Chapter Twenty-Five
Theodore
It is an agonizing way to go, starving to death, but also a peaceful one.
It starts off painful—the wrenching knife in your gut that twists and aches, slicing away at your stomach as the acid begins to eat away at anything it can reach.
When your body is so hungry it begins to eat itself, wasting away at the muscle and the fat until you are nothing but a weak sack of bones left to crumble on the bed.
But eventually it gets easier. The pain becomes a dull irritation in the back of your mind. The hunger becomes an exhaustion in your limbs. Soon you cannot even lift a fork or a spoon, much less be tempted to go out and devour that which is not yours to consume.
My father is frightened for me, I know. I can hear him sneak into my room to pray when he thinks I am asleep. I can hear his sobs as they wreck through him as the days go by, and I have yet to do anything but wither away.
At first it was easy enough to blame my injuries. Fitzwilliam and his friends did a number on me, and I would be hard pressed to find a single stretch of skin that isn't mottled and discoloured.
That first day I saw myself in the mirror, leaned up against the sink as my father tended to each wound, I wondered what Azizi might think if she saw me.
Wondered what colours she might paint me with if she put my battered body on canvas.
Would she use the colours she has already, or would my wounds call for something new and fresh?
Would she agonize over each shade and stroke?
Would she mix and grind and mix again until she had the right tone of purple and the right hue of yellow to splash across my pale skin?
And Kolfina. God, Kolfina.
I could not bear for her to see me like this at all.
She is so soft, so gentle. She is unbaked dough that I wish to sink my hands into and kneed away at.
What would she think if she saw me now, curled up beneath my blanket for near a week straight?
Too thin, too weak. My hair unwashed and my fingers tightened into fists I cannot release.
Would she cry for me? Weep for me? Would she worry? I would hate to see any sort of pain on her pretty face.
Perhaps that is why it's so shocking to find her standing beside my bed when I wake up.
Why I gasp at those hazel eyes I know so well instead of the borrowed blue ones she wore to the festival.
There is a shimmering edge to her in the morning light, a sort of etherealness that settles around her like a mourning veil.
I am convinced then that I have finally died. Or that, perhaps, I am close enough to it for the heavens to appear. It is kind of her to be there in the end, to carry me on to the other side, wherever that may be.
“I always knew you were an angel,” I croak when she kneels beside me, the gentle caress of her fingers nothing more than a cool breeze across my cheek.
I was right, there is a bitter sorrow there in her gaze, tears that well up like ocean tides to spill down her rounded cheeks.
“Don't cry for me,” I beg her. “Angels aren't supposed to cry. You’re supposed to sing, remember?”
She shakes her head, drawing a circle above her head with her finger as if to say, “Not an angel.”
But if she's not an angel, then she is just a ghost. And if she is just a ghost, then she’s abandoned the body Azizi stole for her. But why? Was she not happy with having another chance at life? Was the body not good enough for her? Should we find another?
Another breeze on my cheek, and I look up to find her smiling at me—a fragile, shaky thing on her plump lips. She presses a hand to my chest, and I can see the truth in her eyes.
"You gave it up... for me? But why?"
Kolfina scoffs silently, gesturing around the room as if it is an answer in and of itself. Perhaps it is. Shame pools in my stomach, bringing bile to the back of my throat—though what I have left to vomit up, I cannot say.
The woman does not stop there, rising to her feet to begin pacing the small length of my room, her arms and hands waving about in a wild game of charades for me to decode.
I am too exhausted to follow most of it, but I catch parts about Azizi—Kolfina’s pointer and middle fingers shaped into a V and pressed to her teeth—and the frantic gesture of a paintbrush.
I catch parts about my father with his cap and me wasting away in the bed.
I catch her gesture for the wallpaper in the house that waits in the darkness to gobble her up—the clenching of her fists together, the opening of her fingers like flower petals in spring, the bruising grip around her wrists like shackles holding her down.
“The visions,” I say quietly, frowning at her from beneath my covers, “they're back?”
But instead of the frightened look I am so familiar with when she speaks of her garden, I see only anger in her eyes.
Fury and despair as she turns to me, swiping a hand across the nightstand to send my journal and pens scattering across the ground.
Neither of us expect it; she's never been able to interact with physical objects before.
Unfortunately, it only makes her angrier, and she wastes no time lashing out at my shelves, scattering books onto the ground with only half-success.
"Kolfina—Kolfina please—" I beg her, confused and exhausted as I struggle to sit up. "I don't know what you're saying."
She screams silently, her eyes squeezed shut and the gas lanterns on the wall flickering with the threat of going out.
When she's finally done, she puffs and huffs, glaring at me with tears streaming down her cheeks, carving divots in them like beach sand.
It makes the pain in my stomach lurch again, makes the dagger in my chest dig in deeper and deeper.
In a blink, she is in front of me, her hands resting on my cheeks, and I swear I can almost feel the weight of them there. I wonder what makes me different. Why can she touch the books she's made a mess of, but not me?
I can see the pain in her eyes, can almost taste her tears when she moves her hand to hover over my heart again.
"I'm sorry," I croak, closing my eyes in a useless attempt to hide away from the guilt. "I'm sorry, I don't... I don't know what to do."
Kolfina's biting chill traces the line of my jaw and I stare up at her, meeting the contemplative look she gives me.
She presses a finger to my lips, and before I can truly think about it, I open my mouth, shivering when the digit slides inside.
I can't truly feel it, not the pressure or the weight, but it is not unlike a sharp breath in the dead of winter.
Like a mouthful of snow settling and melting on your tongue quicker than you can savor it.
She meets my eyes and frowns, like she is expecting something.
I know what she is expecting. I know what she is asking, what she wants. But I cannot answer. I will not answer. It's too painful, too horrible.
It is one thing to pretend when Azizi gives me a cup of her own food source, one thing to pretend my father does not supply me the same thing after Azizi's visit the other day. But to give in to the hunger completely, the way Kolfina prods me to, the way Azizi wants me to...
“I can't do it,” I tell her as I pull away. "I am damned enough as it is. Already the Devil has one foot inside my soul. Already he tempts me. To give in would be the greatest sin. There would be no redemption after that, no way God could forgive me. "
Kolfina's shoulders slump and her lips part in a silent sigh. She doesn't have to act it out for me to understand the look on her face.
What God would demand redemption for a crime He committed for you?
It is something I have often asked myself. My father said God does not make rotten souls. The Church says He does not make mistakes. I have questioned if I have a purpose for the Lord, if perhaps He wishes for me to give in to my hunger for some reason or another.
Then I remember the cross-shaped burn between my shoulder blades. I remember the taste of the holy water as Father Thompson held me down. If God had a plan for me once, I fear He has long abandoned me since.
Frost beneath my eye. Ice across my tongue.
I glance up to find Kolfina looking at me like a mourner looks at a widow. Full of pity and sadness. As if I am already dead and gone and she did not get a chance to say goodbye. I want to tell her I'm sorry. I want to tell her not to be sad, because I'm still here.
But am I? Is what I'm doing even living? Am I truly just waiting around to die in the hopes that my God will forgive me for the way He made me? In the hopes that He will be proud of me for withstanding the punishment He bestowed?
Is the punishment justified if you do not remember the crime you committed to earn it?
When my father sneaks in later that night, I am still awake.
Kolfina stayed with me as long as she could, but whether it be her own sadness and frustration, or her distance from the house, eventually the edges of her began to blur.
Terror brimmed in her eyes as she stared down at her bare wrists, watching the vines twist around them and dig thorns deep beneath her skin. A moment later, she was gone.
It's hours later that I hear my father come in and sit in the chair beside my bed. It creaks beneath him, nearly loud enough to disguise the quiet clink of a glass being set on the nightstand, and then he begins to pray.
I do not pray with him—haven’t since I left my rosary at Christ’s feet—I only wait until he is finished before reaching out to take his hand in mine. He jumps at the unexpected touch, but to my relief, he does not move to turn on the lights, only grips my hand tighter in his.
"Oh, my boy."
"Papa," I say, my voice barely above a whisper, as if some part of me hopes he will not hear me, "I do not know what to do."