Before the Sun

Chapter Nineteen- My Only Purpose

Kenny is cold but his touch burns. His hands are tangled in my knotted hair, raking through the mess as he coos meaningless nonsense. My voice crumbles beneath my cries, eyes searing with the salty tears blanketing them. I clutch at the damp material of his shirt, fingers clawing the fabric into my fists. My cheek lays on the surface of his chest, I listen to his heartbeat and the way it's beating a rhythm much too fast. It thumps and riots against his ribcage, yearning to be impossibly closer to me.

"He's in there."

I whisper as if the words frighten me to utter. Kenny's sight follows my pointed finger to the room across the foyer, the door slightly pried open with a shadow of darkness crawling out. He nods his head and unravels my hands from around his torso, pulling me into his side instead. I look up to him from my place tucked below his arm. It's the first time I really look at him- the dark bags hanging beneath his erratic eyes, his grown out stubble pinpricking the skin around his jaw. Maybe I've never looked at him under such magnification, such scrutinisation, but he's not Kenny. Theres not an ounce of the Kenny I remember lodged within the sick walls of his mind anymore. The longer I look at the bones and structure of his face, the less of a man he becomes. The longer I peer down the hollow tunnels of his eyes, the faster he morphs into the monster that curls into the corner of my mind.

Kenny nudges the door with his dusty boot, it creaks open with a mellow scream before clashing against the wall. He retrieves his phone from the back of his jeans, igniting the lifeless man on the floor in a cloud of dull light. He knows not to try the light switch hanging on the wall because he was the one to disconnect my home from the power source. It's a lazy slip up. Crouching down, he rolls Tank onto his back. Two empty eyes now peer back at him, blue skin and purple lips surrounding. I watch him and his expression, I await his reaction all to find nothing. He doesn't frown, he doesn't cry, he doesn't even blink. He feels nothing for the man he murdered. I wonder what number Tank was on the Tally of lives Kenny has taken. I wonder how normal the sight of a dead person is to him.

"I'll have some of your fathers men clean this up, they'll deal with everything that comes after that."

Kenny says as he stretches out. He talks about the man he killed as if he's an inconvenience, as if he doesn't have a family, a wife, children. He talks about him as if he was only ever a means to end. But nonetheless, I nod my head like a submissive robot and fall right back into the act he wants me to be.

"Come on, you need to sit down."

He suddenly sounds caring again, ushering me out of the room and into the living room. It's lit only by the moon strung high in the sky and the city neons blaring into the night. I curl into the corner of the couch, gifting Kenny enough room to leave a gap of disconnection between us. However, he disregards it. I itch to shove him away, to run away from the evil radiating off him, but his hand falls to my knee, calloused and rough like sandpaper gnawing at my skin. It's as if with one touch he claims what he believes is his, and if there was anything left within my stomach, it would have already left and found a new home on the face of the man before me.

"Are you okay, Sofie? You're quiet."

Kenny pries, his tone tentative. My eyes lift from his hand on my knee and relocate to find his gaze instead. His eyebrows are dipped together in a concerned manner that I struggle to believe is authentic. I wish to ask him outright- why? Why me? I want to ask him when it stopped. When it stopped being an innocent, friendly adoration and when it became an obsession. I want to know when he fell in love with me. Was it when I was eighteen? Was it when I was seventeen? What about sixteen and fifteen? Has he loved me since I was a little girl? Has it always been this way and I was simply too blinded by my childish refusal to accept evil exists? Has Kenny always been the monster?