Chapter 5
594 Words
He froze at my voice, weak as a dying breath. "Larry... look at me one last time..."
Against his own will, he turned.
I smiled at him, blood welling from my lips. "Remember whose death you're witnessing."
As my pupils dilated, I breathed my last.
"......Jessica?"
Morris hammered the horn. "Move! Jennette can't wait!"
Larry turned decisively, and the military vehicle rolled over my loose hair as it vanished in a whirl of snow.
When Tyler's group returned, I was already wiping away the stage blood.
Kneeling in the snow, his voice thick with tears, he said, "Miss! Why must you go this far?"
Staring at the horizon where the car had disappeared, I clutched a handful of blood-stained snow. "Come. It's time they felt what real pain is," I said with cold determination.
Snow kept falling, as if trying to bury all the world's filth.
After getting Jennette to the hospital, Larry returned to that frozen wasteland. His boots crunched through the snow, the bandages he'd stolen from the hospital still clutched in his hand. What was the point? It was useless now that she was gone.
"Jessica?" His call echoed across the empty whiteness.
Only the wind wailed in reply.
He staggered suddenly, his military overcoat stained with slush. When his adjutant approached, he shoved him violently. "Go! All of you—search the perimeter!"
As the soldiers scattered, he fell to his knees, clawing at the snow with his bare hands, oblivious to his bleeding nails. "Jessica... you'd better not be lying to me..."
When the flames consumed us in our past life, I had tricked him. Pushing him toward the wall, I smiled. "Just jump, Larry. I'll be right behind you."
Instead, the roof beam fell, and he watched me burn.
"Young Marshal!" The adjutant's cry pierced the air. "There's blood here!"
He lurched forward, only to find shredded cotton batting—the remains of the shabby quilted coat he'd forbidden me to wear.
"Keep searching!" His voice shook. "Find her—dead or alive!"
Morris's car screeched to a halt. "Have you gone mad? Jennette's losing the baby, and you're out here digging in the snow?"
Larry didn't look up; he merely mumbled, "She's dead."
"So what if she's dead? That trash could never compare to Jennette's child!" Morris snarled, kicking the cotton wadding aside.
Larry lunged and seized him by the throat. "Say that again."
"I'm just telling the truth!" Morris cackled wildly. "Have you forgotten how she latched onto you like a leech? If not for her wretchedness, Jennette would've been mine years ago!"
The two men tussled in the snow like rabid dogs fighting over carrion. Ultimately, Larry commandeered Morris's car and raced like a madman toward the burial pits.
Larry mumbled to himself as he drove, "Jessica was always terrified of the dark... I have to get her home..."
The wind at the mass grave slashed like knives. Staggering between corpses, he clawed through snowdrifts with frozen fingers. "Not this one... not this one..."
At daybreak, he halted before a fresh excavation. There lay the bloodied opera gown—the very one he'd forced me to wear for 'The Jewelry Purse.' A bullet hole punctured the fabric, its edges seared black, precisely where his warning shot had struck the day before.
"Ah—!"
He fell to his knees, clutching the costume to his chest. His howl sent crows fleeing into the icy dawn.
So, his bullet had indeed struck me. That final glance I gave him—this was the message I left behind.
- Writer
