Lover's Lane

The journal wasn’t just a keepsake anymore.

It had become a scrapbook—a twisted shrine. Cameron added more than just Polaroids now. News clippings. Maps. Dates and initials. Little symbols only he seemed to understand. Each page marked a memory, each victim a thread in their bloody tapestry.

Sienna found it one evening while he was out getting food.

It was hidden beneath his side of the mattress, zipped into the lining of his duffel bag like a sacred thing. She hadn't meant to snoop—but something in her gut had been gnawing for days.

She flipped through it slowly.

The early pages were clean—clinical almost. Names. Roses. Times.

But as the pages turned, the journal darkened. Handwriting turned frantic. Photos were scratched over, some slashed with ink. One page had a victim’s photo smeared with what she hoped was paint. Beneath it: “Liar.”

She stopped when she reached a page near the end.

It was her.

A photo of her standing in front of a motel mirror, brushing her hair, completely unaware.

The caption:

“She’s the only thing I can’t kill.”

Her breath hitched.

Not fear. Not quite. But something like dread’s quieter cousin. Something that whispered—He’s changing.

When Cameron returned, he kissed her forehead and handed her a burger wrapped in greasy foil. She forced a smile, tucked the journal back, and never said a word.

That night, she woke to the sound of him whispering.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, journal open in his lap, blade in his hand—not cutting, just… tracing.

“She’s the only thing I can’t kill,” he whispered again.

“Cam?” she said softly.

He turned like she wasn’t supposed to see him. His eyes were distant. Hollow.

“Do you ever think about stopping?” he asked.

Sienna sat up, pulling the sheets around her. “No.”

“Even if we could?”

“There’s no we without this,” she said. “You know that.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s what scares me.”

The next day, they hit the road again. Southbound. No plan. No target.

But something had shifted.

Cameron drove in silence, one hand always tapping the steering wheel. Sienna stared out the window, arms crossed, the rose box in her lap. She never asked him why he took that photo of her. She didn’t need to.

She already knew the answer.

She was the only thing tethering him to reality.

And if that broke, he might turn the knife inward…

Or worse, toward her.

They stopped in a small Missouri town. A woman named Carol Greene became their next page. She ran a pawn shop. A quiet loner with no family.

But it wasn’t clean this time.

Cameron let it go too far—rage bubbling under the surface as he pressed the blade in too deep, too long. Sienna had to pull him back, had to scream his name before he blinked and let go.

Afterward, he didn’t speak for hours.

She watched him from across the room as he sat hunched over the journal, pen shaking in his hand.

He tore out her page. Burned it in the motel sink.

“I won’t let myself forget who you are,” he said to her, not looking up. “Even if I forget who I am.”

Sienna stood frozen.

Because something told her—this was the beginning of the end.