Page 5 of Borrowed
Someone coughed.
A nurse walked past.
I hummed my favorite song.Mila would like it.It was about cats.The boy with the crayons started to cry, but I ignored him.
He was not Toby.
My painting was done.
A figure with no face, wrapped in bandages with black butterflies floating around him.I wrote his name in the corner with my tongue…Toby.
Or maybe Mine.
“Tabby, that’s…intense,” the therapist said as she walked by, eyes wide, and I grinned.
I licked the red off my fingers.But it didn’t taste like blood.That made me sad.
“Thank you,” I told her with a sigh.“It’s love.”
Because love wasn’t hearts and roses…
It was teeth, skin, and ruin, and Toby said I was born to ruin.
We both were.
He wrapped his arms around me, not allowing anyone else to see, but I felt him—heavy, pressing, possessive.
“My good twin sister,” he murmured.“Everything you make…is perfect.Just like that dripping cunt you’re hiding from me.”
I gasped, the sound sharp, like the ‘tick-tick-tick’ of the clock on the quiet walls.
“Because it’s you, Toby,” I said, laughing at how silly he was.
I was always wet for him.
I was his.
They told me it was either Tuesday or Thursday.
But it smelled like Sunday, and that was when he touched me the most.
They gave me a paper bracelet that itched, and I thought about the toothbrush I was not allowed to chew on.It was green like Toby’s eyes used to be…
When they weren’t full of fire.
When he still had a face.
Nurse Smiley.
Her name rhymes with pill…Jill or Hill or Kill.They walked too fast.Her footsteps sounded like static.I tried to step in between them so I didn’t glitch.
Toby hated it when I glitched.
“Left foot.Right foot.Good girl.”
His voice was inside the vents, wrapping around me like mist.
Behind my teeth.
