DYING ONCE WAS ENOUGH

Faith lay on the cold floor; her back ached, yet she was doubled over on the floor, arms wrapped tight around her stomach, an overwhelming pain explored in her abdomen. She gasped continually, an attempt to renew her lost energy. 

With another excruciating blast, she could already the taste warm blood sliding down from her nose. Her stomach churned harshly. 

" Help," she breathed the word, but it only made the pain increased. 

Her weary eyes drifted to a bowl of food, just by the corner of the room, she couldn’t help but salivate as she could barely move a muscle in that direction.

She crawled toward it anyway.

Her teeth sank in before her pride could stop her. The rancid flavour quick replaced the blood she had tasted earlier, as she started devouring it, she didn’t notice how musty it was.

The food violently aside, before she could finish it. 

Her gaze met with that of Lydia, with a faint frown sitting calming on her lips

“Who said you can eat dog’s food?”

A sudden laughter echoed through the empty room; yet she ignored and brought out a liquid substance from her purse. 

She bent to Faith’s level, offering the liquid in the most gentle way she could before forcing it down her throat after losing patience.

Faith tried coughing it out. 

But her breath caught when she caught sight of Cassius.  

Within minutes, Cassius' hands were wrapped on Lydia's waist. Her brain repicturing the image, but her body couldn't receive it 

She tried to scream his name, but no sound was produced; she looked at them in eyes widen and mouth closed. 

“I had to do it, she needs to be dead before cop get here?” Lydia muttered to him as though I wasn’t there.

Cassius laughed. 

“She’s just too foolish and naive.”

Her heart twisted as she stared at them, the people she had trusted the most. 

Her body knew pain. This was different. Something cracked open quietly inside, the kind of break that makes no sound but leaves nothing standing.”

She turned to the other side; she saw a piece of paper.

She used her blood to write on it,

 “What have I ever done to deserve this from you? Was I wrong by helping you both?” Her hands trembled as she wrote, “I never had a sister; I took you in, Lydia, and this is how you repay me.”

Both of them read it.

“Bullshit!! We never begged you; you were too naive to see through us,” Lydia said.

She used her heel to press Faith's palm to the floor,with blood gushing out.

Faith tried to scream, but it was only a tear; she rolled on the floor in agony.

They laughed. 

“Thanks for making me and my love the president and vice president of the company.”

They laughed. 

“You will regret ever doing this to me,” Faith thought. 

Cassius used his shoes to step on her fresh wound. 

The footsteps stopped her breath. Her cracked lips twitched.”

Her breath came in a shallow pull, tears slid way down her face. 

Lydia lowered herself to her level again. 

She held Faith's neck. She started slapping her nonstop. 

She willed her arms to move, to push them away, to do something or anything.

 But her body had already made its decision. 

Her fingers curled slightly against the cold tiles , the only rebellion she had left. She lay there, eyes open, forced to witness every second of it.”

“Hey, honey, don’t dirty your hands; let me continue.”

Cassius' slap was more painful than Lydia. 

Every memory turned to broken glass inside her

 She had held each memory like something precious. Now they turned in her mind like broken glass, cutting her from the inside.”

He turned without hesitation, their back facing her. 

“Go meet your parents, so you will be a family of three there,” 

They laughed. 

The echo of their footsteps faded down the hallway, and then there was nothing. 

Just silence pressing in from every corner. The air sat heavy and still against her skin, the kind of cold that has nothing to do with temperature — the cold of being completely, utterly alone.”

She closed her eyes to wait for death to take her. But warm arms wrap around her. 

His voice broke. “Faith, I should have never left him to you. I should have taken you with me.”

Her lips moved but produced nothing. She lifted her hand toward him, her bloodied fingers trembling in the air between them. 

If she could have spoken, if her throat had allowed it, she would have said his name first — then everything else.

 Every moment she looked past him. Every time she had chosen wrong. But her body had run out of time for confessions.”

She watched as he cried bitterly; she could only see without doing anything. Her heart was shattered into million pieces seeing his tears. 

“I waited  for your divorce so I could remarry you. I never knew things would turn out this way.”

“I'm sorry, Faith.”

His apology broke over her like something unbearable. 

She was the one who had dismissed him, pushed him away, chosen Cassius over him without a second thought.

 Yet here he was, kneeling on a blood soaked floor, taking the weight of something that was never his to carry. 

It was the cruelest thing she had ever witnessed — and she had no voice left to stop him.”

“I never got married because I was waiting for you. I should have stayed back even when you rejected me. I became cold and ruthless because of you.” 

She had felt the glass on her lips, the heel on her palm, the slow drain of blood leaving her body. 

None of it compared to watching a single tear cut down his face. 

Physical pain had edges — it started somewhere and lived somewhere. This had no edges. It spread through everything that was left of her.”

She lifted her trembling hands, smearing blood as she tried to wipe away his tears. 

Her fingers were cold and clumsy. 

She had called him cold. 

She had laughed at his persistence, rolled her eyes at his loyalty, and handed her heart to someone who had been sharpening a knife behind her back the whole time.

 And yet here was the man she had pushed away a hundred times, breaking apart on her behalf, loving her still ;even now, even like this, even when she had given him every reason not to.”

She watched as he broke down in front of her.but it was useless; she couldn't hold on anymore. 

The sharpness began to soften at the edges, not into relief but into something heavier.

 Her body was no longer fighting — it was letting go, piece by piece, like a hand slowly releasing its grip. 

She could still hear his voice but it was coming from somewhere far away now, like a sound traveling through deep water.”

“Don't worry, I will avenge your death, your company will be restored, I will make them pay for every pain they have caused you, and I will make them regret living.”

His voice drifted further away. 

Her eyes began to close slowly. 

She wished : “TO BE GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE.”

She was seeing her parents in tears. She stretched her hands to touch them, but they turned to dust. 

Tears rolled down her eyes, darkness folded around her, and she let it take her. 

Death claimed her