“They don’t love you.” Nicky sneers, cutting me off. “You were their mission all along.”
I shudder as my heart starts cracking in my chest bit by bit, each word a perfect blow.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Both of them start laughing but it’s not the belly laughs I grew up hearing in our house—wait, when last did I hear either of them laugh?
“Foolish girl,” Nicky seethes. “Since when have you been this naïve and foolish? Since that boy hate fucked you and took your virginity?”
I shake my head, eyes wide as I take several steps back, but I slip and fall face down into the warm blood on the floor.
My God…
Warm, thick blood covers my face, fighting to push into my mouth like it wants me to choke on it. I feel like I’m about to have a coronary, feeling the blood clinging to my face, every inch of it now covering my body.
“No one wants you,” Nancy repeats. I don’t know how but she’s now close to me.
“You deserve to suffer. You deserve to be swallowed by the darkness. Why fight it? Give in already, no one will miss you.”
“You’re wrong…” I gasp, but it feels like I’m suffocating. My chest is tight and heavy. I start clawing at my chest again.
This has to stop. Please someone make it stop.
“You’re the cause of all this death,” Nancy says, as more blood starts gurgling out of her mouth. “You did this.”
“Aiden died because of you,” Nicky says.
Aiden? I didn’t…
“No, he was sick…” I rush to explain, but Nicky goes on as if I didn’t speak at all.
“And now, the woman who took pity on you, took you in, died as you watched. You did nothing.”
No, I tried to do something, I want to scream but I freeze as the chilling reality of what I did becomes clear.
“No one likes you. You don’t even have friends.”
I shake my head even more. Tears blinding my eyes. I can’t see anymore. The red and dark spots blending together until it feels like an abyss.
Make it stop.
“You have no one.”
Surely, they’re wrong. I have someone. There’s someone out there in my corner.
“You did this.”
No…
“You’re an evil, ruinous mistake,” Nicky seethes. “Nicky was right to throw you away.”
Please stop!
“Nathan never wanted to father you.”
No.
“Just let go…”
I scream and the next thing I know, Nicky and Nancy are gone. I’m back in the small hotel room I’ve been hiding in since I ran from home since the night it all happened.
The room is dark, empty and cold, like my heart, but the nightmare seems to have bled out into this very room and at the realization of that, I can’t breathe.
That weight on my chest, is back.
That suffocating feeling, it’s back as well.
That sense of drowning over and over again? It also comes back until I start clawing at my chest, this time with a viciousness that rivals a wounded animal.
Panting for breath, I frantically kick the sweat coated sheets that seem to hold me back, imprisoning me to the bed.
You don’t have a home.
The voices are back again, whispering viciously, rattling around in my mind and suddenly, the blood is back. It’s everywhere again.
Nicky and Nancy are back, their voices whispering hotly in my ear until I drop from the bed. There’s a low buzzing sound coming from somewhere that won’t stop.
No one loves you.
No.
You’re the reason behind everything.
Then, a pair of beautiful green eyes flash before me, making my heart stop. Time stops. The rushing of blood in my veins, stops. Everything in me seems to freeze when I see those eyes.
I know him. He’s someone to me. Who is he?
His name is right there on the tip of my tongue but I can’t say it for some reason, until…
“Julian,” I gasp his name like a litany, like it’s my last resolve, my last salvation, falling off my lips, but just as quickly, the green disappears until the beautiful eyes are almost black, swirling with so much hate…directed at me.
“No!”
I start clawing at my chest faster and faster, but nothing happens. I try to stand up, but I can’t, so I start crawling, the bristles of the carpet biting into my flesh but I keep going. It’s all I have now as the voices follow me. Taunting me. Ridiculing me.
“I’m a shell of a person right now, because of you!”
Did he say that to me? Why was he in so much pain? Did I do that too?
Yes, you did! You destroy everything you touch and everyone who so much as gets close to you.
“Please stop. Please,” I beg over and over again, but the harsh voice only grows louder.
I have to get out of here. I start crawling faster, tripping in the dark, smashing my shoulder into something but I bite down on the pain and keep crawling, the need to escape so intense, it’s literally swallowing me whole at this point. I need to answer it right now.
I’m the evil.
I’m the problem here.
I hurt people.
“Your heart is already corroded, empty, rotten.”
He was right. I’m rotten.
I’m not wanted.
I need to go.
I crawl faster but I slam into something. An object comes crushing down right beside me. Suddenly, the floor is wet. Something that looks a lot like the white roses I saw, are now scattered, mixed with the wetness.
I move to crawl again, but I feel a sharp sensation, then… a bit of release.
I freeze.
The release was so sweet, so sudden, it eased the pressure in my chest. I want more of that. There’s peace in that.
I look down and the wetness is now thick, which only means one thing. The blood is back.
Make it stop. Oh God, please make it stop! It’s just too much blood.
Just give in.
I grab the bigger sharp pieces in the water. It has a sharp edge and with that, I start applying pressure until I feel peace.
Over and over, the tightness in my chest starts loosening, the pressure fading away like a sweet release that chases away the nightmares that I don’t understand and those that feed my guilt.
Yes.
“Surrender, baby girl. No one wants you here.”
Yes, Mom. But wait, who is my mom?
Darkness skirts at the edges of my vision. Suddenly, nothing matters anymore. Everything is pointless, foamless, unimportant.
Is peace dark? I don’t care, this is good enough.
At least there’s nothing here. Not even a pair of smoldering, intense green eyes that melt my insides.
2
The night Nancy died
“Mia, where the fuck are you?”
Second voice message from the number…
“This is my second fucking message, Mia. Pick up your damn phone.”
Third voice message from the number…
“Mia, I swear to God, if you don’t get back here to me…”
Fourth voice message from the number…
“Damn you and your stubbornness, Mia, this isn’t the time to play childish games that you won’t win. Stop this right now and get back here to me. We need to fucking talk.”