Chapter 13 #2
Somehow I make it back to the bedroom. Somehow I drag myself up onto the bed and burrow under the covers like a child hiding from monsters. I pull the blankets over my head and curl into the smallest ball I can manage, and I shake.
The panic attack lasts a long time.
I don’t know how long exactly. Time has lost all meaning again, swallowed up by the terror and the memories and the desperate struggle to breathe. At some point, the shaking stops. At some point the tears dry. At some point I’m just lying here, hollowed out and exhausted, staring at nothing.
On the television, another episode has started. Someone is making bread. The dough needs to prove, the contestant is saying. You have to give it time to rise.
I laugh. It comes out broken and slightly hysterical, but it’s still a laugh. I’m losing my mind. I’m lying in a murderer’s bed, recovering from a panic attack triggered by accidentally finding his torture chamber, and I’m listening to someone talk about bread proving.
Aunt Moira would have something to say about this. She’d say I wasn’t losing my mind. That I’m coping just fine. She’d tell me some piece of Irish wisdom about God never giving you more than you can handle. I always believed her when she said that. Now I’m not so sure.
I pull the covers tighter around myself and try to breathe.
I don’t know how much time passes before I hear it. The sound of a lock turning. Heavy and metallic and unmistakable.
My whole body goes rigid.
Footsteps. Measured and deliberate, moving through the flat. I track them with my ears, mapping his progress. The front door closing. The hallway. A pause, probably at the living room. Then closer, closer, until they stop outside the bedroom.
The door opens.
Dante stands in the doorway, a dark silhouette backlit by the hall light. He looks tired. Shoulders slightly bowed, movements slower than usual. He’s wearing different clothes than when he left. Dark trousers and a gray sweater instead of the all-black ensemble he departed in.
My eyes dart to his hands before I can stop myself.
Clean. No blood. No visible evidence of what he’s been doing for the past several hours.
Because he changed. Because he showered and put on fresh clothes and hid all the evidence before coming home to me.
My stomach lurches.
“You’re still awake,” he says quietly.
I shrug. The gesture feels stiff, unnatural. My body is still thrumming with residual panic, muscles locked tight and unwilling to relax.
We stare at each other across the dim room. The television casts flickering light across the walls, someone explaining the importance of the perfect crust. It feels surreal. All of it feels surreal.
Dante looks exhausted. Not just tired, but bone-deep weary in a way I haven’t seen before.
There are shadows under his eyes, a tightness around his mouth.
I find myself wondering when he last slept properly.
Every time I surfaced from my fever dreams, every time I opened my eyes in the night, he was there.
Sitting in that chair by the bed. Watching over me.
Has he slept at all since I’ve been here?
“Do you need anything?” he asks.
I shake my head.
Another long moment of silence. He seems to be waiting for something, though I don’t know what. Finally he nods, just once, and takes a step back.
“Goodnight then.”
He pulls the door mostly closed behind him, leaving just a crack. I hear his footsteps retreat down the hall. Hear him moving around in the living room, the creak of that ancient sofa as he settles onto it.
He’s going to sleep on that horrible couch. Because I’m in his bed.
The realization sits uncomfortably in my chest. He gave me his bed. His only bed, apparently, in this sad excuse for a home. He’s been sitting in a chair watching me for days, and now he’s going to fold himself onto a sofa that’s probably older than both of us combined.
I feel bad.
The emotion catches me off guard, and I immediately feel stupid for feeling it. This is the man who tortured me. The man who made me watch while he killed someone. The man who is keeping me prisoner in his flat with no intention of ever letting me go.
Why should I feel bad that he’s sleeping on an uncomfortable couch? He deserves far worse than that. He deserves to sleep on a bed of nails. He deserves to never sleep again.
But the feeling persists, lodged somewhere behind my ribs like a splinter I can’t dig out.
I try to get comfortable. Punch the pillow into a better shape. Adjust the blankets.
I keep seeing that room. The chair. The tools. The stains on the concrete floor.
I keep seeing Dante in the doorway, wearing his clean clothes and his tired eyes and asking if I need anything.
I’m a mess. A complete and utter mess.
I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep. How can anyone sleep with all this chaos churning inside them? How can anyone rest when they’re imprisoned by a monster?
But my body has other ideas. The illness has left me weak, wrung out like a dishcloth. The panic attack drained whatever reserves I had left. Despite everything, despite the fear and the confusion and the memories lurking at the edges of my consciousness, exhaustion drags me under.
At least in sleep, I can escape.