Waiting For My Killers At Styx

For five years, I lived my life suffocating beneath the weight of a cruel, whispered moniker: The Jinxed Prince.

The origin of that title was inextricably tied to my birthday.

My fiance, Corinne, died on my birthday. Exactly one year later, my best friend, Wesley, also died on my birthday.

When they were alive, they loved to tease me, calling me their "Prince" because of my charmed, wealthy upbringing. So, when they were gone, the country club gossips and society columns all whispered the same thing: The Prince cursed the people he loved most to death.

I lost count of the nights I lay awake, crushed by a guilt so absolute it felt like physical violence. I tormented myself with the same question: If I had just refused to celebrate my birthday, would they still be here?

I believed that lie right up until the afternoon I went to a local private academy to handle transfer paperwork for my little cousin. That was when I saw a silhouette that made the blood freeze in my veins.

The angle of her profile was entirely, undeniably Corinne.

My feet moved before my brain could process the impossibility of it. I chased the ghost out to the courtyard, only to find her crouching on the pavement, sternly reprimanding a little boy.

"Mia Winchester, did you get into another fight with your classmates? If you keep this up, no dessert for a week!" Her voice carried that exact, familiar edge of authority.

"Corinne! You're a bad mommy! He started it!" The little girl stubbornly stuck her tongue out.

Corinne? Mia Winchester?

I stood paralyzed on the manicured lawn. The world spun completely off its axis. They weren't dead. They were alive. They were together. They had a child.

"Uncle Troy, what are you looking at?" my cousin's voice suddenly piped up from beside me.

Hearing the noise, Corinne turned her head. Her eyes locked directly onto mine.

I remained rooted to the spot, a tempest of contradictory emotions raging in my chest.

I didn't know if I was supposed to be weeping with joy that my "curse" hadn't actually killed them, or if I was supposed to be shattering over the realization that they had colluded to betray me in the most horrific, agonizing way imaginable.

Why?

Corinne and I had grown up side by side. When we turned twenty, she had legally changed her middle name to "Prologue" just to prove a point when she confessed her feelings to me.

Everything in my life before you was just a prologue, she had whispered, pressing her forehead against mine. Our past is the title page, Troy. But spending the rest of my life with you? Thats the actual novel.

The day before my birthdaythe day before she supposedly diedshe had kissed my knuckles and sworn, "My Prince, I will never let a single drop of rain fall on you as long as I live."

Yet, she was the one who brought the hurricane.

At what exact moment did her heart pivot away from me?

I couldn't fathom it.

The sharp trill of the school bell shattered the silence. The kids scrambled back toward the brick building.

I stood there, painfully out of place, utterly lost.

Corinne walked toward me. There was no panic in her eyes, no frantic shame of a woman caught in a monstrous lie. Instead, she possessed a chilling, familiar ease.

"Prince. You figured it out sooner than I anticipated."

A bitter ache bloomed in my ribs. Was my devastating discovery just an entertaining miscalculation to her?

I raised my eyes to meet hers, drawing a long, trembling breath. "When did it start?"

She tilted her head, pantomiming thoughtful reflection, offering me a look of helpless regret.

"Maybe it was the day you got into that fight to protect him. I looked at Wesley, the boy needing protection, and suddenly found a different kind of charm in that." She sighed softly. "Or maybe it was graduation day. The way his faded, overworn button-down clung to his shoulders... it drew me in."

Corinne lowered her lashes, speaking with the infuriatingly calm candor of a wise elder explaining a hard truth to a child.

"Troy, no one can predict what the heart will crave in the very next second. Just like how I used to despise arrogant trust-fund boys, yet I fell in love with you anyway."

Ruthless efficiency and brutal directnessthose had always been Corinnes specialties.

I swallowed the bile and the heartbreak rising in my throat. "Why didn't you just tell me? Why fake your deaths? Why hide?"

She looked at me as if the answer was painfully obvious. "Because I know you, Troy. Back then, you hadn't learned how to weigh the scales. You didn't know how to balance the value of love against the value of family legacy. If we had been honest, the fallout would have destroyed both our families and ruined Wesley."

"But now," she continued smoothly, "now you've learned. Otherwise, you'd be dragging me to the tabloids right now instead of standing here quietly."

A flawless, surgical calculation.

She even understood how to weaponize my restraint.

She was right about one thing: I wasn't going to cause a scene. But it wasn't because I had mastered the art of weighing my options.

It was because I was dying.

I had barely six months left. I only wanted to spend my remaining time doing things that actually mattered.

After walking away from the school, I sat in a dimly lit coffee shop for hours, staring into a lukewarm mug, trying to figure out how to tell my parents about my terminal diagnosis.

By the time the sky bruised into twilight, I finally dragged myself to the front door of my family estate. Just as I reached for the handle, a child's bright laughter drifted from the living room.

I frowned in confusion, freezing when I heard my mothers voice.

"Wesley, sweetheart, take the kid and head out in five minutes. Troy texted that he's on his way home."

A pause. Then my fathers heavy sigh. "You two really went too far with that stunt five years ago. Troy has been utterly miserable. I know he isn't our biological son, but I raised him. It breaks my heart to see him like this."

"Let's just spend the rest of our lives making it up to him," my father added wearily.

Then, Wesley's voicesoft, deferential, sickeningly gentle. "Mom, Dad, it's my fault. I'll sit him down and explain everything to him soon."

In a span of thirty seconds, the entire landscape of my reality clicked into a horrifying, brilliant clarity.

It explained why my mother always insisted I bring Wesley over for dinner in college.

Why she always looked like she was on the verge of tears whenever she saw him, slipping cash into his coat pockets.

Why I would occasionally find stray toy cars hidden under the sofa cushions.

Wesley was their biological son. The classic, tragic tale of babies switched at birth.

And they had known about the fake deaths all along.

A violent shiver seized my entire body. They had watched me wither away. They had watched me drown in soul-crushing guilt for five years, and they had said absolutely nothing.

Well, I thought, a numb, hysterical calm washing over me. This is for the best. I don't have to worry about destroying them when I die.

And they don't have to exhaust themselves lying to me anymore.

Standing there on the cold marble porch, I pulled out my phone, opened my text thread with my oncologist, and typed a single sentence:

I am officially declining the chemotherapy.

Suddenly, the brass doorknob began to turn.

Panic seized me. I couldn't face them. Not yet. I spun around and bolted down the driveway, running until the air burned in my lungs.

I collapsed on a wooden bench in a deserted community park, buried my face in my hands, and finally let the dam break. I sobbed until I was gasping for air.

Night descended, wrapping the world in shadows. There was truly no one left on this earth who loved me.

Eventually, I massaged my numb legs and forced myself to walk back to the sprawling estate that no longer belonged to me.

When I walked in, the tension in the room was palpable. My parents exchanged loaded glances until my father finally cleared his throat.

"Troy, sit down. There's... there's something you need to know. Wesley didn't pass away." They watched my face with agonizing scrutiny. "He and Corinne are married. They have a daughter."

When I didn't scream, when I merely sat in a suffocating silence, my mothers tone suddenly sharpened with defensive aggression.

"Now, don't you dare blame Wesley for this. You two were switched at birth. He absorbed all the suffering of a broken, impoverished home that was meant for you. Even though he took Corinne, you still got to live your entire life as the wealthy heir of the Winchester family!"

Was I supposed to be grateful? Then why did it feel like my chest had been carved out with a rusted spoon?

I wasn't allowed to blame them. I wasn't allowed to harbor resentment.

Throwing a tantrum was a privilege reserved for those who were actually loved. I didn't qualify.

So, I simply gave a slow, minute nod.

They looked startled, clearly unprepared for my hollow compliance.

"Your niece's preschool is quite a commute from their apartment. We're having them move in with us for now," my mother said.

I recognized the tone. It wasn't a discussion. It was an eviction notice wrapped in politeness.

That very night, Corinne and Wesley moved in.

The house vibrated with a sickening, festive energy. The grand hallways were suddenly choked with their belongings.

In the kitchen, my mother was bustling around the stove. The softness in her eyes was a tenderness I had never, not once, been on the receiving end of. She kept murmuring, "Take it slow, Wesley honey. Rest if you're tired. Let Mom handle this. You never got to be pampered growing up, and it breaks my heart."

Corinne was lounging on the velvet sofa. She caught sight of me lingering near the foyer out of the corner of her eye. "Why are you just standing there?" she asked, her tone entirely too casual. "Come sit."

I didn't move.

In the house I had called home for twenty-six years, I had instantly been reduced to an awkward, unwanted houseguest.

Dinner was a sprawling feast of every single dish Wesley loved.

My mother constantly reached across the table to pile food onto Wesley's plate, then affectionately ruffled Mia's hair. "Eat up, sweetie. Your daddy never got to taste anything this good when he was little."

Every word felt like a deliberate, pointed needle aimed straight at my throat.

Mia poked at her mashed potatoes, then suddenly looked up at me with wide, innocent eyes. "Uncle Troy, why aren't you eating? Do you not like us?"

The clinking of silverware stopped. The silence at the dining table was deafening. Every pair of eyes locked onto me.

Wesley set his fork down, playing the role of the benevolent peacemaker. "Mia, don't say that. Uncle Troy just isn't feeling hungry."

Before I could force a single syllable out, my mother erupted.

"Troy, I honestly thought you had finally grown up today. That's why I let them move in. But I see exactly what you're doing. Sitting there with a sour look on your facewho is that supposed to punish?" She slammed her palm on the table. "I am begging you, stop causing drama. Just for once. Can you do that?"

My knuckles turned stark white around my fork. A sharp, suffocating pain seized my chest.

I shook my head frantically, trying to speak, but the next second, a violent coughing fit overtook me.

My father sighed heavily, looking at me with exhausted disapproval. "Troy, if you don't like the food, your mother can make you something else."

I forced the corners of my mouth up into a grotesque facsimile of a smile, scooped a spoonful of dry rice into my mouth, and chewed. It tasted like sawdust. "No. It's fine."

Across the table, Corinne watched me. For a fraction of a second, a flicker of genuine distress crossed her eyes.

Dinner ended in a suffocating quiet.

I realized, with absolute certainty, that I didn't belong here anymore.

I retreated to my bedroom, locking the door before I allowed the mask of indifference to slip. Sliding down the heavy oak door until I hit the floor, I pulled my knees to my chest and wept, the physical pain in my chest radiating outward in vicious, pulsing waves.

My phone buzzed. A text from my oncologist.

[Mr. Winchester, have you thought this through? Without chemotherapy, your time is incredibly short. If you agree to treatment, we can buy you at least another six months.]

I stared at the glowing letters for a long time. My thumb hovered over the keyboard before I typed:

[Thank you, Doctor. But I'm leaving the city.]

A soft knock rapped against the wood. I scrubbed my face dry and opened the door.

It was Corinne.

She stood there holding a small porcelain plate of lemon ricotta ravioli. Her voice was uncharacteristically soft. "You barely touched your dinner. I made your favorite."

I didn't reach for the plate. My voice was utterly flat. "I don't like it anymore."

I went to shut the door, but she stuck her arm out, catching my wrist. The sudden movement knocked my phone from my hand. It clattered to the floor, the screen still bright.

She glanced down, her eyes catching the text. Her pupils contracted violently.

"You're leaving?"

I snatched the phone off the rug. She had only seen the second half of the message.

She looked at me, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Is it because of me?"

I took a half-step back, putting emotional and physical distance between us. "No. I just want a change of scenery."

She opened her mouth to argue, but I shut the door in her face.

The next morning, I began packing away my life. I found an old cedar box in the back of my closet. Inside was a stack of polaroids of Corinne and me, and the silver pendant she had given me the day she confessed her love. It was a tiny, elegantly engraved letter P for Prologue.

Back then, her eyes had held nothing but me. Back then, my parents had actually loved me.

A sour, burning sensation clawed at my throat. I dumped the contents of the box into a black trash bag. It was time to throw it all away.

Stepping out into the hallway, I nearly tripped over Mia.

She was sitting on the carpet, building a tower out of wooden blocks. She looked up, tilting her head. "Uncle Troy, what are you throwing away?"

I crouched down and gently ruffled her hair. The contrast between my icy fingertips and her warm skin gave me a jarring sense of vertigo. "Nothing important. Just useless junk."

She blinked, staring intently at my hollow, pale cheeks. "Uncle Troy, do you hate me and Mommy?"

Looking at a face that was a miniature replica of the woman who broke me, my heart inevitably softened. "No, Mia. You're wonderful."

"Then why do you always look so sad?" She grabbed my cold hand, her little brow furrowed in genuine distress. "Mommy told me you used to be a Prince. She said Princes are supposed to be happy all the time. Grandma said you were the most spoiled boy in the world, that you had everything, and that you were the luckiest person ever."

Prince.

It had been so long since anyone used that word with anything other than venom.

Now, it was just a grotesque mockery.

Everyone thinks you lived a charmed life, Troy. Nobody wanted to see the blood on the crown.

My eyes stung with hot tears. I turned my head away, not wanting the child to see me cry.

At that exact moment, Corinne and Wesley walked up the stairs. Seeing me kneeling close to Mia, a flash of surprise crossed Corinne's face.

But Wesley panicked. He rushed forward, likely terrified I was poisoning the kid against him. He snatched Mia up into his arms, his voice dripping with exaggerated concern.

"Mia, don't bother your uncle. He has a delicate constitution. We shouldn't tire him out."

He leaned into the words delicate constitution, weaponizing them to remind Corinne of the narrative they had builtthat I was just playing the frail, dramatic victim for attention.

Mia looked over Wesley's shoulder at me, her little voice trembling with pity. "Mommy, Uncle Troy is crying. His hands are freezing."

Corinnes gaze snapped to my face. Seeing my red-rimmed eyes, she froze.

Without asking, she reached out and snatched the trash bag from my grip. The polaroids and the silver P pendant spilled out near the rim.

A chaotic storm of emotions swirled in her dark eyes.

"You're throwing these away?" she asked, her voice cracking.

"Yeah." I nodded, my voice dead. "There's no point keeping them."

Her fingers tightened around the plastic until her knuckles went white. She looked furious, but also utterly gutted. "Troy, how can you bear to just toss it all?"

I raised an eyebrow, letting the exhaustion and mockery bleed into my eyes. "Corinne, the past is the past. I have to move on with my own life. Why wouldn't I bear it?"

"Your life?" she laughed, a brittle, ugly sound. "Is this what your life is now? Rotting away in self-pity? Do you have any idea how pathetic you look right now? How much you worry me?"

Wasn't she the architect of this exact rot?

I didn't argue. I just looked at her, letting the last flickering embers of the boy who loved her die out completely in my eyes.

Wesley tugged at Corinne's sleeve, his voice a masterclass in gentle manipulation. "Cor, leave him be. Troy has been handed everything on a silver platter his whole life. It's perfectly normal that he's throwing a tantrum now that he has to share the house." He offered me a martyr's smile. "I don't mind, Troy. As long as I finally have my real family, I can endure anything."

I didn't have the energy to fight a ghost. I turned and walked toward the stairs.

Corinne suddenly chased after me. She grabbed my wrist and shoved me against the hallway wall, her eyes blazing with a desperate guilt. "Troy, why are you letting yourself turn into this walking corpse?!"

I shoved her back. My strength was humiliatingly weak. "Corinne, what I do with my life has absolutely nothing to do with you anymore."

The moment the words left my mouth, something wet and warm slid down my upper lip. Blood. It poured from my nose, thick and unyielding.

Corinne gasped, her anger instantly morphing into raw panic. "Are you sick?!"

I violently shook my head, scrubbing the blood away with my sleeve to hide the volume. "No. Just taking too many iron supplements. Stress."

She opened her mouth, but before she could press further, Wesley sprinted out of Mia's room, his voice shrill with manufactured terror.

"Cor! Come quick! Mia is having an allergic reaction! I don't know what to do!"

Corinne looked torn, glancing from my bloody face to Wesley, before maternal instinct won out. She sprinted back into the bedroom.

Once she was out of sight, I slumped against the wallpaper and pressed my hand over my mouth, coughing violently.

When I pulled my hand away, my palm was painted a blinding, horrific crimson.

After I dumped the trash bag in the outside bins, I drove myself to the hospital to get a refill on my heavy painkillers.

My doctor sat across from me, his eyes pleading. "Mr. Winchester, please reconsider the chemo."

I offered him a weary smile. "Chemo buys me six months of agonizing pain. I've spent the last five years living through pure hell. When I die, I just want it to be easy."

He stared at me, helpless, and finally stopped arguing.

I ended up staying overnight in a hospital bed, too exhausted to drive back.

When I finally returned to the estate the next morning, the atmosphere in the living room was toxic. My parents, Wesley, and Corinne were sitting on the sofas, their faces set in stone.

"Troy. How could you do something so vile?" my mother screamed, her eyes bloodshot.

Did they find out about the cancer? Did they know I declined treatment?

I walked forward, genuine confusion masking my face. "What happened?"

Corinne stood up, her face a mask of absolute freezing fury. "Mia nearly died yesterday from a peanut allergy." She took a step toward me. "You know perfectly well that Wesley is deathly allergic to peanuts. And you deliberately put peanut butter in the snacks in the pantry."

I looked over at Wesley. He refused to meet my eyes, staring intently at the rug.

I was genuinely stunned by the depths of his depravity. To frame me, he was willing to risk his own daughter's life.

"I never touched any peanut butter."

My dry, factual denial was the match in the powder barrel. My mother lunged forward and slapped me across the face with everything she had.

The sharp crack echoed off the vaulted ceilings.

The force of the blow sent my weakened, emaciated body crashing to the hardwood floor. My vision swam with black spots, and I had to clench my jaw to swallow down the coppery taste of blood rising in my throat.

My father instinctively stepped forward to help me up, but my mother yanked him back.

"Don't touch him! We spoiled him rotten. He's malicious enough to try and kill a child, but too much of a coward to own up to it!"

Tears hot and fast splattered against the varnished wood beneath me as my mother delivered the final, fatal blow.

"If I had known this was the monster you'd become, I would have left you at the orphanage where you belonged."

She stormed out of the room. My father hesitated, then chased after her.

I lay there for a long time. Eventually, Wesley crouched down beside me, his voice a sickening purr of fake empathy. "Troy, Mia is still unconscious. But it's okay. I know you didn't mean to hurt her."

Corinne scooped Wesley up by the arm, her voice softening as she looked at his fake, red-rimmed eyes. "Wesley, you stayed awake at her bedside all night. Go upstairs and get some sleep."

After they disappeared up the stairs, I dragged my broken body off the floor. My hands shook violently as I pulled a bottle of painkillers from my coat pocket and swallowed two dry.

"What pills are those?"

Corinne's voice echoed from the top of the landing. She had come back down.

I didn't answer. She rushed down the stairs, grabbing my wrist. Her fingers wrapped entirely around it. A look of profound shock washed over her features.

"Troy... how did you get so thin?"

She quickly swallowed down the instinctual concern, replacing it with righteous anger. "Mia is an innocent child. No matter how much you hate me, how much you blame me for leaving youtake it out on me. Not her."

I'm innocent too, I thought. Why doesn't anyone see that?

"I don't hate you," I whispered to the empty air between us. "And I would never hurt a child."

I pulled my arm free, walked up to my room, packed a single duffel bag, and prepared to leave the only home I had ever known forever.

When I opened the front door, my mother was standing on the porch, her eyes puffy from crying.

Seeing the duffel bag slung over my bony shoulder, she froze.

"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded, instinctively defensive. Then, doubling down on her pride, she yelled, "Fine! Leave! And don't bother coming back until you're ready to get on your knees and apologize!"

I left the estate and checked myself into the cheapest hospital ward I could find.

The money I had in my personal account was barely enough to cover a one-month stay.

Day by day, the calendar pages turned. My hair began to fall out in clumps on the cheap pillowcases.

I dragged myself through every public park in the city, just watching people live.

One afternoon, my phone rang. It was Corinne.

"Troy," her voice sounded strained. "Are you doing okay out there? Your parents are worried sick. Just come home. Tomorrow is your birthday. Let's celebrate it together as a family."

I caught my reflection in the dark window of my hospital room. I was a skeleton wrapped in translucent skin.

"Just take good care of them," I replied, my voice steady and hollow. "I'm not coming back."

That night, the moment I laid down, a blinding, excruciating pain erupted from deep within my bones.

I blindly reached out to the bedside table to grab the bottle of painkillers. But my fingers had lost all their strength. The plastic bottle slipped from my grasp, hitting the linoleum floor with a loud clatter. White pills scattered everywhere like snow.

A thick, metallic sweetness surged up my windpipe. I clamped both hands over my mouth, but the blood was unstoppable. It leaked through my fingers, splashing onto the stark white hospital sheets in blooming, violent red roses.

At least I don't have to celebrate another birthday, I thought.

My vision began to pixelate, fading to gray, then to black, until the very last trace of breath quietly slipped from my lungs.