Chapter Three
1005 Words
~JANICE~
Someone was screaming.
It was a raw, piercing scream, filled with so much pain that some distant part of my mind wondered how it hadn't knocked them over. That was when I realized that the scream was, in fact, coming from me.
And somehow, I was still standing.
I wished I wasn't. I wished I could fall over like I did at that hotel, succumbing to a different kind of poison. At that moment, I wished that I had never come back to life.
Phillip and that woman had hurried to their feet, staring at me. They looked ruffled, from their hair to their clothes to their swollen lips. Clearly, they'd been at it for a while. They didn't even have the decency to look guilty. All I saw in their eyes was annoyance at being interrupted. The woman ran one hand through her blonde hair, as if to draw attention to the fact that Phillip had done the same, then shot me a smirk.
"Is this her?" she asked Phillip, looking at me like I was a bug she wanted to step on.
I clapped a hand over my mouth, forcing myself to swallow my screams. They fell, a heavy weight into my stomach. My head had started throbbing.
"Yes, that's Janice Chambers," he replied.
The woman's smirk widened.
"I'm Angelina Myers," she said, those cat eyes glowing with mischief. "You can think of me as the superior version of you."
My heart was speeding up, every cell in my body poised for fight or flight. Images were rushing into my mind, of this woman standing over me, watching me die, talking about how she'd replace me. She poisoned me. She… murdered me. And now she's here with Phillip, and he's–
"Phillip!" I called, my voice rough. "How could you do this? How could you cheat on me with…" I glared at her through the tears filling my eyes, wishing I could call her what she was.
Murderer.
Psycho.
But I couldn't. She hadn't murdered me yet.
"...with this other woman?"
"Other woman?" Phillip replied, raising his eyebrow like I've said something ridiculous. "You're the only 'other' here, Janice. You're the one who barged in and interrupted us."
Those words, delivered so callously, rendered me speechless. My mouth kept opening and closing, but not a single sound made it out. Finally, I managed to choke out a whisper.
"You… you're saying…what are you saying? You're my fiance, Phillip!"
Phillip sighed, as if I was deliberately making trouble for him.
"This immaturity is exactly why I outgrew you," he said. "Clinging like a pathetic child, refusing to take a hint. You know, I was starting to think that I might need to get rid of you, so this is a fortunate turn of events, really. Not even you would be foolish enough to hold on after this."
The tears were coming faster now, too fast for me to wipe with my hands.
This was a nightmare. Even in the depths of my anxious, pessimistic mind, I couldn't have conjured a possibility this awful.
Phillip was cheating on me. Had been cheating on me for a while, clearly, with a woman who looked exactly like me. What did that mean? Had he only picked me because I looked like his lover–
No, don't think of that. I couldn't let myself spiral. There was a more pressing issue.
Phillip had mentioned getting rid of me. And with the way Angelina had asked her question, there's no doubt that they've talked about me before. They'd likely discussed me several times.
An awful realization was forming at the back of my mind. I wanted to reject it, wanted to reject that my Phillip would ever do such a thing. But he wasn't my Phillip, was he? He belonged to this Angelina woman. And if my gut was correct, two of them had conspired to kill me. Angelina might have carried it out alone, but they planned it out together. That's how she knew where and when to find me. No matter how hard a part of me resisted this explanation, I knew this was it. It was obvious now that I had thought about it, which of course didn't make it any less painful.
Phillip Jean was my enemy.
Unable to bear this any longer, I turned and ran. Out the front door, and out of Phillip's life. I didn't bother calling a Lyft this time, or even flagging down a taxi. I just ran and ran and ran, wishing I could vanish if I ran far enough. I saw people giving me strange looks as I dashed past, but nobody stopped me or said anything. Whatever they saw on my face was enough to keep them away.
Finally, my legs grew too weak to take me any further, and I stumbled into a random restaurant. There, I put my head down on a table and bawled my eyes out. I can't believe this. I can't believe that Phillip would do this to me. I had literally crawled back from the dead just to be with him, only to find out that he was the one who killed me. I felt like I was being crushed from the inside. So what did I come back for, then? I'd have rather died than experience this pain–
'No,' I thought defiantly.
Dying was exactly what they wanted me to do. And if I'd died, they would have gotten away with this. That was one of my dying worries, wasn't it? That Angelina would get away with what she did?
'So make sure she doesn't. Make sure neither of them do.'
Exactly.
If I had lost my purpose for this new life, all I needed to do was get another one.
I would dedicate this life to making Phillip and that b***h pay. They were going to regret the day they decided to hurt me.
'I will ruin them both, even if it's the last thing I do.'
- Writer
