The Villain Duet by Bella J.

Chapter 16

Elijah

Every day I recited the same sentence over and over.

I’m not crazy.

I’m not crazy.

I’m not crazy.

I wasn’t crazy. Harley was Ellie. Ellie was my little sister. But Roland kept telling me otherwise. I expected these kinds of lies from a bastard like him, but what I didn’t understand was how they got Ellie to lie. How he brainwashed Ellie into playing along, pretending she was Harley. My stepsister. That monster’s flesh and blood.

Maybe it wasn’t Ellie. The girl Roland brought in here the other day sure looked a lot like her, but he didn’t allow me to get close to her. Maybe it was a trick of the mind, my subconscious so damn desperate for Ellie to be alive I only saw what I wanted to see. I had to get Roland to let me see that little girl again so I could make sure.

What would have been worse?

Ellie pretending to be Harley, proving that Roland had brainwashed my little sister somehow?

Or Harley not being Ellie at all, proving that Roland killed her exactly the way I remembered it—throwing her body against a wall as if she were a puppet?

My stomach curdled at the thought, and I had to get up and move. Pace. Walk up and down from one wall to the other, trying to forget about the memories that crawled across my skin like insects, trying to find a way in so they could infect me. Turn me into rotten flesh like my mom.

I stood in front of the window and stared out on the street. The neighbors’ gardens and driveways needed cleaning. But I no longer had a reason to get blisters on my fingers from working for money so I could feed Ellie.

A man walked up to the stop sign across the road carrying what looked like a guitar case. I sat down on the windowsill and watched him as he adjusted his classic striped beret hat, wiping snow from the shoulders of his gray coat. He was probably one of those street performers, about to play his guitar, hoping someone would stop and drop him their change.

“Elijah?”

I looked up at the sound of my mom’s voice. It was the first time I had seen her since the day she refused to help me save Ellie, playing along with Roland’s scheme to cover up the truth.

Her hair was a mess, her eyes framed with dark circles and lines a thirty-eight-year-old woman shouldn’t have. There was almost nothing left of her—just a sack of pathetic bones and broken dreams.

She walked in and picked up the bucket I used to pee in.

“Is Roland tired of cleaning my piss?” I glowered at her. “Now he’s sending you to do it?”

“He’ll be here soon. Go take a shower.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Go take a fucking shower, Elijah. You stink. This fucking room stinks.”

“I don’t care if I stink. I’m crazy, remember?” I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall. “You’ve been smelling like vomit and piss for as long as I can remember. Maybe we are the same.”

Her tired eyes flashed, and she walked up to me, nostrils flaring, lips curled and exposing her decayed teeth. “You little bastard.”

She hit me, her palm leaving a red-hot sting on my cheek. “Ungrateful little shit.”

“Ungrateful?” I didn’t cower away. At the age of ten, I was already taller than she was. “Tell me, Mom. What should I be grateful for, exactly?” I stepped up to her, and she inched back. “The fact that you haven’t been a mother to Ellie and me since Dad died?”

“Elijah.”

“The fact that you chose drugs over us? Getting high rather than feeding your own children?”

“Shut up,” she warned with a hiss, yet continued to slither back as I stalked closer.

“Or should I be thankful that you allowed your psycho husband to kill Ellie, and pretend like I’m the crazy one?”

Her bottom lip trembled, her eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears. Usually when Ellie’s eyes saddened, tears slipping down her cheeks, I’d feel this immense need inside me to comfort her. To do whatever I could to make whatever was hurting her okay again. But with my mom, staring at her sorrow-filled irises…I felt. Nothing.

There wasn’t a glint of sympathy or compassion that shimmered inside me for a mother who was nothing more than wasted space. My heart was as black as her soul, and as dead as the love she hadn’t shown either Ellie or me.

Her back hit the wall, and she dropped the bucket of piss on the wooden floors. The stench was horrid, but not as vile as this woman’s face in front of me. It felt good to see how intimidated she was with me standing an inch from her, glaring at her like she was the spawn of satan. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew half of her paranoia was thanks to the poison she injected into her veins. Ellie and I and endured countless nights of her crying and screaming, thinking there were people after her—monsters trying to cut her ankles off. It was terrifying to witness it, but now I loved the memory of seeing her like that.

Scared.

Panicked.

Sick.

“I know what you and Roland are trying to do, trying to convince me that I’m crazy so you can cover up whatever it was you did to Ellie.” I watched her, studied her, hating every contour of her face. “At least being crazy has its perks. I can kill you and blame it on the voices inside my head.”

“What did you just say?”

Roland towered in the doorway, the red T-shirt he wore barely covering his belly, his faded jeans torn at the seams.

“Did I hear you correctly? Did you just threaten your mother?”

I inched back, narrowing my eyes as I regarded him with caution. It was one thing to be able to intimidate a woman as weak and timid as my mother, but Roland was a completely different threat. I’d been on the receiving end of his big hands and hard fists before. The man was a mountain of malice, and he could easily kill me…as I suspected he did Ellie.

Roland’s eyes glowed like a predator’s in the night, and a low growl tore from his throat as he launched forward, grabbing me around my neck. It was just like that night, the night he took Ellie from me. His fingers bit into my skin, pressing down on my throat, causing me to choke and gasp for air.

“I’ve had enough of you, boy. I have tried everything I possibly can to help you, but clearly you do not want to be helped.” His grip tightened, and my feet lifted off the ground. “I can tolerate your insane accusations of murder, killing someone who doesn’t even exist—”

“Ellie is real!” I clawed at his arm.

“I can deal with just about anything you throw our way, boy, but I will not stand by and allow you to threaten your mother.”

“Screw you,” I spat out. “Kill me. Do to me what you did to Ellie. I don’t care, you hear me? I don’t care anymore.”

I wanted to die.

For the first time ever, even after all the hell Mom had put us through, I finally stepped on that ledge wanting to tip over. Fall. And just…vanish. If I couldn’t be where Ellie was, I didn’t want to be anywhere at all.

Roland slammed me onto the bed, air rushing from my lungs as his arm pressed down on my chest so hard, I was sure my bones would crack at any moment.

“I’ve had it with you, you crazy piece of shit.”

I kicked and clawed, fighting him with every ounce of strength I had. Not because I wanted to survive, but because I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to tear his flesh off and watch him bleed, witness the life drain from his eyes.

He snaked his thick fingers around my throat. “You should have died, too. You should have died with him. At least then your mother would have been rid of you, you fucking psycho bastard.”

“What are you talking about?” I choked out, my hands wrapped around his wrist, trying to pull his hold from my neck.

He leaned down, spit spraying from his dry, chapped lips. “Fuck knows why God decided you had to survive that car wreck. You should have gone to hell with your father that night, along with that fucking demon inside you who helps conjure up these damn lies.”

“What?” I snapped, trying to turn so I could see my mom, who simply stood to the side and watched as Roland choked me. “Mom, what is he talking about?”

Roland’s fingers tightened, and my lips parted as I struggled for air.

“Mom…what…”

Darkness flickered across my vision, my lungs burning to take a breath. It started at my toes, the cold spreading up my legs, turning every muscle in to ice. My mind screamed at me to move and to breathe. I could feel the adrenaline pulsing in my veins, but my body was numb. Uncooperative. Slipping away.

Dying.

I could still hear Roland spitting fire with his anger, but I kept looking at my mother, wanting her face to be the last thing I saw before I died. No amount of flames or torture throughout infinity would have been able to wipe her face from my mind. I wanted to make sure I remembered what she looked like right here, right at this very moment as she watched me die. One day I’d see her again in hell, and I would watch the devil skin her, witness her eternal suffering while thinking of this exact moment.

The moment she didn’t save me.

The cold reached my chest, and my arms went numb, falling down beside me. I closed my eyes and saw Ellie’s beautiful, innocent little face. I knew I wouldn’t be joining her in Heaven. No child whose mind was filled with so many murderous cruel thoughts could ever walk past the Pearly Gates. But I would never forget her, and I would never forgive myself for not being able to save her.

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” I whispered with my last breath, finally surrendering to the dark.

A scream tore through the silence of my thoughts—a soul-crushing, horrifying shriek. The pressure on my chest was gone, the cold melting away as my lungs expanded. I gasped and sucked in a breath, my hands touching my throat as the oxygen burned its way down.

The darkness dissipated, and I could see the terror that paled my mom’s face. A thud sounded, and I shot up as Roland’s body hit the floor, blood oozing from the back of his head. Thick, dark, crimson liquid spread through the wooden floor’s crevices, his hair and shirt soaked in blood. My heart pounded, but it wasn’t fear. It wasn’t panic.

It was…exhilarating. Seeing Roland’s corpse, knowing he was no longer here to make my life a living hell, but instead he was now burning in it, made me feel more alive than I ever had. I could feel it on my skin, the way my insides fluttered with adrenaline, my mind processing the scene in front of me with a rush.

“Please don’t hurt me.” My mom’s desperate pleas grated at my spine like fingernails on a chalkboard.

I jumped off the bed, and in the doorway stood the man with the classic striped beret and gray coat, holding a gun in his hand. It was the man I saw on the corner earlier, the man who carried the guitar case.

His unfamiliar presence filled the room as if he owned it, his large frame built to intimidate.

“Who are you?” I stepped over Roland’s dead body without blinking.

The man placed his finger over his lips, touching his mustache, gray-blue eyes peering from underneath his beret. Maybe I was a fool, but I didn’t fear him. I was drawn to him and the power he bathed in. The mystery that radiated off him. How he just walked in here, killing Roland without blinking, as if he had the authority and the right to take a life. Everything about this very scene captivated me, as if something inside my head had slid into place, and I found myself. Knew who I wanted to be.

I wanted to be…him.

My mom cried, and I looked her way as she slid down the wall like the pathetic mess she was. Her eyes were wild, glazed, her left arm raw, scabbed and bruised from her constant drug abuse. I would have pitied her if I weren’t on the receiving end of her destruction.

The man held out his hand, revealing a syringe in his palm. I knew what it was. I had lived with a junkie long enough to know what heroin looked like. I also knew what the silent man was saying, what I needed to do.

He knew.

He didn’t know me, but he knew.

She had to pay. My mother. She had to atone for what she did to me. To Ellie. It was the only way; I could feel it in my blood. The need to try and right all the wrongs this miserable human being had caused.

I took the syringe and turned before crouching in front of her, my eyes level with hers. There was no life, no soul, just an empty vessel of broken dreams and shitty choices.

“Please,” she begged, tears and snot dangling from her chin. It was clear as daylight that she was high, her mind no longer present. But she felt the fear. She felt the panic. The terror. “Don’t let him hurt me.”

Music started playing, coming from my mother’s room. It was an orchestral tune I didn’t recognize, but I instantly loved it. I couldn’t explain it, but the music sounded as if it was composed for this moment, meant to be played while I looked into my mom’s bloodshot eyes, her lips parted as violent sobs poured from her miserable existence.

The syringe was almost weightless inside my palm, but carried so much weight, and I knew the only way to be rid of it—to be rid of the load—was to do this one thing.

I eased forward, gently taking her arm in my hand. My mom whimpered, but her tears seemed to have subsided.

“Where is Ellie, Mom?” I stroked her skin along the inside of her elbow. “Where is my little sister?”

“Ellie? No. No. No, Ellie.” Her words came out with panicked breaths. “Elijah.”

“Where is Ellie?” I yanked her arm, my patience wearing thin.

“No, no, no. Ellie. It’s not real.”

“You’re lying!” I snapped, and she closed her eyes, rolling her head from side to side against the wall. “You bitch!”

My anger fueled my actions, and I pulled her closer, placing the tip of the needle against the vein in her bruised arm. Some of the wounds oozed from infected flesh, but I felt nothing.

No compassion.

No sympathy.

No heart.

“This is for me,” I said, piercing her skin as I slid the needle under her skin. Her eyes met mine, and there was this moment of profound truth. Surrender. There was no doubt that she could have easily overpowered me. She could have stopped me…if she wanted to, but her addiction had robbed her of all her strength, her fight, her will to live. A part of me wondered if she always knew this would be how it all ended.

As I looked into her glazed eyes, I applied pressure to the syringe. “This…this is for Ellie.”

The world paused, and time stood still. It was as if the universe knew this moment would be a memory I’d keep returning to every day of my life.

“Elijah,” she whispered. “I’m…sorry.”

My heart clenched, the orchestra playing in the background reaching its peak. “It’s a little too late, Mom.”

She closed her eyes, and her head lolled to the side. Her chest was still moving, but soon her shallow breathing would stop…for good.

I felt nothing. No pain. No tears. Nothing. Within the span of minutes, I had gone from a twelve-year-old boy who wanted nothing more than to find his sister, to a coldhearted killer who didn’t feel the faintest amount of regret while watching my mother die.

I straightened, the strange man appearing in the doorway once again. His scrutinizing gaze dropped to my mother, his face darkened with hard lines. It seemed like he hated her almost as much as I did, and I liked it. That alone convinced me that I could trust him.

“Can I come with you?”

His expression remained unchanged, and for a second I feared he’d say no. What would I do then? Where would I go? What would happen to me?

He looked at my mother, unconscious or dead—it was all the same to me—then back at me. All it took was one nod, and my entire life changed. One simple act, and my future got altered.

The only thing I took with me that night was Ellie’s music box. The one thing that reminded me that I wasn’t crazy. That Ellie was real.

One day…I’d prove it.