Oracle

Untitled Part 6

"I-I guess because I used it to cheat on shit. If I didn't think it would destroy my genius status, I probably would have gotten some psychiatrist."

"What about your parents?"

For the first time in years, I cast my thoughts back to the calm, average couple living back in Michigan. I loved them, of course, but I'd been separated from them when I went to college, and then again when I became a serial killer.

"They...accepted it. They called it an overactive imagination, then me making guesses and telling stories as I got older. When I started acing the tests and qualified as a genius, they were so relieved. They thought that I'd been making deductions and passing it off as magic to try and impress them. I don't think they wanted to consider what it might really be."

"Have you contacted them?"

"No. Of fucking course not. I've got people out for my blood, I can't risk wrapping them up into it. They've probably already had to move, or at least change their numbers." I felt my tear tracts bulge as I imagined what they thought of me. At the very least, they'd hate me for disappearing for years, at the worst they'd hold me accountable for what I'd done.

Why the hell shouldn't they? I'd killed dozens of people. Why shouldn't I be held accountable for that? I was infamous. People would know them as the parents of Lena ______, nothing else.

Sometimes when nothing was happening, the world seemed to slow down. And the past started to catch up. This was one of those times.

The faces of my victims flashed behind my eyeballs. Then they turned into the faces of my parents, proud of their only daughter. I thought of what my parents must have thought when I killed Anderson, when I threw away my entire life, everything they'd given me. What they'd thought when I broke Cal out of prison. What they thought when they understood I was never coming home again.

Icarus was silent, sensing my mood. He must have realized that he'd hit a nerve. His face was frozen now, the white light congealing in pools on his skin.

"I'm going to try and sleep." I told him, my head still whirring with thoughts. I rolled over, my eyes still staring into the darkness. I tried to relax my body, but every muscle was drawn tight. I lay, trying to lose my mind into my subconscious. But instead of sleep, a vision emerged and swallowed me whole.

Dirt. A flat plain of earth. Wet. Grass poking out of the ground like green fangs. A liquid, thin and ghostly, slipping between the blades. The hundreds of dark snakes moving forward. The cold air lifting the odor into the sky.

Echo standing behind the flood. Men creeping around her, silently pouring out more fuel. The fluid serpents merging into a single stream, flowing in one unanimous direction. The sniper's eyes tracing their path, winding away into the night.

The men stopping. The empty tanks, gently placed into the volatile flood. The group watching as the river stagnates into a swamp, drowning the grass under it's dark water.

A girl walking up next to Echo. Darkness parting around blonde hair. Young eyes washing over the chemical marsh, inspecting it with a professional's gaze.

"You sure this is worth it?" Sound pouring out from quiet lips.

Dark eyes watching her.

"It would be easier to just put a bullet in their heads while they sleep. You could even tie them up and burn them later. This is too risky."

A wave of silence washing over the spark of noise. The air, stifled and still.

"Oh fuck. You're scared of her."