No Love For The Villain - vanish into fiction

“I won’t.”

The streetlights of the dark avenue glowed. The night street blurred the shapes and boundaries of things. Everything seeped into everything else, crossing lines—even shadows and light.

***

When they returned to the hotel, they were met by an employee with a troubled expression in the lobby. The problem was a phone call. An urgent call was looking for an abducted woman.

He says he’s looking for his daughter.

Hearing the employee’s words, Sierra sensed it instinctively. Pastor Miles had called the hotel.

How did he know they were at this hotel? He was looking for her—was he trying to take her back to the red house?

As Sierra’s gaze wavered, Eli took the receiver from the employee. Eli spoke to the pastor on the other end of the line.

“What does a man who already has a son want with a daughter?”

Sierra, her expression fixed, watched Eli. As she stared at his broad back, he turned around. As if sensing her unease, he met her eyes.

Pastor Miles’s voice from the receiver reached Sierra faintly as well.

[…Please tell Sierra that we only hope for her safe return. We are, unequivocally, her legal guardians. Before reporting this to the police, please just return Sierra to her loving family. The child is frail; it must be so hard for her to have gone so far. With her leg not even healed properly…]

Eli’s gaze sharpened. With an expression of clear irritation, he cut off Pastor Miles’s words.

“Why didn’t you show that much concern when you were scarring someone else’s daughter’s leg? Do as you please. Report it to the police. Before I go to jail, I’ll pay your son a visit.”

His tone was calm.

“Your son walks just fine. The way I see it, I’d like to make sure he never walks again. My temper’s rather nasty.”

He seemed accustomed to threatening and intimidating others.

“Take good care of your son. He’s the only one you have, isn’t he?”

Eli left the warning hanging.

[Sierra, are you there? Sierra!!]

Pastor Miles’s shouting could be heard, but Eli hung up the phone. Silence settled over the lobby.

The man in the impeccable suit looked no different than before the call.

But the hotel employee standing nearby wore a startled expression—as if an ordinary guest had suddenly transformed into a dangerous criminal.

Sierra, unable to move with Pastor Miles’s voice calling her name echoing in her ears, felt the urge to apologize rising from deep in her throat, a long-formed habit. Just as her pulse began to race, Eli took hold of her arm.

Sierra, dazed, backed away as if being seized by Pastor Miles. Preemptively frightened, she avoided him the way everything moving in the dead of night looked like a ghost.

Then Eli gripped the back of Sierra’s neck. She was pulled toward him, unable to retreat any further. Her neck, trapped in his grasp, stiffened.

“Whether you like me or fear me, I don’t care. But don’t run away.”

After warning her, Eli guided her into the elevator. He clearly thought she was afraid of him.

Sierra wanted to say that wasn’t it, that she wasn’t scared of him, but her frozen lips wouldn’t move as she wanted.

Struggling to break free from the fear deeply etched into her mind, Sierra shook her head.

“It’s not you I’m afraid of…”

“Then who are you so afraid of?”

Who was she afraid of?

Was she afraid of the pastor’s beatings?

She was afraid. But there was a deeper fear than that.

The fear of being told that if she didn’t obey as taught, she would fall to hell alone, watched over from above…

“The one watching from above…”

The Father in heaven.

As Sierra muttered vacantly into the air with clouded eyes, Eli placed his hand over her eyes.

At his touch, Sierra’s eyes closed.

A godless darkness descended.

“What’s there to fear about being watched? If it’s the eyes that scare you, just tear them out.”

Eli said indifferently. Sierra felt he didn’t understand her words. He didn’t know God. He didn’t know fear.

Her trembling did not stop. Sierra hunched her shoulders. As she began to curl in on herself out of habit, her arm was pulled.

Her body, accustomed to clutching loneliness alone, was drawn into a broad embrace.

She thought what he said was absurd, yet the moment she was in his arms, it felt as though he truly would do just that. That he would tear out even the eyes of the God that frightened her.

“I’ll go to hell.”

“What’s so special about hell? Living is hell enough.”

Eli’s words made her unnaturally immense fear seem trivial.

He was right. Even the red house, which everyone called heaven, was hell in its own way.

With that single sentence, heaven and hell were overturned. The anxiety that had shaken her whole body began to fade. Sierra rested her head on Eli’s shoulder.

In his embrace, she felt she might be crushed—and she wished to be crushed.

To be shattered into pieces. Until she could break free from this powerless body where fear had been engraved as habit.