Page 26 of Infamous

Time doesn’t heal.

It just kills you slowly. It peels you from the inside out until all that’s left is sorrow and regret.

It’s been ten years since they locked Lucian away. Years since his last wordsforget mecut me to ribbons and shattered my world.

And I tried. I really did. I scrubbed his voice from my head. Drowned the memories in vodka. Built a life out of ashes and pretended to call it living.

But it’s not a life. It’s survival on autopilot.

The silence of my apartment hasn’t softened. I go to work. I smile. I let strangers’ hands touch me like they have a right to me. None of it feels real. Because Lucian buried me with him the day they closed that cell door.

He’s rotting in a cage. And I’m rotting above ground, pretending to breathe.

And then tonight…tonight is the final nail in my coffin.

His name is all over the news again.

Lucian Cross.

In bold type, screaming across the television screen, revisiting the life of the notorious serial killer known as Ghost.

FORD PENITENTIARY IN FLAMES: DOZENS DEAD IN DEADLIEST PRISON RIOT IN STATE HISTORY.

The news anchor’s voice drones over footage of a fire - orange light licking the sky, smoke clawing its way into heaven. I read the crawl at the bottom of the screen:

Among the confirmed dead: Lucian Cross, 38. Known as the prolific serial killler, Ghost.

My heart stutters. Then claws. Then stops.

I can’t look away. Helicopters hover over the inferno, their spotlights cutting through smoke. Sirens wail. Men run. Bodies are covered.

I don’t breathe. I don’t blink.

The words fall like stones:

Body recovered in the wreckage of the South Dock corridor.

His death, if verified, closes the file on one of the state’s most infamous killers.

The screen blurs. My pulse isn’t a rhythm anymore - it’s a scream.

The reporter keeps talking, but I only hear the static between her words.

Lucian Cross…dead.

And just like that - I fall apart all over again.

I tearthrough every newspaper I can find, the pages trembling in my hands, crumpling under my grip.

Ink stains my skin. Black dust sits in the grooves of my fingers, but I keep going. Headline after headline, each one blurring into the next, screaming the same words in red and black.

I switch between channels on the TV, remote slick in mypalm. Every voice I hear, every new piece of information, leaves me drowning in my own despair. I wait for someone - anyone - to falter, to contradict, to tell me this isn’t real. But the news never comes.

Every station. Every face. Every polished anchor who used to spit his name like poison now says it like victory. They’re not reporting the news. They’re celebrating it. They’re dancing on his grave.

The room tilts. Their voices clang like iron bars, reverberating off the walls. I want to throw the papers, smash the television, scream until something gives - but nothing will change what’s already written.

Lucian Cross. Ghost. Dead.