6. Chapter 6- August #2
A bathroom. Bright yellow tile. Lenora is called June. Red hair. Freckles. Twenty-seven years old. She’s sitting inside a bathtub. Fully clothed as blood pinkens the water. Not much but enough.
I kneel beside her.
She’s weak. Her body has almost completely taken mine.
My eyes. My hands. My scars. Even my voice sometimes.
I look like a ghost. Thin. Gray. Barely there.
“Please,” she whispers.
“No.”
“August.”
“No.”
“You promised.”
“I changed my mind.”
“You promised.”
“I don’t care.”
“You said if it got this bad…”
“I know what I said.”
She reaches for me. Her fingers pass through a section of my arm. Not completely. My body is becoming translucent.
“I’m running out of time.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“No.”
“Look at yourself.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
She cries. “You always get to decide.”
I stare at her. “What?”
“You decide when we run. You decide when we stay. You decide when we touch. When we don’t. You decide when I’m allowed to know the truth.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“No.”
She looks at me. “You’re trying to keep me.”
The words hit.
Because they’re true. I don’t want to save her.
Not entirely.
I want her. Even if wanting her destroys us.
“Please,” she says again. She puts something in my hand.
A syringe.
I look at it. “No.”
“You promised.”
“I can’t.”
“You said you would.”
“I can’t.”
“August.”
“Don’t ask me.”
“You know what happens if I finish.”
“We don’t know.”
“Yes, we do.”
“No.”
“I remember.”
I freeze.
Her expression changes. “I remember all of them.”
My blood runs cold. “June…”
“I remember being Lenora.”
“No.”
“Eleanor.”
“Stop.”
“Anna.”
“Stop.”
“I remember the river.”
“STOP.”
“I remember the gun.”
I stand.
She grabs my sleeve. “I remember you begging me to kill you.”
“Enough.”
“And I remember what happens after you die.”
I stop then slowly turn. “What?”
Her face goes pale. “You don’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
“August…”
“What happens?”
She begins crying harder. “I can’t tell you.”
I grab her shoulders. “What happens?”
“Don’t.”
“Tell me!”
“You wake up.”
“I know that.”
“No.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “You wake up before I’m gone.”
Everything inside me stops. “What?”
“You watch.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Every time.”
She touches my face. “You come back while I’m finishing.”
I can’t breathe.
“And what do I do?”
She closes her eyes. “You help.”
My stomach drops. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You don’t know who you are anymore.”
“No.”
“You tear pieces from yourself and give them to me.”
“Stop.”
“You beg me to take you.”
“Stop.”
“And when there isn’t enough left…”
She opens her eyes. “You kill me.”
The memory jerks.
Different angle. Different moment.
June beneath me. My hands around her throat. Her hands around my wrists. She isn’t fighting. She’s crying.
So am I. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“Please come back.”
“I will.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
I squeeze.
She stops breathing.
I scream.
The memory breaks.
We slam back into the apartment and she shoves me away.
I stumble into the wall as she gasps for air. Her hand goes to her throat. Finger-shaped bruises bloom across her skin.
My fingerprints. “No.”
I reach for her.
She backs away. “No.”
“Lenora…”
“You killed me.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You strangled me.”
“I know.”
“You fucking killed me.”
“I KNOW.” The shout tears out of me. I punch the wall. Pain explodes through my hand.
Good. I deserve it.
“I know.” My voice breaks.
Lenora’s crying.
So am I.
“I thought you were killing me.”
“I was.”
“No.” I look at her. “We were killing each other.”
Silence.
The words settle between us.
Not a romance. Not a curse. A cycle of love becoming terror every time.
“We hurt each other,” Lenora whispers.
“Yes.”
“We tried to save each other.”
“Yes.”
“And then…”
“We got desperate.”
She wipes tears from her face. “You locked me up.”
“Yes.”
“I tried to kill myself.”
“Yes.”
“I killed you.”
“Yes.”
“You killed me.”
“Yes.”
Her shoulders shake. “Why did we keep coming back?”
I laugh. Broken and ugly.
“Because apparently we’re fucking idiots.”
She almost laughs. Instead…it turns into a sob.
I can’t stand it anymore.
I cross the room.
She doesn’t move away this time.
I stop in front of her. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes lift. “For which lifetime?”
“All of them.”
The answer ruins us both.
She folds against me.
I hold her.
For several minutes, we stand in the dark surrounded by broken glass and the remains of every mistake we’ve ever made.
She cries into my chest.
I press my face into her hair. “I would never hurt you.”
She laughs bitterly. “You have.”
“I know.”
“You just showed me.”
“I know.”
“So don’t promise me that.”
I close my eyes.
She’s right.
“Then I’ll promise something else.”
“What?”
“If I become him again…”
She pulls back. “Him?”
“The version of me that locks you up. Controls you. Hurts you because he’s too afraid to lose you.” My throat tightens. “If I become him…”
“August.”
“Leave.”
“No.”
“Lenora.”
“No.”
“Promise me.”
“I said no.”
“You have to.”
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
A flash of anger.
Familiar and dangerous.
For one second, I see 1921.
The locked door. The fireplace poker.
I step back.
She sees why.
Her face changes. “That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“We kept making decisions for each other.”
I say nothing.
“You decided what I could handle.”
“Yes.”
“I decided whether you were worth dying for.”
“Yes.”
“We never actually let the other person choose.”
“No.”
Lenora wipes her cheeks. “Then we stop.”
I stare at her “What?”
“We stop trying to save each other.”
My heart twists. “That sounds fucking terrible.”
“I don’t mean we let each other die.”
“Then what?”
“We tell each other everything.” She steps closer. “No hiding.”
“Lenora…”
“No locking doors.”
I flinch.
“No tying anyone to chairs.”
Despite everything, I almost smile. “Fair.”
“No martyr bullshit.”
“That one feels directed.”
“It is.” Her mouth trembles. “And no deciding that killing each other is romantic.”
My smile disappears. “Agreed.”
She holds out her six-fingered hand. My finger attached to her body. The sight should disgust me. Instead, it makes my chest ache.
“Together?”
I stare at her hand. Eight cycles of us destroying ourselves because neither could tolerate losing the other. Maybe the answer isn’t distance. Maybe it isn’t sacrifice. Maybe for the first time, we simply stop lying.
I take her hand. “Together.”
The second our skin touches, another memory hits.
Not violent.
Not ours.
A room I’ve never seen.
A man standing over Lenora.
Not me.
Older. Gray hair. A black coat.
He presses his palm over her mouth while she screams.
Behind him, I’m restrained.
Bleeding and furious.
The stranger looks directly at me and smiles. “You’ll thank me eventually.”
I fight against the restraints. “Let her go.”
“She isn’t yours.”
“LET HER GO.”
“She never was.”
He turns toward Lenora and touches her face almost tenderly.
Then looks back at me. “You keep thinking love is what binds you.” His smile widens. “It isn’t.”
The memory trembles.
I smell smoke. Hear Lenora screaming.
“What did you do to us?”
The man’s face finally comes into focus. And I know him.
I know him.
Not his name. Something worse. Recognition buried so deep it feels inherited.
He leans close to me. “You asked me to make sure she always came back.”
My blood freezes. “No.”
“You begged me.”
“No.”
“You offered me anything.”
I stop fighting. “What did I give you?”
His eyes gleam. “You.”
The memory vanishes.
I rip my hand away from Lenora and we both stagger.
She saw it.
I know by her face. “Who was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You recognized him.”
“I’ve seen him before.”
“Where?”
The answer rises slowly.
Not from memory. From instinct. From the same place I always recognize Lenora. “1897.”
Her face goes pale. “What happened in 1897?”
I look at the broken jar. At the original specimen. At the first year I thought this began and finally understand. “It didn’t begin in 1897.”
Lenora swallows. “Then what happened?”
I stare at her. “I made a deal.”
Silence.
“With who?”
“I don’t know.”
“For what?”
Another piece returns.
Lenora lying motionless on a bed. Her skin gray. My hands shaking as I hold hers. A doctor closing his bag. Words I refused to accept. There’s nothing more we can do.
Me running through rain. An address written on paper. A door opening. A man smiling. “How badly do you want her back?”
My chest tightens.
“August?”
I look at her. The truth is so much worse than either of us killing the other. “You died.”
Her lips part.
“The first Lenora.” I can barely say it. “You died before the molt ever existed.”
Her face empties. “How?”
“I don’t remember yet.”
“And you…”
“I couldn’t let you go.”
The pieces fall together.
Her returning. My immortality. The transfer. The cycles. The thing that feeds every time we love each other.
Lenora whispers “What did you do?”
My eyes burn. “I brought you back.”
Her face crumples. “At what cost?”
I look down at my disappearing hand. Then at the pieces of me living inside her. And finally I understand why the man in my memory had smiled. Why he said I offered him anything. Why I wrote warnings to myself. Why I chose to forget.
Because I was never Lenora’s victim. She was never mine.
I started this.
My voice barely works. “Me.”