Page 17 of Eternal
I hated how weak I was, hated that my body couldn’t keep up with the rage inside it.
Like it was too big to be contained, too big to be felt, like the mix of grief and abuse made it unbearable in a way.
And the pills were gone, the alcohol was gone, the only ones I’d relied on to numb everything.
I’d searched for them the first few nights, stupidly. I knew I wouldn’t find any, but I did. I tore through crates, dug through dusty cupboards, anything that might give me even a taste of silence.
Tariq caught me without really understanding what I was searching for.
Didn’t even need to raise his voice.
“You’re not here to escape, Azra,” he said. “You’re here to face what you are. And what you’renot.”
I didn’t touch another pill after that.
Not because I didn’t want to, I did, every goddamn day. But there was nowhere to hide here, no excuses, no distractions. Andhim.
He never shouted, or laid a hand on me out of anger. But he didn’t coddle me either, he watched,alwayswatched. There was no mercy in his training, only sharp instructions and silence.
Then he’d cook for me, and give me a place to stay.
He had a daughter once, who died a few years ago. He told me about her, she’d been sick for a long time before resting eternally. Maybe that’s why he treated me like I was his own, maybe it made him feel a little better.
I remember the knife he threw at my feet one evening, glistening under the sun.
My hand shook as I picked it up. I gripped it until my knuckles went white, until my skin split under the pressure.
Every swing felt like it took years off my life in terms of effort. Every mistake painfully echoed in my bones time the sun dipped low, I was on my knees, my body was wrecked, and my head was screaming.
The sand beneath me was stained dark with blood and sweat.Red.
Tariq stepped forward, gave me a small nod. “Good,” he said. “You’re learning.”
And I was learning how to make pain useful. To turn it into something useful, somethingfinal. I was learning how to silence the girl who cried herself to sleep and become the kind of woman who could end someone without blinking.
But the nights… Those were the worst.
Cold sweats.
Insomnia.
Itching that felt like it came from under the skin.
Life went quiet, the stars burned too bright, and the silence made the craving worse.
I’d curl around the knife he offered me under my pillow like a secret I could only share with myself.
Whisper the words my mother once said to me, the only words I still believed in, even if they were lies.
“Family is the one who stays.”
I don’t know if I believe that anymore. But I kept saying it. Because stopping wasn’t an option.
Red.
The blood on my sleeve is dry now, but the color, that bright red, still pulls it all back, the memories, the heat. Tariq’s voice. That version of me I had to kill to survive. The goodbye I didn’t want to give, to this country, to the people there. Tohim.
But that was years ago.
