My Turn

by Madilyn DeRose

I saw everything. She needed me, I needed her. She was never going to escape me. Alana Monroe was mine. Then, now, and forever.

“You’re right. If I did what was best for you, I would’ve ripped you from his arms a decade ago, but what good would it have done? You can’t even fucking look at me without seeing him. You’ll always cast me in his shadow and because of his endless disappointments, I don’t even get the chance to claw my way out.”

After this, maybe I’d stick a fucking tracker under her skin. I probably should’ve done it ages ago. Live and learn, I guess.

“Let me introduce myself, Alana. I am the one who owns you. I am your savior but also your undoing. I’m who you should fear when you hear something move in the middle of the night. Every creak of the floorboards should make your body tremble with my nearness. When your neck prickles and you feel like you’re being watched, I want you wet and needy because you know who lurks in your shadow.”

Turning human bodies into fertilizer wasn’t even that difficult of a process.

Word of advice: don’t tattoo your goddamn genitals. Second word of advice: don’t let a psycho tattoo your goddamn genitals.

Yes, it was so nice that I would bring the woman I loved to Thanksgiving with my family. In fact, if she ever tried to back out of it, I’d duct tape her, throw her over my shoulder, then chain her to a dining room chair so that I could force feed her mashed potatoes. At the end of it, I’d call her my good girl and she’d realize she was being needlessly obstinate.

“You just have no idea what it’s like to consume a man’s soul and for him to devour you in return. I breathe your air so I can have a taste of you. There’s no world where I could allow you to be in a situation that would put you at risk. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

They say that obsession grows, that it morphs into something dangerous and uncontrollable. I don’t know if that’s true. Things had been this way for a long time and I hadn’t done anything horrible.

Putting Alana above everything else in this world was the definition of our love. It was a pursuit that defied law and reason. If something was bad for her, I’d get rid of it.

Wasn’t that insane? She saw this damned neon mask and she fucking smiled. She chose to sleep around Erebus, to trust him while she was most vulnerable.

“I love you,” I said into her mouth. “I love you. I fucking love you. Until my dying breath, with my dying breath, after my dying breath.”