Chapter 38
Cecilia
There’s nothing in my head but screaming.
The door to my bedroom slams open. Victoria and Svetlana carry me in as best they can as I empty out on the floor again. Only acid comes out. I’m already so empty, a shell of who I was just minutes ago.
“Bring my husband! I’ll call Mikhail. Go!” Victoria orders, her shaking arms coiling around me. Her weight is on my back, working to ground me, to contain the hell unleashing on my body. But she can’t. No one can.
I’m a monster. A killer. A psychopath.
“S-s-stay a-away,” I cry out, pushing her off me with all my strength.
But even when she’s thrown back, Victoria returns, never letting go of me for more than a second.
My friend’s loving arms should feel like a blanket, soothing and warm, but right now, they feel heavy, like the burden of my sin coiling tight around me.
My knees give out at the threshold of the room.
I fall to the floor, curling into myself, my hands clawing at my chest, needing air.
“Oh, God! Oh, God, Cecilia. I’m here,” Victoria whispers, sobbing against me.
“Leave!” I snap at her, pushing her hands off me. “Get out. Get. Out!”
I stand on wobbly feet, walking backward to put some space between us.
I wish I didn’t have eyes to see the hurt swimming in her gaze.
But when she brings her trembling hand to her mouth, I see the now-chipped manicure on one of her nails, and then the smudged mascara on her skin, and I know I’ve hurt another person I love.
Because this is who I am now—who I’ve always been—and if I don’t drive her away, I’m putting her in a lot more danger.
My friend scrambles to her feet, her eyes flickering with conflicted emotion.
Yes. She should be afraid. She should get the hell away from this killer.
Victoria shakes her head, tears flowing down her face as she steps back, looking for help in the hallway.
But no one’s coming, and even if they did, there’s nothing they could do to undo the past. Like the trapped bird my husband once told me I was, I’m back in yet another cage, seized by life’s insurmountable claws of terror.
It’s smaller and tighter and darker than anything I’ve ever experienced, and wherever I look, the bars of my enclosure obstruct my vision.
This room, where Mikhail and I shared so many moments, now feels like a graveyard of memories.
The girl who lived through them is somewhere far away, the ghostly laughter and sensual moaning of our many nights cutting past my ears like knives thrown into the Wheel of Death.
I’ll hurt him too when he’s back. If he’s back.
“I-I—I’ll bring you Mikhail. And a doctor—”
I shut the door in front of her, twisting the key as many times as it goes before collapsing again on my knees. I scream into my palms, ugly and raw, and then look up at the sky through the window across the room, as if my mother can see me.
Icy wind throws the tall branches of the nearby trees into the glass, the sound like little snapping fingers. I’m going straight to hell for this, and somehow, it still doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
I think of my mother’s smile, of her gentle hands and long, beautiful hair.
I think of her laugh—the small fragment of it I still remember.
I’m never going to hear it again, and with each passing day, the sound fades from my memory.
I wrap my arms around myself, pretending it’s her who’s holding me like she used to.
And though my voice is scratchy and defeated, I still whisper the lullaby she used to sing me every day.
The notes go up, then down, and my crying breaks it apart, but I keep going, writhing in pain on the cold, hard floor.
Then, minutes turn into hours. Hours turn into darkness.
The day passes with me in this exact same spot as I look out into nothingness.
Eventually, my body gives out from exhaustion, and the tears and vomiting stop.
But my mind…it keeps going in circles, keeping me nailed to the same position that makes my knees hurt.
Voices come and go by the locked door. It’s Victoria and Wolfgang and a voice I don’t know—maybe the doctor. Only when they threaten to break in do I find it in me to say a few words.
“I’m fine. I just want to be alone.”
The lie scrapes my throat raw. I’m drowning, and I don’t know how to make it stop.
A thought springs to mind then, my arms reaching forward, helping me to crawl to the other side of the room.
Whimpers roll off my tongue with every strenuous move.
It’s too much—a monumental effort. But…there’s the window.
I reach up to the frame, pulling myself up like a broken doll. My shaking hand coils around the handle, pulling it open. Cold, fresh air kisses my face like a gentle encouragement.
It’s okay, it seems to say. Come closer, and all the pain will go away.
When I look down, I know it’s the only answer.