Page 195 of Eternal
And for a moment, I almost laughed. Not because of the pain, because she has never looked morealivethan when she waskillingme.
I close my eyes, my body sags. Seconds pass, then minutes, my hands twitch, and then… I move.
Slowly, painfully. I work the bindings, pulling, and twisting. The second they loosen, I rip my arms free.
Blood.Everywhere. My breath is uneven and shallow, I stagger to my feet, pressing a hand to the wound.
I found a first aid kit in the bathroom.
My fingers find bandages, I wrap them around my stomach, hissing through my teeth. It’s not enough, and it won’t hold for long.
But she didn’t aim for my heart, nor my throat.My partner,she didn’t want me dead. She wanted me to remember, to hate myself for lying to her, for using her to find answers.
But she didn’t want me dead, it doesn’t matter though, because she thinks I’m gone.
And I can’t let her think that.
Not now, not ever. It’s too late, I won’t leave her.
56
AZRA
“Mr. Sandman” by SYML
Present
Itold you you’d hate me if I was honest.
Liar.
Fucking liar.
A scream claws its way out of my throat before I even realize I’m making a sound. I grab the first thing I see, a glass, a book, a goddamn knife, and throw them across the room. It crashes into the wall, but it’s not enough. I want the whole place to fall apart, I want the walls to shake, the ceiling to crack, the entire world to feel what’s inside me right now.
Ican’tbreathe.
I rip off my jacket, my dress, my gloves, anything that has his touch on it. My skin burns, disgust curdling in my stomach. I claw at my arms, at my ribs, trying to scrape him off me.
Get off, get off, get off.
You fucking liar.
I grab the lamp off the nightstand and smash it into the mirror, it cracks, shatters. My reflection splits into a hundred jagged pieces.
Crazy isn’t it?
How hard it is to look at yourself.Reallylook.
Not the face, but everything underneath. And lately I’ve been seeing hope, a whisper of it, and I hate that. I hate that I let myself believe something could change, that I let something soft crawl into my chest when I swore I’d hardened over.
Hope makes you feel stupid andfeel.
Nothing good comes out offeelings.
I hate myself for that and things I don’t even have names for. Weakness, wanting things I should’ve let down, for not being enough.
There are a thousand versions of me scattered in these broken pieces and I can’t stand a single one of them.
