The light of the moon shone through the window as she walked toward the cabinet. Her steps were slow, her body was shaking, and adrenaline kept surging through her head and down her spine.

None of it was enough to stop her.

Here she was, standing in her most hated place in the apartment: the guest bedroom. It had only an unused bed and a cabinet full of Astian’s private items. For as long as she lived with him, she never understood why the cabinet was here instead of their bedroom, but it made sense now. Before she came in, this was his bedroom.

Astian had always forbidden her from opening the cabinet. He kept it vague as to what was in there, never going into more detail than it being private, but the couple times she did catch it open it looked packed. She had wanted to get a closer look, but she didn’t want to intrude on his privacy. She’d hate to be the kind of person who couldn’t respect their partner’s boundaries.

If only Astian was the same.

Finding the key took about three seconds. He’d always been terrible at hiding it, and tonight was especially bad. It was just lying on the bed covers completely unhidden.

What was he doing the night before he was taken?

On second thought, forget it.

She picked the key up, unlocked the door with a shaky hand, then just stared out the bedroom window with her hand on the door handle. It was so, so cold.

She hated this room so much. No other room in the apartment reminded her of him as much as this one. It was so bad it felt like his essence was still there watching her. She wanted so badly to run out and lock the door forever, letting the room rot until the end of time.

As if that would keep him out.

She found she’d already opened the cabinet door. The inside was filled with old books, strange looking artifacts, and a couple bags of what she swore were drugs. Was this what he used to… cast spells? Where had he found all this stuff? 

Whatever, it didn’t matter. She was only here for one thing. The only thing she’d ever seen him put inside the cabinet. The only place she knew she’d find one.

She grabbed Astian’s pistol off the top shelf. She turned it over in her hands, examining it as if checking for defects. She found none, it looked in perfect condition.

She searched the cabinet for a magazine. She found one lying on the top shelf next to where the gun was. With the magazine inserted, she grabbed hold of the top of the gun and slowly pulled it back. She then let go and flipped the safety switch off. She turned the gun toward her and raised it ever so slowly. She paused when it hit her lips.

No, she couldn’t stop now. Not when she was so close. 

She opened her mouth and slid it inside, pointing it at her throat.

Just one twitch. One twitch of her finger and this would all be over

She thought back on her life. She remembered back to when she was nine years old and learned to ride a bike for the first time. Her father was so proud, she could still recall the smile on his face when she was able to ride around the whole neighborhood without falling. She was proud too, it was the first time she could remember where she truly felt like she accomplished something.

She remembered back to when she was sixteen where, as a junior, her cheerleading team spent over a hundred hours perfecting their routine. It took months of training, and day after day she felt more exhausted than she ever had in her life. But that November, the team took home a gold trophy. For the first time in their school’s history, the cheerleading team won the state championship.

She remembered back to when she was twenty-two. Finally graduating college, going out into the workforce, moving in with Astian, raising money for their dream house by the lake, and constantly moving up the ladder in her job. Her future looked so bright. Astian and her were going to get married and have a family. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he saw their child for the first time.

All of it was a lie. Made up for the sole reason of giving Astian a girlfriend.

It hadn’t really sunk in for her how insane that was until now. Astian took weeks out of his life to invent an entirely new person because he couldn’t get laid. How far did he have to go for the spell to work? She remembered during the trial one of the prosecutors jokingly telling Astian it would’ve been easier just to convince Nathan to love him as a man, to which Astian angrily replied that he wasn’t gay. But otherwise, everyone in the trial had been very vague about the extent of his work.

It was a horrifying thought. Nothing she had ever experienced or remembered could be trusted. All of it could’ve been planted. And it wasn’t just gender specific memories. There was not a single thing about her she could say with confidence wasn’t something he made up, for no other purpose than to please him. No memory, no personality trait, nor any action she had ever taken was worth more than that. None of the work she did in college or for her job mattered. None of it happened. It was all given to her because Astian wanted it.

She had never truly accomplished anything in her life. She was Astian’s sex doll. That was the only thing she’d ever done for the world.

Hell, forget what that meant for her, what did this mean for other people? The violation of mass amounts of minds to account for her went far beyond just Ashley. What about her friends from high school? Most of them were girls. How would they feel if they learned they’d been hanging out with some dickhead’s jerkoff fantasy? How would her college roommates feel about living with someone like that?

What did it mean for her parents? The ones that knew her as Natalie their whole lives. The ones who thought they raised a girl through false memories. How would they react when told the child they thought they raised wasn’t the child they actually raised? What about Kate? How would she react when told her older sister wasn’t her sister at all?

Her entire fake, imaginary life played out in her head, as if to taunt her. Her eyes shut tightly. She could feel the teardrops falling to the floor. Yet the gun remained in her mouth with her finger on the trigger.

She tightened her index finger. Any further and there was no chance she would be saved in time. 

Her body stood in the air. Every second she hesitated she tried to convince herself. She was only created so Astian could put his dick in something, and he’s gone now. She didn’t even have that anymore. The one thing she was meant to do had become worthless. She had no reason to keep this sorry excuse of an existence going.

A stronger person, someone with the willpower to do what needed to be done, would’ve been convinced. 

Instead, her mind was stuck on what Ashley told her that day.

“Stay safe tonight, okay?”

The gun fell to the floor. Natalie fell with it. 

Tears fell freely from her eyes. She couldn’t even muster a sniffle as they did.