Page 12 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
It scares me that he doesn’t know what my touch means.
All I could do with my hands is kill him.
“Think of it as me repaying you.”
“I-I can’t touch you,” I stutter through my words, scratching my forearms. “Besides, you’re not indebted to me.”
“You can’t… touch me?” Azaire asks slowly, focusing on the wrong thing. I want to reiterate—you are not indebted to me.I did what anyone should. But it’s not what he cares about.
“I can’t touch anyone, no.” I pull at the tips of my gloves.
“Why can’t you?”
I look at him, and he looks at my gloves. No one else wears them. Hopefully they never have to.
My condition isn’t something I would wish upon anyone.
“Too powerful,” I say. It’s not the whole truth, but I suppose it’s a piece of it.
The last time I touched someone, they died.
The next person will, too.
“But then, you could feel if I just…” Azaire closes his eyes.
He tries hard to not try at all. Yet, slowly, it works. Suddenly, there’s silence. A small gap in the noise around us. I close my eyes with him.
The world falls apart.
At first, there’s nothing—the kind of nothing that’s sweet. The kind of nothing I’ve always longed for. No emotion bombarding me, not even my own.
It’s stillness.
Then I see it for what it is:peace.
I breathe it in like fresh mountain air. Soak it up like the sun. But with every breath, the silence around me grows, pounding in my ears. Past memories come up, begging to be relived and rehashed. Wanting me to feel the guilt, the pain, all over again.
My mom appears, dead in the ground. Her legs are swallowed by the soil, as if the ground claimed her before the burial.
I realize, startlingly, that peace is far too quiet.
The nothingness hardens into a room—four walls I built myself, with a door I locked and forgot how to open.
I walk to a wall, and I pound on the carcass. The noise echoes through the empty room. I try to scream, but the only sound I make is my flesh and bone beating against the wall.
My eyes fly open.
“Azaire!” I gasp, clutching his hand. I need him to stop, before I fall back in.
He opens his eyes wide, gasping along with me. He’s in shock. First I see it. Then Ifeelit, too.
I’ve scared him.
“My apologies.” I rush to get the words out. I glance around my surroundings. The sun glowing on the grass, the trees rustling above me. The real world that I am still a part of. I take another deep breath. “I suppose I’m not well equipped for the quiet.”
Azaire’s eyes hover, searching me with nothing but compassion. My gloved hand still holds his, dangerously tight.
“You can tell me about it.” Azaire adds, “If you want.”
