My Life In The Ruins Novels & Stories

My body convulses from the aftershocks, even after I come down from the biggest orgasm I’ve ever had. I can’t fucking breathe, let alone move or think coherent thoughts. None of that was natural. Absolutely none of it. I fear I'm already in too deep with this man. My ruination at his hands is inevitable.

Her irises lowered and traced the marks on most parts of her body, mocking her ruination. "Why?" Her damaged soul complained. Why was she so helpless? A stranger came out of no where and ruined her whole life in a night. Her mind pledged her body not to smile ever again. She lost her reason to survive. She wasn't living anyway. After demise of her parents, she was merely surviving yet this right was also taken from her. After yesterday's night, what was the purpose now? Her blurry eyes studied the surroundings. The door was unlocked and open, illuminating the whole room with bright light.

But because I was too broken to care anymore. Let him have his lie. Let him have Morgan. Let him have Marcus Bennett's perfect life. I was done fighting. Done hoping. Done caring. I was just done. And tomorrow Tomorrow, I'd figure out how to survive becoming the kind of person who lets monsters win. Because I was too broken to be a hero anymore.

“I understand more than you think. I’m not some naive girl who doesn’t know the weight of her words. I know exactly what I’m saying.” I run a hand through my hair, frustration bubbling inside me. “But you deserve better. Someone who can give you a normal life.” “A normal life?” she fires back, her voice rising. “What is normal, Ruin? Since when has my life ever been normal? I’m blind, being hunted by a man who I would have been married to, my family probably dead. Normal is a ship that sailed a long time ago. And you... you’ve been the only constant in this chaos.”

And for the first time that night, I understood something terrible. My life was no longer falling apart. It had already fallen. Now I had to decide what kind of ruin I was willing to survive.

I hear her suck in a surprised breath and I force myself to look around at the wreckage. Everything is broken. My second-hand couch, my cheap coffee table, all my thrift store plates and mugs and glasses, all of it smashed. My television, cracked and playing static. My new clothes are strewn around the hallway, and even my toiletries are smashed to paste in the bathtub. My life lays in ruins around me and I can't feel anything but a cold and persistent terror. I've never had my own space before. This apartment isn't much—a small kitchen, tiny living room, miniscule bedroom, and a bathroom fit for ants—but it's mine, and that meant everything.

“You left me behind to rot in the place you call ruin. And now you wear your scars like proof you’ve earned something. Like you’ve changed. But I was the one who paid.” I staggered back. My knees hit the wet grass again. The pendant at my neck pulsed like a second heartbeat, but it couldn’t drown out the truth trying to claw free from my chest. Kye turned toward me, gently lowering himself until our faces were level. “Don’t listen. This is part of it. Whatever this thing is, it feeds off what it breaks.” But it wasn’t that simple. Because I remembered. The night the world had first shattered — the real beginning of my ruin — I had made a choice. And it wasn’t to fight. It was to run.

⁠ Not yet. I push up on one elbow. My hands are‌ bleeding, skin torn, nai‌ls black with soot. My jacket’s half-burned‍, my body shaking. I t‌ake invent‌ory slowly:‍ shoulder dislocated, rib⁠s b‌ruised — may⁠be cracked —‌ but not⁠hin‌g f‍atal. Not yet.‌ Then the s‌ilence breaks. A sound filters through the ruins — fa‌int, distant, unmist‍akab⁠le.

I heard it open behind me, but before I could turn around… A straight white line cracked through the blackness in my eye with a loud buzzing in my head. I heard screams behind me, muffled by crying noises as my head hit the floor. Ruin’s voice brushed past my ear like a whisper before I passed out. ‘Life is simple. If they don’t offer a hand to save you from falling off a cliff, you grab their neck and take them down with you. A man in power and authority never suffers alone.’

Because for Crystal, that life was already behind her by having signed a contract that she did not have time to read. And it was in that way that another morning arrived. A morning that had no hope. A morning that did not give her a little of the warmth of the sun's rays, she was simply living in a storm, the same one that seemed to never end no matter what. No doubt the world was conspiring against her.