Page 151 of Swallow Your Sorries

I choke as my collar is grabbed and I’m strangled, but when the pressure of the fabric against my throat is relieved, I gag again at what I’m met with face to face in the casket.

I turn my head, but Bart swipes the cane beneath my chin and forces me to look left, to look at it.

What isn’t mangled on the corpse is mottled, layers of skin rising and separating from each other. Splotches of yellow that look like chicken fat hover beneath the surface. Patches of blood long turned a dark purplish blue still stain her skin. The only thing that’s recognisable is her face and her eyes that peer up at me open and dry. One orb split open, revealing its innards. Her hair is still caked in remnants of blood and glass, and her fingers clasped over her concaved chest are broken.

“I didn’t bother with any sort of preservation,” my father says. “I wanted you to remember the cunt you covered for as she truly was. Her insides finally made her outer.”

“I-I didn’t,” I wheeze, trying to pack away but Bart’s grip on the back of my neck shoves my face closer so that I’m merely a breath away from the broken teeth.

“You went to that studio every week and you mean to tell me you never suspected what your mother was up to?”

“I didn’t.”

“Yet you had the video.”

“I told you I was hacked! I didn’t film it. I didn’t.”

The cane comes across my back with so much force I don’t have time to react as I fall to my feet, hitting the casket so hard that it sways on its strand and the assistant, just in the hall, rushes to capture it as it lurches forward.

The corpse, for it’s not my mother, begins to fall out, its broken arm stretching toward me as if begging me to help, to stop the slaughter of someone already mutilated. But how could I?

“Liar! You have made this family the laughingstock of the entire town while they sympathise with the monster who started it all. Making ballet montages of who they think, no, thought, was so beautiful. Do you think she deserves to still maintain such a reputation? A reputation she never deserved, but one I meticulously made sure she held?”

I don’t answer.

“Get your phone out. Now.”

“Why?”I pull out my phone with shaking fingers, puzzled as to what he wants me to do.

“I want her image to be as spoiled as she’s made mine. That’s what she looks like now. Spoiled rotten. Film her,” he motions to the casket.

“W-what?” I shake my head, no. She was vulnerable. She was fucking dead.

“You love leaking intimate moments. Now, you’re about to leak another.”

I try to pivot, to flee the room, but another blow hits my stomach so hard, that I double over and finally feel the bile leave my throat and spew from my lips, sprinkling the corpse.

“Still protecting her,” he tsks, snatching the phone from my grasp and hitting the record button with the audio muted.

“Stop!” I lunge for him, but he’s already stopped the recording as quickly as he’d started it.

It doesn’t take long to scan a corpse, and I know exactly why he’s made it less than five seconds. So anyone viewing it will inevitably watch it on a loop, trying to get a good enough look. A good enough screenshot to feign horror while passing it around to all of their contacts.

I freeze and watch in horror as he pulls up my email list and sends the video to everyone.

Just like Eloisa had done.

“There, they can add that to their ridiculous montages at the end.”

I can only blink. “How could you do that?”

“How could you? Remember, you did this, Gant. You cover for her, then you tell the world.”

Fury flames in my heart like that red-headed bitch that was the cause of everything. Someone else has to die, and it’s going to be her.

I gasp for breath, taking in my surroundings. I’m still in the forest, but I’m wet. Soaked.

The spring.

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