Page 136 of Circus From Hell

I’m hurt. So goddamn fucking hurt that I don’t know how to handle the emotion.

Kreo blames the electricity for the fact I didn’t become normal. The fact that I’m ‘deformed’. But I’ve grown as a human surrounded by Soren, Arlo, Micha, and even Spiral.

They proved that I am capable of growth, that Kreo is wrong about me. He didn’t care for me. He studied me. He didn’t nurture or teach; he blocked and hid.

Kreo may have brought me to life, but it was never my life.

It was his.

I fall to my hands and knees. I groan as the pain I never thought I’d experience again surges back. I cry and whine, pummelling my fist into my stomach, begging it to stop.

I prefer the pain Spiral injected into my veins.

This is so much worse.

Because it’s not real.

It’s caused by feelings that can’t be cured and realisations that have changed my world on its axis.

And I want to die.

My legs bend and crack as I stand. I grab the metal table, steadying myself against the electricity firing a mile a minute around my veins. I lean on it, dragging myself to Kreo’s desk. His godforsaken desk.

I scream out as I throw it across the room. I topple the damn metal table that caused me all this hell. The one I was brought to life on. I slam my fists into the rectangular contraption with buttons and switches and voltage signs. But it does nothing. Means nothing.

I mean nothing.

My eyes catch the glint of metal scissors on the floor. I pick them up and stare.

Then I bring them to my face.

I cut the first stitch pulling up my permanent smile. It snaps and breaks away, the skin dropping an inch.

I do the second, ignoring the distant footsteps approaching this room of death.

My invisible leash loosens with every thread cut.

Concerned voices reach my ears, but they’re muffled.

I keep cutting, severing, pulling.

The left side of my smile dips, and freedom I didn’t think I needed surges inside of me.

I sever the right side with less care.

People flood the room. I’m too focused on escaping my mind, escaping Kreo.

Someone shouts my name.

Hands find my shoulders.

And the final tie is severed with a flick of the sharp blade through thread.

My smile drops.

Freedom.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX