iris, and eventually bloom across my temple and radiate to my whole head. They were so bad that I'd lie in a catatonic state, sometimes for a couple days, in too much pain to even cry out.

Good to know that the headaches have also carried over into my adulthood.

Certainly looking more pathetic than I care to ever look, I do my best to half walk, half stumble away from the road, towards a tree that looks to have foliage thick enough to block the rain that's now pouring down.

Mountain weather. I'm not a fan of it. Clear blue skies one second, torrents of rain the next.

At this elevation the cold feels more biting, the rain screwing into my skin and soaking me to the bone long before I reach cover. I half fall carelessly into the base of the tree, too focused on not passing out to care that I end up sitting in a large splotch of mud.

Then I shut my eyes and listen to the storm.

When I was a child, after my return from Hope Valley, the blackouts started with a vengeance. Since I was a toddler, I'd experienced an array of concerning symptoms that my father thought mirrored his own illness. He was right to be concerned. There was a unique desperation in him back then to make sure I could experience a normal life, at least one in which my brain wasn't so afflicted by the illness as his was.

So he sent me to Hope Valley. Perhaps the one thing my father ever did with good intentions, and it backfired so horribly. Neither of us were the same after I came back. My father became someone I didn't recognize, his twisted mind allowing him the luxury of removing himself from the reality in which his son was becoming a monster. 

And me? 

Well, it would be a lie to say that I became someone new entirely. I was always going to be a little different. 

"People like us can still be be normal, Massimo. If you got help, you wouldn't feel so isolated and alone." His voice rings in my ears, even now. That strange, foreign time where someone believed there was hope for me. Such a short blip of insignificance compared to the rest of my life, but it's always stuck with me. "You wouldn't have to hide who you are anymore. Wouldn't you like that?"

But then Hope Valley made everything worse. I'll never know if I could have been normal, because that place ruined me. Hope Valley flipped that switch that my home situation and genetic dispositions were already toggling carelessly with. Then they took a sledgehammer to it and ensured I'd be helpless to ever fix it.

The blackouts initially lasted such short spurts of time, and not all of them were violent. The ones that were—like the very first one with Amanda Erikson—I only knew about because people filled me in afterwards. Because I woke up from my stupor covered in blood and I dreamed about it later, saw what my eyes hadn't seen in the moments I gutted those people with hands that may as well have not been my own.

Remembering is always the worst pain. And not because of the innocence I've unduly punished. I don't care much for the lives I've ended.

My aversion to violence goes beyond what people think. Yes, I dislike blood. The smell, the feel, the seeping inky look of it. Frankly, I just don't have the stomach for it. But violence is almost always an extreme display of emotion. An explosion. Why resort to that when an issue can be fixed by cleaner, less degrading methods? I find it pathetic. The utter loss of control. 

Violence in my world is either calculated, clean, and behind the scenes—or it's nothing I want part of. If I want to strike fear and obedience in men's hearts, I outmaneuver them. I don't need to kidnap and mutilate their wives; instead I make sure they know that I can. I show them my army and I make sure they know I'm not strong because of the evil my hands commit, but because of my genius that inspires my men to obey my orders at any cost. To lay down their lives for me, one by one, the second I ask them to. 

Ultimately, a leader who resorts to senseless and exaggerated violence will reveal more of his weaknesses than he should care to reveal. He'll show people he can be swayed by emotion. 

So I don't like to remember what I did in my blackouts. Not only is it the worst image I'd want to send to my men and my enemies, but it may as well be a punishment personally crafted for me. To have some part of me commit such senseless, shameful acts.

Despite the horrible gripping panic that comes from the blackouts, the empty gaps in my memory where I know I inflicted irreversible pain but just can't remember how or on who—it's better than remembering.

I don't want to remember some things. Some things are better buried. Memory can oftentimes only be the interminable repetition of pain. And it's the one element of control I will give up. The one thing I will surrender on my knees, with my head bowed in capitulation.

As the rain falls, I'm reminded of the last time I was stuck in a storm like this. I recall that night well, the dizzying panic of it. Of thinking that everything would be lost. Feeling completely and utterly hopeless. Crashing into that diner with the shame of failure weighing heavy on my soul, my brothers' lives hanging in the balance. I've never felt like that since. I swore to myself I never would. 

Even now, despite less than dignified appearances, it's not at that point. Things are not hopeless.

They're not. As long as I have breath in my lungs, fight in my body.

There are things I need to figure out, problems I'll put my mind to once this pain dulls into something bearable.

One, two, three, four...

I count my breaths, each expansion of my chest. It's something I started doing as a child whenever I felt like I didn't belong in my own body. A resonating reminder of I'm alive, I'm here, I'm alive, I'm here...

And as I let the headache run its course, I find myself for some reason thinking about how the last time I was stuck in a storm like this, I had all three of my brothers by my side.

♛

By the time I'm able to start making my way back, it's almost three in the morning.

Thankfully, I can quickly discern where I am. I seem to be just an hour's walk outside of town, but of course being in the mountains, anywhere even slightly out of town is immediately in the middle of nowhere.

In my less than ideal condition, the walk takes around three hours instead of one.

My muscles ache something fierce by the time I spot the telltale narrow streets and buildings of Rhinebeck. I'm bedraggled, still wet—although thankfully the rain stopped at the beginning of my trek—practically a zombie, and numb to the bone. Everything is so cold that it feels like my very blood has frozen in my veins.

I stumble into the elevator of my building. There's not a soul around to witness my disgrace, the sun just beginning to rise.

Just a short amount of time remains until I need to deliver on my threat to Vivienne—if I haven't already.

It's something I've been turning over in my mind obsessively. With each step I've taken, the question has pounded at my temples: have I already killed Vivienne Lee? It's the sole reason I haven't collapsed. I need to see. I need to be faced with the truth of whether she'll be dead or alive when I get upstairs.

It's something for my thoughts to latch onto as I try and bring on the flashbacks.

The inevitable flashbacks.

The way blood would look on her skin, how it would stain the dark, melted honey of her neck. Her body bent at all unnatural angles, that mass of hair strewn around an empty face, eyes open and staring, dead, into nothing. Lips cold, pale, and cracked.

If I killed her, the images will be upon me soon. I'll remember each and every moment of it. I'll feel it too, as if I'm reliving it.

Coming to the conclusion that I needed to get rid of her was overwhelmingly simple. She's the only one who has any idea of the events that jeopardize my life here. She's frustratingly stubborn, practically an open book, and noisy. Everything about her—her life—is noise. Her gaggle of rowdy friends, her job, even the bracelets she wears that clink together with every movement, her heels on the floor, her cat, her damn laughter that bleeds through my walls.

While she may not have told everything to her friends yet, she's not the kind of woman I can have knowing any of my business. And with the volatile nature of my sanity, it's getting to the point that I need to just do it intentionally before the other part of myself does it unintentionally. 

It will be faster for her that way. More painless. The logic of my decision simply can't be ignored. 

But what also can't be ignored is the fact that when I picked up my phone to alert one of my men of the assignment, I couldn't do it. It was the idea of someone else touching her. I knew I had to do this myself, for some reason.

I will analyze my reasoning after I get some rest. 

The elevator doors slide open, but I don't move. If I haven't already killed her, and if she hasn't cleared out of her apartment, I'm exactly eighteen minutes late in delivering on my promise. Maybe it's better to have done it already, so I can say I've remained a man of my word. Maybe the flashbacks won't ever come. Maybe she's just gone. Maybe it wasn't even a mess. Maybe I was clean. Took care of it for good.

Done. Not another thought to be spent on her.

I don't know why I can't move.

The doors begin to slip shut and I shoot out a numb hand to stop them. Like creaky, rusted machinery, my limbs begin to obey me. I round the corner, seeing nothing in the hallway. No blood. No signs of struggle. Nothing at her door or mine. Everything is quite normal—from the outside.

A glance at my watch tells me I'm twenty-three minutes tardy now.

Twenty-four, twenty-five... my body eventually leans into the wall, halfway between both our doors, and in a move that I don't consciously tell it to do, slides down until I'm sitting on the floor. Real, natural exhaustion has my eyes drooping and my body weak, even as shivers roll through my frame. I need to get warm soon.

But is she gone? Have I killed her?

I can only look between both our doors. Paralyzed for some reason, unable to press on. In this rare moment of weakness I'm helpless to make the decision to be faced with reality so I wait, pathetically, helplessly, for reality to decide it wants to face me.

I'm fifty-three minutes late and the flashbacks still haven't come.

Suddenly knowing I cannot sit still for a moment longer, I bring my exhausted body to stand. Sitting locked in the same position for so long did not do myself any favors, and black spots swim in my vision.

Noise from somewhere, muffled, alerts me to an impending presence. Getting louder suddenly. It's the fumbling with a lock. Vivienne's doorknob turns, the door swinging wide open. Her leg appears first, long and lithe, followed by her ass. She drags something outside, huffing with the effort.

"I'll be a sec, Shiv!" she hollers back into her apartment. "Let me just take this outside before it stinks up my entire fucking living room. I've never seen him shit this much. Do you think I should take him to the vet?"

She straightens, dusting off her hands. She freezes when she sees me, a startled gasp falling from her lips.

Her lips which are very much not cold, pale, and cracked.

They happen to be a warm, glazed rose color today.

The last thing I see before weakness completely overtakes me and slips a cold, dark sheet over my eyes is her rodent-resembling cat blinking at me judgmentally from the inside of its litter box.

Then I'm falling into a sweet oblivion of nothingness, which happens to be right at the feet of a woman I was supposed to kill fifty-six minutes ago.

It really has not been my most dignified day. 

♛

I'm reaching the end of my pre-written chapters so I'll be switching to weekly updates for this book (crying, sobbing) as I need more time to write. But the next chapter is coming on Monday (because obviously I don't wanna start NOW) and from then on, Mondays will be update days. 

- G