Prologue

November 15th

10 pm.

The despair finally got to me after one week, the drugs and treatment dissolving my resolve after much resistance and fights, and I actually started to see things in the very white and confined room I was in.

The shadows that were always in the corner, mocking me and laughing.

You are a failure.

You fell for his trick.

You are such a fool.

I laughed hysterically, mocking myself too because I had seen the signs but ignored them.

I had thought maybe I was just overthinking things, but here I was now, tied to a bed while they got to live my life forever.

"Ha ha ha ha ha," I laughed hysterically again, feeling myself start to go mad as the thoughts ran through my head again, and I scowled when a nurse came in to give me another dose of drug.

I wondered what it was.

A drug to make me actually feel better or a drug to make me mad.

Probably the latter since that is what they want, right?

I protested a little, feeling myself resist as she injected the liquid into my blood, and I felt its contents rush to my head right before I crashed out.

I fell unconscious.

Or maybe not, since it seemed to me like I was floating.

God, it felt good.

My arms felt light, and my brain...

Good, good.

I couldn't get that out of my head till my eyes popped open, I don't know how many hours later, and I blinked my eyes when I saw the room door open.

Huh?

A person was standing there.

All-black outfit.

Face cap and a nose mask.

I tried to move when he started to approach me.

Oh my God, no, they're going to kill me.

I couldn't move, though.

I couldn't talk either.

What's going on?

The person proceeded to inject me with some other liquid, and just like that, I was out again.

This time, not floating but actually getting surrounded by darkness, and it was dark all over again.

No.

****

The ground beneath me was moving.

Wait, no, that doesn't feel like the cold, hard surface of the bed where they had kept me confined for days or the ground.

It felt more... cushiony.

I reached beneath me to feel whatever it was and gasped when I noticed my hand was free.

It wasn't tied down.

Neither my legs. I knew that when I moved it around.

Then where...

I opened my eyes to take in where I was and saw it to be a... car.

It was moving, and a man was driving it.

The same man who had injected me with something earlier.

Panic immediately flooded my chest.

They're going to kill me.

Get rid of my body and make the media I had committed suicide.

God no.

The rest was adrenaline.

My arms going around the driver's neck, tightening against it, squeezing and holding on tightly even as the car started to swerve dangerously.

I don't care.

I'm not going to go down like this.

Then boom, we hit the curb, the force throwing me back against the back seat, and I immediately reached for the door once I got myself.

"No. Juliette." The man seemed to shout as I made my way out of the wreck, and I ran into the woods nearby, making sure to never look back.

I wouldn't know if the guy ran after me, if there were more people after me, but I didn't stop until my legs gave way and made me collapse on the crunchy leaves and ground.

No one came to hold me.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Okay, I had made it.

They weren't after me anymore.

I think that thought made it easy for me to accept the darkness that started to surround me again, and I felt a single tear run down my cheek.

The last one that would ever run down for that bastard.

He had betrayed me and taken everything away from me, and even though it seems like he had won now, he had better be on his toes because I'm coming back for him.

And not just him, but everyone who had done this to me.

I'm coming back for blood.

I embraced the darkness.