Alter Arlo

by Nordika Night

Arlo Thorne was a monster. And he was the worst kind of monster because he didn’t understand that he was one.

Karma was a bitch, and Fate was a jokester.

“I hate that you fucked him,” Zade finally said. “I hate that you fucked him so good that he wrote this.”

“I am chained to freedom.” “Isn’t freedom supposed to be a good thing?” “Not when you want to belong to someone.” “Who do you want to belong to?” “Nothing.” Me. I was nothing.

“I haven’t swum in this lake since he died. I’m afraid that it’d pull me under and drown me just so I could be with him.”

Wherever this life took us, we’d go together because we were two pin-pricked voodoo dolls, tied together, feeling each other’s pain in different places.

“Good and bad are subjective. Good people do bad things for good reasons. Bad people do bad things for reasons that are good to them.”

Literally and metaphorically. Spiritually? Fuck, all the ways.

He’s psycho!” “You psycho, Kei?” Cadoc asked. “For you,” Keiran answered Cadoc. “But not for this.”

“What if it kills me?” “I’ll resuscitate you.” “And bring me back as a sane man?” “Yes, just so I can turn you crazy,” Keiran said, a cackle following.

I wanted to live in his delusion and forge new realities where it was perfectly normal to have a three-way relationship with a nightmare, a ghost, and a dead man walking. Who fucking said I couldn’t?

“Do you see that we are not the same? That life can move in different lanes and still get to the same place? That baggage can be heavy, but it strengthens us to carry it? That light and dark are but shades of grey. You, Cadoc, are our shade of grey.”

The last thing I needed was to have to watch Zade self-destruct while I was also self-destructing; the world, old or new, wasn’t ready for our second shot at grief.

A shitty life as a criminal in a cutthroat world didn’t sound so bad when I had my stalker and my dead boyfriend’s twin by my side.

it didn’t much matter because if Cadoc died here under the building we called home, I’d bury myself with him to walk in the next life at his side.

“You telling me you love me, Kei?” My heart pattered out of control. “I’m telling you I’ll hunt you forever and howl at you for eternity.” So, love then. I smiled, happier than I’d been in…years. “You make the trip to insanity fun.”

“Ew!” Rosie shrieked. “There’s people on my boots!”

“Now we’re bound together for eternity. I will walk through your dreams, haunt your nightmares, stalk you in the waking world and bring you to my otherworld. You will never escape me.”