I'm going to kill her.

The words sent involuntary shivers. My breathing hitched, and a fierce terror blinded me. Suddenly, Flynn's voice began to resonate restlessly in my ears, its tone creeping with rabid monstrosity. The more it ravaged my mind's expanse, the more terror it instilled in my heart. I could feel a tremble awaken down my spine, as that lone voice grew darker, deeper, plunging straight into my soul. The voice was oddly familiar, no, too familiar. Cold realization pierced me like a serrated knife through bleeding flesh.

The voice was my father's.

He was leaning in, his breath burning at the nape of my neck. My chin was flung up by an ominous jolt of his wrists, leaving the flesh of my neck exposed at his fingertips. His eyes grazed that tentative spot, his pupils burning with the essence of a murderer. Cold, ominous and foreboding.

He smiled.

"Tell me, should I kill you?"

I shook my head, tears cascading down my burning cheeks. Tremors caught my throat, choking me inwardly.

"No, please..."
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My eyes widened as the memory dissipated, replaced by reality. In the distance, Flynn's figure was lashed by wisps of wind as he plunged forwards, his leather jacket raised by the furious storm. The sunlight favored Flynn's rushing figure.

"Stop!" I cried.

The terrified woman was so close to Flynn's figure as he hurtled forwards, his movement brisk and unhesitant. As though accepting her fate, the woman slowed to a halt in the midst of flying grass, a single light basking her shadow. Her eyes watered, words forming in her mouth, as she looked up at the sky.

Help me.

There was a ghastly silence as the world held its breath, before Flynn plunged forwards, hands outstretched, straight towards the paralyzed woman.

Too late, too late-

A dagger was raised and leveled at the woman's neck. Flynn's other hand was on her shoulder, his seemingly impenetrable power restraining her struggle. Before it even touched her exposed throat, she screamed, an ear-splitting, inhumane sound.

I forgot to look away just as the knife plunged into the flesh of her delicate neck, drawing forth torrents of crimson. Flynn's eyes were ice and slits as he seemed to stare past the gory, red laces and into a gray, silken sky that now hung loose with slithers of orange light. He was so far away from me, but I swore I saw the lightest traces of a smile.

Instinctively, I touched my lips to see if my screams had escaped.
The lights bled across this desolate greenery, distant and merciless. I saw the last traces of words grimaced through the woman's mouth. A hopeless, inaudible sound. I wanted to turn around, for my eyes to unshackle the figure of the dying woman, but terror froze me in place. I saw flickers of excruciation clench her eyes, as she whispered her last words for Flynn to hear. I could not interpret her words, however mingled with trauma and melancholy. But Flynn's only response was a glassy laugh, a wicked curl of a smile, and all of a sudden, it hurted even to breathe.

"And why?" his mouth formed a grin taut with hatred. "Why should I?"

His head turned back, his eyes searching for mine, connecting with my horrified gaze. His cobalt eyes continued to hold me in place as he plunged the remainder of the dagger, its pallor surface now smeared with spurting blood, deeper inside her throat.

Red-hot pain and humiliation engulfed everything, weaving through the broken ice of my heart. Her death was so similar to that of my mother's, ushering intoxicating memories that tore through my mind. Guilt and heartache claimed me, my legs growing weaker as a hot shroud of remorse pinned me against its eternal walls.

Nothing was right about it at all, except the escalating pain.

"I'm sorry..." I whispered, "I'm so sorry..."

It was all my fault.

But she would never hear it now. Not her, nor my mother.

Flynn was approaching me, the lifeless body of the woman in his arms. The waves of his light copper hair shimmered, his face replenished with a shade of color. It was almost as if death had strengthened him, made him more powerful than before. He strode with a malicious prowess, oblivious to the fires of terror that crackled through my veins, filling my blood with lightning.

"You killed her." I gasped.

He only clenched his jaw. Looked straight past my swaddled figure as if I was never there in the first place. The flames of disgust building in my bones kindled torturously, and all of a sudden I wanted to twist the dirty smile off his face. Incinerate it in the fire blazing in my joints.

"Looks like I have one more body to bury." A drily humorous tone was seeping through his voice. I couldn't bear to look him in the eye; the monster brewing there terrified and repulsed me. He had the heart of a violent, rabid beast, and that reminded me of my own father.

This was wrong. Everything was wrong. The pain strangling my heart felt so real, I must be bleeding.

I grabbed the hem of his shirt, desperate to stop him from walking further. His reaction was instantaneous, escaping from my clasp and striding briskly away. I pressed my lips and this time imprisoned his arm with both hands. He released an irate sigh and turned back, dropping the corpse on the ground.

"Release me." His demand was fierce, dripping with a false sense of innocence. Anger brewed within my throat.

He hasn't realized the extent of what he has done.

"No." I responded coldly, my voice saturated in mounting vexation. A gust of wind slapped me across the cheeks and I'm suddenly overpowered by my senses, like a monster rising from an empty shell.

"You're disgusting." I stared hard into his crystal blue eyes, glimpsing my own grim reflection in them, one I no longer recognize. I waited a moment to allow the words to sink, before I raised my voice again. "You have no idea what you just did---"

He twisted around and suddenly his arms were on my shoulders, pushing me back fiercely. His gloved hands were burning on my back, the ones that had just touched the blood of a corpse. I shrank back, terrified, but his body trapped mine, till there were no spaces between us. Those bottomless azure eyes locked my limbs, until I felt nauseous, delirious, incapable of holding myself upright.
I was confined. Transfixed.

His breath brushed my cheeks, and I willed myself to shove him away from me, but found no strength. His whisper faintly grazed my ears, raised with the serrated edge of threat.

"You don't understand," he whispered coolly, "I'm just doing what I have to do."

He was breathing heavily, his thirsty arms enclosing around me like iron chains. I finally found the remainder of my power and pushed back, hard. He tripped, his arms releasing me, an expression of shock eating away at his features.

"Yes," I breathed, eyeing him coldly. "I don't understand."

He flinched and the muscles of his arm tightened as he turned around, his back facing me. He picked up the corpse of the woman and a rigid tension filled his limbs, before he strode away, silent.
Flynn doesn't give me one single glance for the rest of the day.
His avoiding gesture brought me vague reassurance, knowing that he won't talk to me or feel my body again. Yet my revulsion was fading, and a strange emotion plagued me, one that yearned for him to look at me, to answer the countless questions in my mind.
His words had made no sense.

Leaning away from me, Flynn began to sift through folds of dirt, harrowing deep until he reached the dinghy bottom of the barren land, and then placed the body deep within.

I raised my head to stare at the distance, fazed at the warmth of the lazuli sky which pulsed above me. I wanted Flynn to reply to my questions, I wanted him to tell me why he had chosen to kidnap me and bring me to such a place. I wanted to know exactly why he was murdering everyone else except me.

"Flynn." I called out. His body was bent over his toil, his eyes transfixed onto the earth. This time he doesn't startle, doesn't look back at my huddled form. Instead, he surfaced and ignored me as if I was never there.

He walked away and his gaze didn't waver, nor did it graze me. I was left stranded in an empty field, the brooding sky darkening around my lonely figure like frost. All around me was the intimidating nothingness, the impossible means of escape.

I laughed a sad laugh and followed his trail back to the attic.