Kimi's POV
The air hung thick, each ragged breath a painful reminder of my frantic sprint. The baby's cries, sharp and piercing, echoed in my ears, a relentless, haunting melody. A wave of guilt crashed over me, icy and suffocating, leaving me drowning in remorse. I had taken two lives – a mother and her child, their futures extinguished by my actions. The thought twisted in my mind: someone, perhaps a father, a sibling, was waiting for them, their hearts brimming with hope that would now be shattered. This realization was an anvil crushing the very air from my lungs.
A guttural scream tore from my throat, shattering the night's stillness, a grotesque counterpoint to the serene moonlight. I collapsed onto the unforgiving earth, my body trembling uncontrollably. Desperate for connection, I frantically fumbled through my pockets, searching for my phone – a fragile link to a world beyond this nightmare. When I finally found it, its familiar shape offered a sliver of cold comfort in the chaos.
My fingers, clumsy with fear, dialed Audrey's number. The rings felt like hammer blows against my skull, each one intensifying my anxiety until her voice finally answered.
"Hey, Kimi," she said, a thread of worry woven into her tone. Her intuition was unnervingly accurate; she knew something was terribly wrong.
I rarely called her, and the urgency of this moment pressed down like a physical weight.
"Audrey, please… come get me. I'm near the lake," I managed, my voice a broken whisper, laced with despair.
"I'll be there in ten," she responded, her voice calm, a stark contrast to the turmoil roiling within me.
The line went dead, and I was left staring into the still waters of the lake. The moon painted the surface with silver, reflecting a face ravaged by anguish. The serene beauty of the scene was a cruel mockery of the chaos that consumed me. The horrific images refused to fade, and I was trapped in the chilling reality of what I had done. As I waited for Audrey, the baby's cries echoed in my memory, a ghostly reminder of the night's darkness, sealing my fate in a sea of despair.