Chapter 26
ALENA
A week. Or more. Who the fuck knows. Time had turned into a joke with no punchline.
I woke up on the floor again. Face pressed to cold tile, cheek sticky with drool and tears and whatever else I'd leaked out of myself last night.
The room spun slow circles, like the apartment was trying to shake me off.
My mouth tasted like ash and cheap vodka, tongue thick and useless.
The bottle—empty—lay on its side a foot away, neck pointing at me like an accusation.
Another casualty in the war I was losing against myself.
A knock.
Sharp. Real. Not the whispers. Not the scratching. Not my imagination finally snapping clean in half.
My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I gasped.
Drogo.
It had to be.
I scrambled up—half crawling, half stumbling—hands and knees scraping tile, nails broken and bloody from nights I couldn't remember.
The room tilted violently. I caught myself on the wall, left a smear of something dark on the paint.
Blood, maybe. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting to that door.
Another knock. Impatient.
"I'm coming!" My voice cracked, raw from screaming at shadows for days. Or weeks. However long it had been.
I lurched to the door. Fumbled the chain with shaking fingers. The deadbolt. My hands shook so bad I couldn't grip the knob right, kept slipping, metal cold and unforgiving under my palm.
Please be him. Please be him with some stupid explanation and his arms and that look that said I was home. That I was safe. That this nightmare was over.
I yanked the door open.
No one.
Just the empty hallway, fluorescent light buzzing overhead like a dying insect.
My knees buckled.
On the floor, right outside the threshold, was a note. Plain white envelope. My name in his handwriting—the same handwriting that used to leave post-its on my coffee maker saying "good morning beautiful" or "left early, love you." The same slanted D he'd been signing since we were kids.
I picked it up with fingers that didn't feel like mine.
Opened it.
One line.
Don't wait for me anymore. Found something better.
- D
The paper slipped from my hand.
I stared at it on the floor. At those seven words that erased seventeen years.
Seventeen years of "you're the only person who gets me" and "I'd burn the world for you" and "always, Alena, always.
" Seventeen years reduced to a single line scrawled in the same handwriting that used to write me love letters when we were teenagers.
The same hand that had held mine through every nightmare, every ghost attack, every moment I thought I'd break.
Found something better.
Better than me.
Then I laughed.
It started small—a hiccup, a choke, something bubbling up from the broken place inside me.
Then louder. Maniacal. High-pitched and broken, echoing down the empty hallway like a madwoman finally set free.
Tears poured down my face, mixing with snot, mixing with the laugh that wouldn't stop, couldn't stop.
"Fuck!" I screamed through the laughter, pounding my fists on the tile hard enough to leave bruises I'd find later. "Fuck fuck fuck!"
The laugh turned into sobs mid-breath—ugly, wrenching, tearing out of my chest like they were trying to take my heart with them. I don't know how long I stayed there. Minutes. Hours. Time was still a joke. The hallway stayed empty. No neighbors came to check. No one cared. I was alone. Like always.
Eventually the laughter died. The crying slowed to hiccups, then nothing. I sat up slowly, wiping my face with the back of my hand. Looked at the note again. Read it one more time, letting each word sink in like poison.
Something cold and hard settled in my chest. Not pain anymore. Not despair. Something sharper. Cleaner.
Rage.
Pure, clean, white-hot rage.
I stood.
Walked to the kitchen on legs that barely worked, stumbling once, catching myself on the counter.
Grabbed the whiskey bottle—new one, half full, cap already off because why bother anymore.
Took a long pull. Let it burn all the way down, scorching my throat, my chest, settling like liquid fire in my empty stomach.
The whispers started—soft, smug, circling like vultures.
"He left you."
"Always alone."
"Worthless."
I looked at the empty air where the voices came from. The shadows pooling in the corners. The frost creeping across the windows.
"Fuck off," I said. Low. Calm. Final.
A scratch bloomed across my ribs—hot, deliberate, testing.
I laughed again—not broken this time. Manic, yes. Wild, yes. But dangerous. "Fuck OFFFF!" I roared at the shadows, voice cracking the air like a whip.
The whispers went silent.
Dead silent.
The cold retreated a fraction—frost on the windows melting at the edges, dripping down in slow rivulets. The shadows in the corners pulled back, just an inch, but enough. Enough to know they'd felt it too. My rage. My refusal to break anymore.
I took another drink. Stared at the note on the floor. At his handwriting. At the "D" that used to mean safety and now meant nothing.
"Fucker," I whispered.
Then louder.
"FUCKER!"
I screamed it and threw the bottle—not at the wall this time, but at everything.
Glass shattered. Plates flew. The coffee table flipped, legs scraping gouges into the floor.
Books scattered, pages tearing. I grabbed whatever my hands found—lamps that had sat on our shared nightstand, cushions we'd curled up on during movie nights, the sandwich he'd made with his own hands before he left—and hurled them, smashed them, destroyed them.
Everything.
Every piece of him. Every memory. Every lie.
The apartment became a war zone, but this time I was the army. Me. Not the ghosts. Not the grief. Me.
When there was nothing left to break, I sank to the floor amid the wreckage, chest heaving, hands bleeding from broken glass I didn't remember grabbing.
The bottle—somehow still intact—lay beside me.
I picked it up. Drank. Deep pulls until the room spun faster, until furniture jumped and danced, until the shadows blurred and the whispers stayed silent.
Scared or satisfied, I didn't care.
"Fuck you," I whispered to the note. To him. To the ghosts. To everything that had tried to break me.
I stood up.
Legs shaking, vision blurred, blood dripping from my palms. I walked to the bathroom. To the mirror. The one we used to share, where he'd stand behind me in the mornings, arms around my waist, chin on my shoulder, both of us smiling at our reflection like we were invincible.
I looked at myself.
Really looked.
Hair matted with sweat and tears. Eyes bloodshot, ringed with dark circles so deep they looked like bruises. Lips cracked and bleeding. The scar on my neck fresh and red, still weeping blood. I looked like death warmed over. Like something the world had chewed up and spit out.
I looked like a victim.
And then I laughed.
Not broken. Not manic. Clear. Sharp. Dangerous.
"Okay," I said to my reflection. "Enough."
The shadows in the bathroom stirred. Watching. Waiting.
I met their attention in the mirror's reflection. Held it.
"That ends today," I said, voice steady for the first time in weeks. "I will not fall because of a fucking man. Whoever he is."
The shadows hesitated.
Then they moved.
Not toward me. Not threatening. They shifted, reorganized, settled into the corners like obedient dogs waiting for commands. The whispers stayed silent. The cold stopped creeping. The frost on the mirror began to melt, water running down in slow streams.
I felt it then—the shift. The change. They weren't controlling me anymore.
I was controlling them.
Or at least, we'd reached an understanding. A truce. They could hurt me, yes. But I could hurt them back now. I'd proven it. And they knew it.
I wiped the blood from my neck with the back of my hand. Looked at myself one more time. At the woman in the mirror who'd survived ghosts and abandonment and her own spiral into madness.
"No more," I whispered.
The woman in the mirror stared back.
Broken, yes.
But not defeated.
Not anymore.