The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

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My father writes me letters.

Articulate, well-structured accounts of what his days are like. How they drag by and what he spends his free time doing. Sometimes, it feels like he’s merely on a superficial vacation on a stranded island.

That’s how regular the conversation is.

If someone else were to pick them up and follow his cursive writing to the very last line, they would never suspect he was locked inside of a concrete box biding his time on death row.

That’s how normal he is. How normal he has always been.

When will society learn that the monsters of the world are not ones with yellow teeth and sharp claws? How many documentaries must we watch until we see the truth, see us for what we really are?

We are the leaders of the free world. Your neighbor who hosts summer BBQs, husbands with families, politicians, doctors.

We don’t live underneath your bed or in your closet—that’s too easy. It’s not complex enough for us.

No, we stand in the daylight of your homes, out in the open. Examining your lives, learning every single day how to chameleon ourselves into what you deem a “good person.” The kind of person you trust, the person you let inside your home for coffee, the person you least expect to ruthlessly murder you on your bedroom floor.

The longer it takes for humanity to comprehend these things, the more of an advantage we have over them.

The earth gives beneath the weight of my walk. Mud tints the sides of my Dior derby shoes, and I am already planning on throwing these away as soon as I can get them off my feet.

I do not like being contaminated. Clutter and dirt physically repulse me.

I live for cleanliness. Organization. Structure.

White satin sheets, white blanket that is bleached on Sundays at precisely ten in the morning. A strict workout that occurs every day just before sunrise. The same breakfast, the same routine, an unwavering agenda that I never stray from.

My life is a series of skillfully designed moments. Everything I do, everything I say, has an objective.

Why waste time, breath, money on something that isn’t?

Much to my distaste, I wade through the trees anyway. Because there is something I need to…dissect.

I sense a summer breeze brush across my face, a hint of a floral scent that is overrun by the musky scent of pine. These are things I notice but don’t feel. Not the way most people do.

The forest begins to open up, the dated mausoleum catching the sun. All those people are forgotten, rotting inside. It’s a shame they never removed the bodies.

Just outside the door to the macabre structure, I see what I have come here for.

She’s kneeling on the wet ground, little yellow rainboots peeking out from beneath. That horrendous fisherman’s hat she wears adorns the top of her head, doing a terrible job at containing those disobedient curls she very clearly does not maintain.

Lyra Abbott nauseates me.

Always walking around with dirt on her clothing, sticky fingers from those cherries she inhales by the dozen, and she has this strange fixation with insects that makes me ill. Everything she does, everything she is, counteracts me.

She is sodium, and I am potassium.

She is ammonium hydroxide, and I am acetic acid.

Seeing her live so proudly with her mucky habits and contaminated interests makes me want to drown myself in bleach. Scrub my eyeballs with it until I can’t see her. Until she is wiped clean from me entirely.

I don’t like the way she looks at me and how every time it makes me feel tainted.

The way she stood over me as Finn’s blood spurted from his jugular vein made me feel unsettled, soaking me in the thick, decadent, crimson liquid I’m so fond of. I might have enjoyed that moment had I not seen the look on her face.

People should not have that sort of reaction after killing someone.

She should have gone into shock, cried, passed out.

Not her.

No, Lyra looked relieved. Delight sparkled on her face, and a sense of calm descended on her shoulders. She enjoyed killing him, and I think if given the opportunity, she would do it again. It was that face that made me need answers.

I’d done a well enough job at blatantly ignoring her, even when I could detect her near me, feel her stare on my skin. I’m too curious to disregard her now.

Could she be on the other side of my spectrum?

Could my father have created another version of me with the heinous crime he’d committed against her mother?

I was a born psychopath. I knew that already. I’d accepted that a long time ago.

But she, could she counteract that?

The made sociopath.

Nature vs nurture.

Did being stranded for an entire day next to her mother’s lifeless and bloodstained body turn her into some form of anomaly? Had my father unknowingly connected us through his gruesome hobby?

A branch cracks beneath my feet, and she turns around to investigate the sound.

Her body freezes, and I grin coldly.

We are all six minutes away from death every time we wake up.

Breathing resets that clock.

I am the hands that stop it.

“I think it’s time we finally had a chat, my dearest phantom.”

The End