Act 3 | Chapter 10

I gave Riley some privacy a little later that day. She probably needed it to calm herself down and contemplate everything that had happened to her. While I let the time pass, I sat in my room on my art stool and simply painted on another blank canvas. The music I was listening to help me calm down myself, and the brush I held danced around to the tune of the song. The can of red paint I hadn't used was finally opened again, and I was smearing the new paint over the white canvas to draw a large rose. Nothing too elaborate, but still something that I could paint that would take me some time to add detail too.

What I didn't expect was for all the paint to get on my hands. Though, when I thought about it some more it wasn't paint, to begin with. It didn't bug me though, and I kept going, eventually getting out some green and blue paint, and giving the flower a nice long stem that went down to the edge of the canvas, with a blue sky behind it. The stem wrapped around the finger of a hand, and pricked a part of the skin with its thorn, causing a small trickle of blood to seep out. I broke the rule of layering for painting, where you usually draw the background first, and then whatever over it, but I didn't care, instead of painting it all white, I only colored bit's of the painting to make it appear as though the white of the canvas was clouded and the sky was practically covered by them. When I finished an hour or two later, I stood up and looked at it from across my room. It looked good in my opinion, and I'm sure Mr. Mcvay would have been proud.

I couldn't help but noticed just how dirty my hands where. They were stained with red paint and only red paint. There was no sign of the green or the blue. It was only red. Blood. Hannah's blood. I shook my head and bumped my door open with my shoulder so I didn't have to get my knob all dirty, and did the same with the bathroom door. Thankfully, it wasn't fully shut, or else I might have to find other ways of opening the door without my hands. The warm water from the sink helped clean the paint off my hands. It swirled around the sink slowly getting closer and closer to the drain before swimming down into it and vanishing forever. My last bit of evidence now gone. I stood there for a minute once my hands were clean and let out a log and a tired sigh. It was starting to get dark out, and today had felt like one of the longest days in my life. Riley seemed upset, traumatized. I don't know if I can ever help her get better after she saw what I did. How I stabbed the shards of broken glass through the man's throat and killed him. His blood squirted onto my face afterward and stained it, that with the lighting of the ally, she must have seen me as a monster. But even then, she said she still loved me so maybe she forgives me, but just doesn't fully yet.

Everything had gone so well last week. I still remember how the rest of our first day went. When we were sitting in the dinner and waiting for our food to arrive after just getting to the city. By the time it did arrive, we were both starving. It was definitely bigger than either of us had expected. The burgers, both well cooked, where almost the size of the plates they served them on. So either they had small plates or just really big burgers. I grabbed mine with both hands and lifted it up to hold in front of my face. Some grease dripped between my fingers and onto the plate below.

"Oh," I said watching the grease drops fall.

"I might not be able to finish mine," Riley commented, picking it up and trying it out. She took a large bite into it and started to chew.

"Same. I don't know if I can finish this." I chuckled and tried it out for myself. To the restaurant's credit, this was definitely better than the burgers we had to make at the fast food places we both worked at. It took way too long for us to finish out food, and I didnt even finish my burger. By the time Riley finished hers, she just barely shoved the last piece in her mouth.

"How did you at all finish that?" I asked, tilting my head.

"I don't know, but I don't feel so good." Riley moaned.

"You want to go to the bathroom?"

"No, I'll be fine." She sighed, "I just need a minute to rest."

"Alright." I tried finishing my burger but just couldn't do it. By the time I was done eating, my hands were drenched in the slippery grease, as was Rileys. I had to stand up and walk to the bathroom to wash my hands and leave Riley unattended for a brief moment. The bathrooms in this place were not honestly that bad. They were definitely a lot cleaner than I expected. The walls were painted completely white, with the floor being texturized in the same color but alongside black tiles. It almost reminded me of the pizzeria flooring we had back at Bate's County. By the time I finished washing my hands, I went to go check on Riley. Sure enough, she hadn't moved an inch. Gently, I tried to shake her awake.

"Hey, wake up. We need to pay and get moving." She gave me a loud groan in response, and I simply rolled my eyes. "Come on!"

It took some time to wake Riley up and convince her to leave, but when I did manage to, we decided to spend the rest of our afternoon in central park. We walked through the streets and the park, looking at the thousands upon millions of people living there day to day lives. Some had dogs, others were couples. Kids ran around and played through the park, and it was actually kind of nice to watch. Riley would constantly glance over my way to see what my reaction was to the area around us, and most of the time it was me being nervous. I didn't like being around so many people, I just wasn't used to it. It's how we spent the rest of our day, and when the sun finally started to set, we made our way back to the hotel room.

I flopped down onto the bed, and let out a long sigh. Riley giggled and laid down next to me and pulled her phone out.

"You want to watch a movie for the rest the night?"

"Sure. If the WIFI here actually works."

That's the last thing I remember from that night at least. We stayed up, watched some horror movie about a cave and pepper cave jumping, and it was all just a lot of fun. Though, I don't know when Riley and I will get to have another day like that. Tomorrow? A week from now? Never? I dried my hands off with the towel and walked back to my room. Immediately after entering, I looked at my bed, where Riley had sat down. She was facing away from me and looking at the painting I had just finished.

"Oh. Hey?" I said, taking a step closer. Riley did not respond at first as she had been for the last day, but soon looked over at me and gave a small nod.

"Nice painting." She responded in a slow and tired voice.

"Thanks? What are you doing?"

"Just... sitting here." Riley said, looking back at the painting. I gave her a nod and went to sit down next to her. The two of us stared silently at the painting for some time before I finally spoke up. Maybe I needed help myself. This whole murder thing. I can't do it anymore, I know that, but now I really have to make sure it doesn't happen anymore. Maybe talking about it will help.

"I don't know what to do, Riley," I said in a low whisper.

"What'd ya mean?"

"I've... killed people. Maira, Hannah, that random stranger. I killed them." To be honest, admitting to it always felt hard. I didn't want to take credit for killing those people, but in reality, I did, and the only way I can move on is by admitting that I did wrong. I see that now. The more I thought about it, Maria, and Hannahs families must be worried about them. They'll never get to know what happened to their daughters, and will have to move on in there own ways. IT's strange. I regret leaving their families broken like that, but not actually killing those two.

"We," Riley stated, "We can get through this." She grabbed one of my hands with both of hers and squeezed it slightly. Riley went quiet after that before finally asking probably the hardest question to answer: "What did you do with Hannah and Maria?"

"..." There wasn't any way for me to sugarcoat it or dance around the details. I did horrible things to both of them, probably worst of Hannah now that I think about it. I needed to let it out though. Riley asked, and she wanted to know. I can't keep secrets from her anymore, I have to tell her. Get it off my chest, you know. So I did. I sat there for a long time and recalled every detail of what I did to the two girls. First Maria, how I cut her up, and stabbed her repeatedly, eventually killing her and burying her far away from here. Then to Hannah, who I stripped naked and slashed several times to drain as much blood from her body as I could. Riley looked over to the now empty can of red paint and put two and two together before closing her mouth and putting one of her hands over it. She looked like she was ready to puke.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Yeah, I just need a second." She replied, taking several deep breaths.

"You don't look okay?"

Riley didn't have time to respond. She gently pushed me out of the way and ran to the bathroom. Maybe I described too much because I could hear her vomiting into the toilet. I made my way back into the bathroom and crouched down beside Riley. She leaned her head over the toilet bowl and kept going. Yeah, maybe I went a little far.

"I'm sorry." I tried saying. "I shouldn't have-"

"It's fine, Zoey," Riley commented, taking a deep breath.

"No. It isn't. I did something. Something bad... and I'm sorry that you had to find out about it."

"L- Look. It's fine, Zoey. I've always been squeamish around real blood."

"Really? I thought with all the horror movies you've watched and all the fights you've gotten into you would at least be used to it."

"You see people play games and have a gun pointed to their head but you'd be scared shitless if a gun was pointed to your face in real life," Riley replied.

"I... guess. I kind of got over it. I wanted to see what blood really looked like. Things just kind of lined up for me."

After a moment of silence again, Riley asked an unexpected question that definitely caught me off guard.

"What was it like. Real blood?"

I raised an eyebrow before tilting my head and taking a deep breath. I could only respond with: "It was warm. Thick. Red. It felt weird... but it looked nothing like in the movies... it was... real."

"Okay, I don't want to know anymore." She groaned with a tone of regret in her voice.

"Sorry."

"I asked, it's fine." Riley weakly put a hand on my shoulder, "Listen. I may see you a bit differently, but that's not gonna change whether or not you're my girlfriend."

"You mean even after learning what I am... you still love me?"

"I mean.. it was still self-defense. Drastic self-defense but still self-defense." Riley commented, looking down.

"No. Even that I killed two people."

Three. But yeah, I can forgive you."

I let out a long sigh of relief and went to hug Riley. I pulled her close and gently whispered into her ear: "Thank you."

"I'll always love you, I promise." Riley smiled a small bit.