Page 20 of The Madness Within

??My Dual Life

Ember

People thought I was fearless.

But they didn’t know the truth. I wasn’t brave. I was just broken enough to stop pretending I wasn’t scared.

Fear had become second nature, something I wore like a second skin. After all, how do you fear the dark when you were raised in it?

It’s the quiet moments I hated the most. The waiting between the screams. That’s when it always crept back in.

The blood. The breath on my neck. The split second when the knife could’ve taken me, too.

I still remembered the cold linoleum under my knees. The smell of iron. My mother’s voice, choking on her last breathwhile I pressed my hands to the wound, begging God to take me instead.

But he didn’t. He let me live. And I’d been bleeding ever since, just slower.

People called me obsessed. Paranoid. They didn’t know I replayed that night every time I closed my eyes.

I wasn’t fearless. I was just a girl who survived the kind of death you don’t come back from whole. And now, I was the one holding the blade, digging through the lies, one monster at a time.

I nursed my third black coffee, tucked into the corner of this shitty little café where no one looked twice at a girl with dark circles and a thousand-yard stare. The city hummed outside, but in here, it was just me and my obsession.

My laptop screen was split. On the left, my script for tonight’s episode ofDead Wrong. On the right, a spreadsheet I built from scratch and sheer stubbornness.

‘The Acquitted Dead.’

Each name more disturbing than the last. Each crime worse than the one before. Each one setfree… only to end up gutted, burned, decapitated, strung up like a macabre art installation.

The cops said it was a coincidence.

I said it’s a message.

My fingers hovered over one name, D. Vale, Esq.

The elegance of his defense, the cold precision. I didn’t know why he stood out.

Something about him didn’t sit right. Still, I made a mental note, too early to accuse. Keep digging.

My phone buzzed against the table. It was an encrypted, burner app.

Survivor willing to talk. No names. Meet at 6th & Delancey. Discreet.

I sucked in a breath and exhaled slowly. There it was, that electric thrill of danger that told me I was getting close. Ortooclose.

The walls in here bled stories.

The crime board took up an entire wall, red string slicing through newspaper clippings, autopsy reports, court transcripts. I added a fresh pin, latest victim. Arms outstretched. Blindfolded. Teeth clutched in a hand.

Another was coming.

I couldfeelit.

I slid on my headset, mic live, voice low.

“The Scales, that’s what I’m calling them. All dead, all freshly acquitted. The system set them free, someone else corrected the verdict. But here’s the part they don’t want you to hear… I think the killer is sending a message.”

I paused, eyes flicking to the note scribbled above the board, ‘Justice is a knife.’

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