34. Midnight
Midnight
Nine And A Half Years Ago
T he door to our bedroom swings open.
Aurelia is sprawled on the bed, her legs open. A woman lies between them, her fingers buried in Aurelia’s pussy, her tongue licking down her slit. A moan rips from Aurelia’s lips.
“More, oh yes. Harder.”
They haven’t seen me.
I can’t move. Like a fucking fool, I stand there watching my soulmate destroy every piece of my heart.
I blink once.
The life I thought I’d have dissolves: dinners, family meals, carriage rides at sunset. The ring I was going to buy her.
My stomach hardens.
I blink again.
Aurelia cries out, her back arching off the bed.
A cosy cottage with open fires, marshmallows toasted in the middle of the day because we’re too excited to wait for nightfall. Toes curling through sand and feet padding through long grass.
My fingers go numb, lead drops into my heart.
I blink once more.
Aurelia’s pussy grinds into this woman’s face, her eyes squeeze shut as she comes.
Soft kisses under moonlight. Warm coffee in the mornings. A lifetime of bringing her banana-on-toast the way she likes it. A face wrinkled by memories.
Strange thing, letting go.
Grief.
Rage.
And spontaneous loss.
A coldness settles in my limbs. Then a sharp clarity as I’m freed from the burden of love. Of a life dependent on another. Of the obsessive need to serve her.
Her whims, needs and desires.
It’s freedom.
I cling to it, knowing freedom will bring me joy. I cling to it even as my cooling heart betrays me. And fuck, I cling to it despite reality leaking down my cheeks in giant rivulets.
It is only now, when her body settles on the bed and both of them are panting, that their energy dips low enough to feel the frothing presence of my rage.
Aurelia’s eyes open.
One beat.
She stares at this other woman, lust thick and heavy in her eyes.
Two beats.
She tenses. A growing awareness that something is wrong. The woman draws her tongue in one long final lick over Aurelia’s cunt.
Three beats.
Aurelia tenses, her eyes slowly drawing across the room to meet mine.
She screams. Shuffles back away from the woman, desperately trying to cover her swollen pussy.
Like that matters.
Like hiding her nakedness can erase what’s seared into my mind.
She covers her mouth.
I laugh.
Fold my arms.
Wait.
As if she can say something that will fix this. I don’t want it fixed.
Not now.
Not ever.
She opens her mouth, the faintest hiss of a word.
“Don’t,” I bark.
She’s crying now. And I’m laughing harder. I must look like a psychopath. Hysterical, mouth open like the maw of a lion, all teeth and fury. Head kicked back, leaning against the doorway.
The woman is scrambling now, pulling clothes on and scurrying away. Like her leaving will make it better.
But I’m in the doorway.
She approaches. There’s no other way out. She has to go past me. I must hold murder in my eyes because she trembles as she nears me.
“E… excuse me,” she stammers.
I lock onto her eyes and stand immobile. I will not move.
She makes herself tiny, pressing her spine flat against the doorframe as she tries to squeeze by without touching me.
She keeps her head turned away, focused on her goal: the exit.
“Boo,” I growl and jerk forward.
She screams and lunges, tripping and careening towards the floor. Her hands are full of her clothes. She doesn’t put them out to save herself and smacks her head on a stone tile.
She’s motionless for a moment, and then scrambles up, her head bleeding.
We’re the same now, she and I.
Blood leaks down her cheeks the way tears run down mine.
She meets my gaze for one long second, her expression crumpled, smeared with my girlfriend’s come.
My fingers slip to my hip as if I carry a blade. She doesn’t know I don’t.
Her eyes follow.
She steps back.
I could do it. Take her life. Ruin mine.
She’s not worth it.
Neither of them are.
She doesn’t wait any longer, she turns and runs, slamming the door and vanishing.
Slowly, I turn to Aurelia. Now the woman is out of sight, the heat of my anger is extinguishing.
But I need it. Holding onto it will keep me strong. Every other emotion is a waste. Why feel sad when this is clearly already over? Why feel grief when I already sold my soul?
I close my eyes, trying to sink into the furnace deep in my chest, but it’s betraying me. Locking itself away. Abandoning me when I need it most. I grab at it. Trying to hold the threads of pain, but they’re slippery, like oversoaked rose stems.
“Midnight,” Aurelia says. Her words are soft. How odd that my name on her tongue used to fill me with stars and moondust. She made me feel like I was immortal, like every time she whispered my name it etched another year into my soul.
My eyes flash and she recoils. There is no point having a conversation. This is over.
“You broke us,” I say.
She laughs. It’s so sudden, so unexpected, that this time I’m the one recoiling.
“And you have a saviour complex.” She sits up on the bed, her legs still bare and dares to brandish her rage at me like she’s entitled to it.
“Do you have any idea how suffocating your love is?”
“I saved your fucking life, Aurelia. I gave up my soul for you.”
“Oh, please. You were on a mission to self-destruct. I told you over and over not to try and save me. But you didn’t listen. And then you’re all up in my face every second of every day, never giving me a chance to breathe or live.”
“YOU WERE GOING TO DIE.” I’m screaming now, and I’m not sure if it’s at me or her. I don’t understand what is happening or how we’ve gotten to this place.
“AND YOU STOPPED ME LIVING ANYWAY.”
“You ungrateful cunt.” My fists ball. A deep need to break something fills my gut, my lungs, it’s all I can breathe, all I can see. But she won’t let up. She won’t stop screaming.
“And you’re an obsessive, controlling freak.”
“Get out. Get out and never come back.”
She gets up from the bed and begins packing her shit, and I slide down the wall.
I stay there, staring at nothing. Listening to the sounds of my future disintegrating. Each item she packs is another splinter, another fracture in the life I thought I was going to have.
All of it shoved into two suitcases and a rucksack.
She pauses by the front door. I don’t look at her. I don’t look at anything much.
She must wait for at least three minutes. Whether she’s contemplating saying something, apologising, hurling more abuse, maybe telling me she still loves me, it doesn’t matter.
In the end, she says nothing, just walks out.
The door clicks shut. It’s the loudest thud. The heaviest crack in my heart.
I sink to the hardwood floor. Cold seeps into my bones as I cry, alone.
Silent.
No one mops my tears or hears my screams.
I stay there until day turns to night. Until the moon rises and the stars wrap a cloak around me, stitching me back together like a patchwork quilt. Nothing quite fits anymore. Nothing quite works. But when morning comes, there are no tears left.
There is no love left in my heart.
There is only the knowledge that I have nine years and six months left to break my contract. I will not let my soul be reaped for her. Aurelia does not get to live while I die.
It twists and gnarls into a thirst. The kind of primal hunger that only the obsessed and the deranged can understand.
I must have vengeance.
I must have redemption.
By the time I haul myself off the floor, I am raw thirst. I am pure revenge.
And it flows deep, deep, deep in my veins.