His(72)

But I said nothing.

He bent his head and brushed his lips against mine. The kiss was so light, and yet I felt electricity arc through my nerves at the barest touch.

I wanted him to stab me with the knife he held. I wanted to die in that moment, wanting something that I could never have. But he didn’t raise the knife at all. I believe he had forgotten it was there.

“Goodbye, kitten.”

“Goodbye.”

He stepped back and closed the door behind him. I could hear the snap of the lock.

I stood on the porch for another moment, my body shaking, unsure what it was that had just happened. Then I turned and began to walk down the driveway, the sun shining brightly overhead.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Gav

The world closed in on me as the door swung shut behind her. Closed in - the walls disappeared into black. My body went numb.

She was gone.

Everything I’d worked to keep secret was out, the walls were broken. In my mind, I saw her running out to the road, sticking out her thumb. Catching a ride to the police station. They would come, they would knock down the door. What would they find?

As if underwater, I went to the bedroom. Pulled the arm chair around to the foot of the bed. Untied the rope from the bedposts.

The rope, useless. I would never tie her up again. Useless, useless, except for one thing. My hands moved automatically, looped the rope around itself. The knot tied itself, it seemed, and before I knew it the noose was finished, hanging limply from my hand.

Still in the bedroom, the rope slung over the high rafter, scraped the wood as I pulled it tight. Tied snug against the foot of the bed. The chair under my feet held steady, although my hands shook.

Me? I felt nothing. It wasn’t me who took the noose and draped it around my neck. Not my hands which tightened the knot fast. The rope scratched the skin at my collarbone, but the sensation came from a distance, not from my own nerve endings. I was watching myself commit suicide.

Before, in the tub, I’d held the knife to my skin and recoiled. Now, though, there was nothing for me to recoil from. Just an empty room.

I took my last breath and stepped forward into nothing.



Kat

At the end of the driveway, I caught the motion sensor. The iron gate rattled open in front of me. I stared out at the curving road.

I didn’t want to leave.

So ridiculous. Insane. But there was something at the back of my mind, something that was nagging at me. I didn’t know what it was.

The sound of a car engine came to my ears as though from a distance. I could hear it coming around a lower bend in the road. All I had to do was run out into the middle of the road, wave my arms. I was free. I could go home.

What was it he had said that troubled me so much?

The car’s engine grew louder, and I closed my eyes, my hands at my temples. Thinking back. He wanted to let me go. Surely he knew that I was going to go to the police. He hadn’t even asked me not to tell anyone.

Bored.

The car came around the bend, but I was already running back up toward the house, the troubled feeling in my mind coalescing into something as clear and bright as words on a page. I knew what he meant.

Bored—that was the reason I’d tried to commit suicide. That was what I’d told him.

I ran up the porch and banged on the door, the feeling of dread growing inside of me.

“Gav!” I shouted. “Gav! Let me in!”

The door knob rattled in my hand, but the deadbolt was secure.

“Gav!”

No response.

I went to the window, banging on the pane. I tried to look in, but the glare of the sun reflected off of the glass, and I could see nothing inside. I raised my hand to break the windowpane, and then hesitated. But only for a second.

What is he going to do, kill me?

Gav

The darkness descended, but this time it was not the darkness of my shadow. Shadows need light to exist, and where I was going there was nothing, nothing at all.

Around my neck I felt a strange tug and tension cutting off my blood. My heart pounded loud, drowning out everything. My body kicked once, then again, and I only sensed the body kicking, could not feel it myself. I was already drifting away into the darkness.

This was a dark like fog, so thick it slid over my skin. A soft, enveloping darkness. A peaceful void that I fell into knowingly, longing to lose myself. It was the same thing you sink into halfway on your way to sleep - an ether, thick and palpable. The murmuring fog cradled me, turning me in its arms.

My breath stopped. My lungs were empty. I was empty, blissfully empty. The sound of my heartbeat faded, slowed to a dull murmur. The shadow of a heartbeat.

The sound of the fog - lord, how can I describe it? Pick up a shell and hold it to your ear. It’s not the ocean you hear, but rather a reverberation of static noise. That was the sound of the fog, a low roar coming from nowhere and filling everything. It was a dull roar, a noise that tickled at my senses without letting me hear anything else. The sound came through my body and filled me, too, a peaceful static.