♟️four | Aella

♟️House of Balloons by The Weeknd

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"Snap out of it, Tristan," I yelled at the crazy bastard. "Before I really do it!"

And he dared to glare at me from head to toe and say, "You can't carry me, Cinderella, even less can you throw me into the river without me letting you do it, which ain't ever going to happen. So, that's a stupid threat is just what it is, stupid."

"I'm stronger than I look, Tristan," I hissed. "I may not be able to go fist to fist with you, but I can carry you if I want."

"Yeah? Then why don't you carry him?" He pointed to Christian's corpse, a mocking grin on his damned lips and I clenched my jaw. "If you're so strong."

"It's quite disgusting of you to ask me to carry the corpse of bastard who just tried to rape me, and nearly got his way with it," my voice was a low whisper, but he heard it just right. "It's horrible, even for you. Which says a fucking lot to me. But if you insist, I'll carry him, because I can, however, I'll throw him directly into the fucking rivers so the piranhas can get him. After all, it's you who wants him to be crushed in the wood crusher, so, weight what's more important. Testing me or shutting the fuck up and helping me get rid of his damn body."

He glared back at me, anger clearly taking over, but I don't give a shit if he's angry, because I am too. Fuck, he doesn't get to be an asshole now, not right fucking now. I'm nearly falling apart here, because of what happened to me, and he's being a jerk about it, fucking piece of shit.

"You're the last person I thought I would ever be hiding a dead body for and with," Tristan mocked, then flexed his insanely sculpted broad muscles, his long sculpted arms moving to reap the rest of Christian's clothes, even if there wasn't much left him, and to take off his earrings, necklace, wrist watch, and rings. "Move your ass, Cinderella, go and turn the blood wood crusher on, we have to do it fast, while he's freshly dead, or the piranhas won't want him rotten."

"Motherfucking bastard," I cursed him under my breath, and forced myself to go into the cabin, then I turned the damn thing on, my body shaking and struggling to stand still, but I forced it because the last person who should see me breaking is Tristan goddamn De Vere Beauclerk. "Come on," I groaned standing in front of the crusher that were dangerously rotating in a very lethal way, which I guess it's the damn purpose.

Tristan towered over me as he came in with the corpse like Christian weighed nothing, and I clenched my jaw not to puke with how crushed his head was, all my doing. But I made myself watch, I made myself stand in front of the crusher and see it happening because this is a consequence of something I did, and I never run from it. Even if what I did was killing somebody, he deserved it, I don't feel guilty, I just feel... horrible for taking a life over-fucking-all, because that shouldn't be in my power, my plan was just to knock him out, but I lost control.

He stood at my side, close and in front of crushed, Christian at his arms, "When you kill someone, Cinderella, no matter the bloody damn reason, be it anger fit or self defense, you have to make sure to get rid of the body by whatever means you can, even if it sounds inhumane, you have to do it. You have to do it in a way that nothing will be left behind to trace back to you, because that can cost your entire life, and we don't want that on us. Which is why," I felt his ice blue eyes on me and looked up to find his gaze burning in mine, "we have a industrial wood crusher deep within our woods and a deep lake filled with red-bellied piranhas!"

And as he threw Christian's body in the crusher, and his blood splattered all over us both, Tristan kept his eyes on mine, and I was unable to look away and lose the staring contest, a small part of me glad that he was staring at me so wouldn't need to stare at Christian's body being crushed. I'll already be having enough nightmares from this for my entire lifetime. Though the sound of his body being crushed and the feeling of his blood and some remains being splattered on my skin will hardly ever fade.

We stayed like that for more than 5 minutes, until he moved to turn it off, unbothered with the whole gore thing, looking down at me, "Do you regret killing him?" For once, there was no judgement in his voice.

"No, I had no other choice. I just," I inhaled deeply, but all I could smell was blood, "hate that he forced me to the point where I lost control over myself. Despite whatever you may be thinking, I... I didn't intend on killing him, I panicked and when I got back to myself I had already crushed his head with the rock and he was dead. The idea of stealing someone's life doesn't sit so right with me, it's a power no human should have in the world. But I don't regret killing him."

He grabbed a hammer and went to the wooden table where he had put all of Christian's accessories on, "It was your survival instinct kicking in, no one should feel guilty for that, it's within the human nature. You only think that doing that it's wrong because of the laws made by humans to control humans, while the ones who made the law would use this power to get what they wanted. That is, more power," then he began to shatter everything with the hammer, hard and experienced like a blacksmith would.

"What... what are we going to say?" I asked.

"To anyone who looks for him or to our family?" He arched his eyebrows and I felt suddenly sick and dizzy.

"Shit, they... they can't know about this. Fuck, fuck," panic began to rise again, "your parents will go insane, they... shit, my siblings siblings can't have a word about this. I... I... fuck. I fucked up, I,"

"Our parents will understand it depending on how I tell the story, in fact, they will probably feel proud, because they never thought you had it in you to kill a person, even if the situation asked for it. Our siblings won't know, they are too bloody young and they don't need this chaos in their life, they definitely don't need to know what you almost went through. And you defended yourself, I was in the woods after you, I would have gotten here one way or another, and I would have killed him instead, me or you, it don't matter, Christian would die tonight, Aella. We'll play dumb for anyone else who asks about his whereabouts."

I clenched my jaw, hyperventilating, staring at the remains in the wood crusher, it all making me feel even... lethal, "I killed him," I swallowed. "I killed a person. My dad wouldn't,"

"Your dad," he spoke over me, "would have done worse to Christian had he known that he was trying to bloody rape you, Aella!"