dusty bellisario . two [cbd3 - fin]

The remnants of his most recent trial coat the bathroom sink, blood and vomit all neon yellow and red soaked in silence at half past midnight. They’d told him with malice and bared fangs that the forest was calling his name, that he had no choice but to call back-

That he couldn’t come home until he killed off every last one of the wolves they’d released before he stepped foot inside the brush, until he held their bloody fur in between his palms.

His favorite animal, but they knew that already.

He’s a prodigy given only a broken mirror to view himself, a lab rat bred just to watch die, told so often that he’s a failure that he eventually had no choice but to give in and believe it. They call him weak and they call him foul and they call him everything other than what he is- a boy, a teen, born into a family that expects everything and gives nothing.

Trial by trial he succeeds, little lines of ink embedded and laced underneath the skin of his form, trial by trial he joins them. It’s a double edged sword and he’s plunging both ends into his stomach, not stopping until it pierces the heart and destroys him completely.

Blood soaked fingertips spray water against his face, a hundred shards of ice splattering against his skin and a chill running down his spine as he turns the faucet and listens to water dribble and spit its last breaths into the porcelain.

How cruel he thinks as he catches sight of his reflection in the glass, a million shattered veins running up and down the course of his own image.

Raising such beautiful things for no other reason than to watch them wilt.