Page 30 of Hellebore

“I’m sorry, Frannie. I love you; I do love you.”

Isabel steps forwards gently capturing Francesca’s fingers inside her own, rubbing the back of her hand with a tender brush of a thumb. Francesca stills for a moment, her jaw loosening, her eyes drawing back to Isabel’s with unbridled adoration.

“Well, I’m glad everything worked out for you,” Francesca sighs, relenting, stepping to close the distance between them.

There’s something rotten inside of me as I watch them, a bitterness that swarms through my soul. Anger and envy and spite that twists and digs into every one of my nerve endings.

I clench my fists, fury beginning to blister through my arms, and scream. I scream so hard that my body aches. I scream so hard that the empty place in my chest where my lungs should be begins to scrape raw. I scream so violently, expelling every molecule of pent-up anger, that the trees begin to sway and the leaves begin to rustle in response. Birds screech as they flee from the branches, before an eerie silence descends between the trunks, moonlight sharp across the faces of those I once called family.

Isabel startles, glancing around, assessing for danger. Her cheeks flush white, terror lancing through her expression.

“Do you think she’s still here? Heather? In these woods?” Isa whispers to Francesca.

Isabel presses herself close to Francesca, who in turn smirks with dark eyes. Her gaze lingers on the spaces between the trees, a palpable satisfaction shifting the air around her.

“I don’t think so. I don’t believe in ghosts, Isa. When you killed her, she ceased existing, she’s just…. gone.”

A tear slips from my sister’s lashes, colour flooding back into her face as she swallows through a guttural sob.

“I wonder how things might have been, had that winter turned out different, if things had worked out how we hoped,” Isabel whispers, glancing around once more before she steps onto the worn path, moving further into the shadows of the woods.

“I image things would be very different, Isabel. Probably better, more free…. Happy,” Francesca says quietly, forlorn as they are swallowed by shadow, hand in hand through the forest of secrets.

That emptiness inside me fills with soil – with beetles and earth worms and rotting green matter as my body catches up with its decay.

The forest is full of secrets, we were told.

I just never realised my death would be the one the trees kept.

“Oh Rabbit, you really are predictable,” she whispered as she lowered herself to the ground. Her gaze was sharp as she watched me, the full moon setting a halo of light around her head.

Dirt filled my eyes as I tried to open them, to see her through the darkness. All warmth had been sucked from my body, every corner of me suddenly frozen and still. But my heartbeat – I can hear it flooding my ears, a thrum so loud in my head I couldn’t think straight.

“You think I don’t know?” Francesca said, head tilted.

I blinked, swallowing, my voice somehow unreachable.

“You think I don’t know you love me; you want me for yourself? That you watched Cole and I through the trees as he devoured me, wishing it were your hands, your mouth. That you had hoped we would run away and be together. That you hoped I loved you the way you loved me?”

She sighed; eyes cast to the leaf canopy overhead where the forest hummed with life. My chest ached as she lowered herself atop of me.

A depraved, traitorous part of my heart quickened as her thighs gripped my ribs, as her eyes tore back to mine while a sinister grin warped her face into something unrecognisable.

“Well, I don’t love you, not like that. I never have. You are my best friend, but my heart, my soul, my body, belong to Isabel. We’re running away together tomorrow morning. We’re going to be free. From here. From you.”

Her smile twisted into something darker then, something sinister, the corners of her eyes narrowing as she lowered her face to mine, breath ghosting my cheek.

“I knew you’d be a dirty shadow who followed us everywhere. So, you had to go,” she sighed, eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I am sorry, though. I do value our friendship, but if I want a new life with Isabel, you can’t be trying to follow us. You would only ruin it.”

Nearby, a branch cracked and landed against the earth with a violent crash. The dirt beneath me shuddered with warning, a chill beginning to creep down my legs as Francesca’s weight bore down on my chest.

“You know what I love about your sister?” she asked, her finger tracing the edge of my jaw with slow deliberation. “She’s as predictable as you are. She’s devoted to me in a way you never were. She, Heather, would kill for me.”

In an instant, the pressure relieved from my chest as she stood, moonlight eclipsed behind her. She was curves and glowing edges – a demon sheltered in the darkness of the trees, free to satiate her hunger. I could see the way it consumed her, the way she prowled through the underbrush, her footfall slow and heavy as she circled me like prey.

“It turned out better than I could have ever hoped. You’re both so easy to manipulate, to urge in directions I wanted you to go. A few fake tears, a few spun stories about how Cole took advantage of me, of how he threatened to kill me if he couldn’t have me. I knew you would have run home and told her when you saw us in the woods, when I ended things with him. I knew you wouldn’t have resisted spilling that secret, in hopes the other one I loved were you.”

My breath stilled as she lowered herself to me once more, my mind screaming for me to move while my body remained frozen against the forest floor. Leaves itched my thighs, my fingers fighting for purchase but getting lost within the loose dirt.