Chapter 35: Time to Think
A hotel room… Bright lights set into the ceiling, wired through copper pipes buried in the walls, wooden walls decorated here and there, and a handful of furniture filling the space around the bed and the door that led to the bathroom.
Bonnie stood at the entrance to the room. Victoria and Lady stayed close beside her, each holding one of her arms.
"What did she see, to end up like this?" Lady asked.
Victoria didn't answer. Lady lowered her head at La Señora's silence.
Together they walked Bonnie over to the bed. They tried to get her to lie down, but she only sat there, staring into nothing in complete silence. The hardened look on her face was painful to watch. Her eyes didn't react to anything, barely blinking at all. Her breathing would catch for long stretches before slowly starting again.
Both women studied her for a moment, then looked at each other. Lady seemed unsure of what to do, while Victoria stayed composed.
"Go get some sleep, Lady," said La Señora, turning back to Bonnie. "It's late, and we have to leave early tomorrow. Make sure Evelyn's resting in her room."
"I can do that, but…"
"I'll stay with her a while longer. I'll try to bring her back, then head to my own room."
"Understood. I'll go check on Evelyn, then," Lady answered with a faint, uneasy smile. She left the room, casting one last glance back at Bonnie.
The door closed. Victoria sat down beside Bonnie and followed the girl's gaze out into nothing.
She stayed quiet for several long minutes before finally speaking.
"What did you see, girl?"
Bonnie didn't react. Victoria looked down at the floor, her expression more understanding now, though tinged with disappointment all the same. She let out a long sigh — until she heard the soft sound of a single drop hitting the carpet. She looked up and found a flood of tears on a face frozen in trauma.
Weakly, Bonnie opened her mouth and answered:
"Monsters… They were monsters…" Her voice was broken, exhausted.
"I see…"
A few more seconds of silence. Victoria glanced at the scar on her own arm.
"Did you find anything else? That boy's sister…"
She had to cut the question short. Bonnie's eyes flew open in horror, her whole body going rigid in an instant. Her hands trembled, and so did her breathing. The bloody memories crashed back over her like a wave.
From that reaction alone, Victoria understood exactly where the real problem lay — not just the supposed monsters Bonnie had encountered, but the fate of Adam's daughter as well. That realization gave her pause, while the girl fought to hold back the tormenting memories.
After a few minutes, La Señora arrived at a conclusion.
"Bad things happen all the time, everywhere you could possibly imagine. It's unfortunate, but that's simply how the world works, girl. There's nothing we can do to change that…"
She looked at Bonnie, waiting for some kind of response, but got nothing more than a weak sob. She turned her gaze toward the window and stayed quiet for a couple of seconds; a sea of flames flooded through her own memories, accompanied by Lady's desperate screams and brief flashes of recollection…
She closed her eyes. She pressed a hand to her forehead, wincing. When she opened them again, her expression had hardened into something more serious.
"That night, when we faced that cultist and nearly died, I swore to myself I would never try to get involved with them again. The powers that thing had were beyond anything we could handle, and pushing forward would only have gotten us killed. They're monsters — just like I told you. Just like what you saw."
Bonnie squeezed her eyes shut.
"They were already dead…" she whispered.
"That's not something you could have prevented. Even if you'd arrived in time, you wouldn't have stood a chance against them. They would have killed you too — so if you believe in any god, thank Him for not letting you die in those monsters' hands."
No response, again… Victoria rose from the bed.
"As outlaws, we have no obligation to get tangled up in the wicked business of people like that. We know it leads to death — but we also have the freedom to choose. That's exactly why we cut ourselves off from society: to do what we believe is right, no matter what anyone else says about it."
She walked toward the door.
"You made your choice, and you failed — same as Evelyn, Lady, and I did that night. I hope that, just like the three of us did back then, you'll sit with this and learn from it. There's nothing more I can do but tell you that. Goodbye."
The door closed. Bonnie was alone.
Fearful, she raised her hands and studied them closely. Victoria's words echoed through her mind, but as she stared at her palms, the blood of Caleb Graves flickered across her skin alongside the golden revolver — a fleeting memory — followed by the body of Wild Dog, and then the bodies of the girls laid out on the stone altar.
Her stomach turned violently. She bolted for the bathroom, where she emptied what little was left inside her. Afterward, kneeling in front of the toilet, crying, she clenched her fists hard, her nails digging into her own skin. Blood welled up from her palms…
A broken, anguished scream tore out of her.
She had finally managed to do what she hadn't been able to do back at the altar, in front of that monster: let herself feel the sheer horror of what she had seen.
Bonnie was an ordinary girl from the county, just as Samuel had been an ordinary young man from the city. Neither of them had ever seen anything like this before. Neither had ever had the chance to learn just how horrible the world could really be.
That was exactly what Victoria had meant. Things like this happen all the time — and you never notice until you see it with your own eyes, completely unable to do anything to fix it.
Endless seconds, shattered minutes… lonely hours. Bonnie wept until her tears ran dry and her throat couldn't manage another scream. Now there was only darkness, and she sat right at the center of it.
"What am I supposed to do?" she whispered.
No one was there to answer.
"Why is the world like this…?"
Two souls in one body, their emotions tangled together. The frustration rising up from Samuel's soul was enormous — but Bonnie's fear and sorrow outweighed it by… far too much.
Exhausted, she closed her eyes. She sank into her own grief until she fell asleep curled up in a corner, like an animal seeking out the quietest place to hide from predators.
Inside his dreams, Samuel found himself sitting in the darkness. Something touched his back. He turned around, and there was Bonnie, looking at him the exact same way.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey…" she answered.
They both turned back to face the dark. They stayed quiet for a few minutes, because neither of them really wanted to talk about anything. They both felt the same weight from what they'd seen at the circus, and neither needed to remind the other of it.
"I feel like an idiot, thinking I could go up against all of that no matter how weak and pathetic I actually am," said Samuel.
"I know. I believed the same thing. The Ballad's power made me think I could too."
"But we nearly became a monster ourselves. We still could, if we lose control."
"Yeah."
Samuel looked up at the dark sky and closed his eyes.
"We're doomed…" he whispered.
"I know. I think so too."
"Should we give up?"
"I don't know. Do you want to give up?"
"After what we saw, I think it'd be the smart thing to do. But if we did that, we'd just stay like this forever. I'm not really sure how you'd feel about watching everything through my eyes, unable to do anything about it. If I were in your place, I think I would've disappeared from sheer boredom."
"It's not so bad. It's like watching one of those movies you have in your world. It's one of the few things I actually liked about your memories… Now I also understand why you were always so bored."
Samuel opened his eyes.
"I don't want you talking about that."
"I won't. I know how it feels."
"Thanks. That's kind of you to say — but I want to use this moment to ask you something about that day. I mean the moment I transmigrated into your body. You told me they killed you. I don't have any memory of that, but I'm sure you do. It's something I've wanted to know this whole time."
Bonnie wrapped her arms around her knees.
"They cut my throat and I died. There's not much else to it. With everything we've learned over the past few days, we know now they were performing the ritual to achieve whatever that…"
"Whatever that bastard at the circus did. You don't have to say it. Don't ever say it again."
"Right. Let's not think about it. What I'm trying to say is that nothing happened beyond that, when they sacrificed me."
"Then how did I end up in this world inside a corpse? It's not like the wound on my neck ever healed. I don't even have a scar."
"I don't know either. Anyway. What should we do? Do you want to keep going with this? I… don't have a problem with it either way, because no matter what we decide, you're the one who gets to choose."
Samuel stayed quiet for a few seconds. He turned to look at Bonnie. She was already looking back at him.
"I already decided I'd return your body to you on my own — but what is it that you want? Do you want to live again?"
She gave a soft, beautiful smile.
"I don't know. I'm not sure. There's nothing left for me out there anymore — but if giving my life back is what you want to do, I won't complain."
"You're choosing way too lightly. This is something important, you know."
Standing up in the darkness, Bonnie walked deeper into the black. She stopped a few feet from Samuel, then turned to look at him.
"You always think so hard about every choice you make. You took so long deciding things that's probably why you were so bored all the time… I don't blame you for it, though."
Samuel got to his feet, but he couldn't find the words to answer. He looked down at his feet, trying to come up with something to say — but then he opened his eyes and found himself back in that same bathroom, arms wrapped around his knees, shivering from the cold of his rain-soaked clothes.
He sat there staring into nothing, thinking of the real Bonnie. He got to his feet once he felt a little steadier. He looked at the shower in silence.
In this whole place, maybe that was the one thing that could save him from sinking further into his own grief — a hot shower, fed by the same kind of copper pipework as the one back at his family's hotel.