Page 63 of The Truths We Burn

Forgotten.

All sense of self has evaporated.

I’ve become this sort of hollow well. The only coins dropped inside are pills that echo within the walls of my core, reminding me that the only thing that fills me is emptiness.

“Visitors? For me?”

I’d been here for eight months. two-hundred and forty-three days. thirty-four weeks. and five thousand, eight hundred and forty hours.

There has never been a single soul come visit me.

Not my arranged ex-fiancé, my mannequin friends, my father sure as fuck hadn’t walked through those doors, and my mom, well, last I knew she was states away engaged to someone with more money and a small life expectancy.

There’s no one who cared enough to stop by and check on me. Once I was thrown into this place, they threw away the key.

After what I’d found out, because of what I know now, I had mentally prepared to spend the entirety of my life here. They won’t let me out, and even if I do get out, they’ll kill me before I had a chance to do anything with my life.

The sad truth is, I’m actually fine with it.

While I’m inside here, at least I can convince myself that Rose is alive.

Death had snuck into our lives and severed the bond between us.

One second I was a twin, and the next, I wasn’t.

No one prepares you for that. For what it feels like when the other half of your soul dies. When the person you came into this world with leaves before you do.

It’s hard to explain, but it’s like there’s a phone constantly ringing inside my chest with no one to pick up the other line.

All I have left is the guilt. It’s what haunts me at night, keeping my insomnia working.

Incessant guilt for being alive while she rots in the ground.

I’m getting served cold oatmeal every morning, playing checkers with myself, while maggots consume whatever is left of her corpse.

“Sage, hello? Sage, are you feeling okay?” The nurse snaps her fingers in front of me. “I said yes, you have visitors. Your father and his friend. They brought you outside breakfast. You should be excited.”

My father? And his friend?

It’s almost a contradiction.

My father doesn’t have friends, and he knows better than to visit me. Even if he wanted to, he knew I would stab him.

It was the last thing I promised him. The last thing I promised Rose even if she hadn’t been alive to hear it.

If I was ever given the opportunity, I wouldn’t hesitate to end his life, and it would be brutal.

I’ve had a long time to think about how I’d do it. Those thoughts are the only thing that bring me real joy.

Thinking about the way he’d look, begging for his life as I press a knife to his throat. I’d give anything to see the way the light in his eyes would drift away as my hands tighten around his throat.

There are millions of ways to do it and narrowing it down is practically impossible. None of them feel right—death feels like too much of a reward for what he did to Rosie.

Although our access to the internet here is restricted, we can read, and I’d done my best to use the facility library to find out what’s the slowest way of killing someone. The most painful, the most graphic, the most aggressive.

No matter how dark or how twisted it got, none of it seemed to be the answer to what he had done. Even being eaten alive by dogs felt too humane.

“Are you sure it’s my father and you haven’t gotten it confused?”