Chapter Nine
After arriving back at their apartment close to the early hours of the morning, Lee Holmes was both grateful and ungrateful to be in bed.
She was grateful in the respect that her body was no longer shivering, having showered prior to getting underneath her heated blanket.
And yet, at the same time, she was ungrateful that her mental purgatory had come to an end, and, with the lights off, her mind was allowed to run rampant once again, no longer distracted by bright lights and freezing cold water.
The consistent rhythm of the clock, once unnoticeable, was suddenly all that Lee could hear whilst Morgan slept peacefully beside her.
Metronomes were known to allow a person to drift off to the calming pulse, like a familiar heartbeat.
A familiar heartbeat lay next to her, her short hair splayed across the pillow, as Lee imagined the gentle thrum of the clock to be her girlfriend breathing in and out, in and out.
Where Lee Holmes had formerly observed her partner in a blissful slumber, she saw her soulmate, her life partner.
Before her now was a sleeping lion—beautiful, and deadly.
Nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed all at once.
Morgan was always the lion; Lee had just never realized that she herself was the gazelle.
Using the steady rhythm of the clock as her guide, Lee attempted to match her breathing patterns to its repetitive beat. With her eyes newly closed in a seemingly futile attempt at sleep, she didn’t notice the knife against her neck until she felt the cool steel against her skin.
The familiar heartbeat had suddenly become anything but, daring to open her eyes just the smallest amount, as if the room was too bright for her pupils to adapt.
Except, through her squinting, all that surrounded her was pitch-black darkness.
Pitch-black darkness and the hint of a silver necklace that she recognized to be Morgan’s, dangling above her rising and falling chest as her girlfriend positioned herself on top of her.
“Morgan, please—don’t! I won’t tell anyone about what happened, I swear! ”
She squirmed now, fighting back for the first time since she had felt the knife against her, careful as to not let the steel cut her skin.
Morgan held her in place with one hand, as if her futile attempts could ever match up to the sheer strength of the lion.
“I don’t give a fuck who you tell. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this. I like it when you struggle, baby.”
It didn’t make any sense. Morgan, whilst clearly dangerous to others, had never presented a danger to her. Morgan had seemed so sincere, so genuine, in her quest to ensure that Lee had nothing to fear in her presence, and yet overpowering her at present time seemed close to impossible.
No longer squinting, she gazed into the darkness around Morgan. She gazed into the darkness until their eyes met, and it was then that she noticed that the pupils she stared into were missing something crucial, something human.
This was what it was like to be one of her victims. This was what it felt like to die.
Stifling a sob, Lee Holmes whispered the only three words that came to her mind. The only three words that could potentially save her, and she meant them, even if they were the last words she would ever say. “I love you.”
“Do you?”
Two words were all it took for the mattress beneath her to fall away, for her body to sink into the abyss of what was once their relationship, before the knife was plunged into her throat and the darkness around her suddenly became all that she was.
Lee Holmes awoke to a scream that she realized quickly to be her own.
She jolted her body forward, expelling herself from the pillow as she clutched a hand to her chest, willing her heart rate to slow down.
The act seemed futile until another hand wrapped itself around her, pulling her closer towards an inviting, warm body.
Despite sleeping next to her girlfriend every night, it took Lee a moment to recognize the body to be Morgan’s, having pictured her moments earlier in a state of malice.
Clutching her closely to her chest, Morgan gently stroked Lee’s hair with the hand that was not presently holding her. “It’s okay. You’re safe,” she whispered into her temple, kissing that same spot afterwards.
A conflict coursed through Lee Holmes that was undeniable. Whilst her heart rate had slowed, the person responsible for slowing it was also responsible for acts she still couldn’t comprehend, and until she did comprehend them, if she ever did, there would be many nights like this one.
She sat silently in Morgan’s arms, feeling the rise and fall of her girlfriend's chest, and it was only then that she realized that the ticking rhythm of the clock had faded for just a few moments, only to return upon listening to Morgan’s breathing.
It was ironic, she thought, because Morgan Finch was the farthest thing from a steady metronome.
She knew that now. Where she had once wanted spice on their five-year anniversary, she had instead been met with something she couldn’t quite name just yet.
All she knew was that it was completely, and utterly destabilizing.
Morgan Finch shifted ever so slightly, allowing Lee to sink further into her arms so that they were both situated more comfortably. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, her tone still quiet, and cautious.
Truth be told, Lee did want to talk about it, but the question was how?
She couldn’t deny that whilst there was a sense of fear radiating from her upon what had unfolded in their living room, it was also laced with curiosity, and, if the saying were true that curiosity killed the cat, perhaps it was best to stay silent.
“Not right now,” she responded, deciding on the spot. “Perhaps in the morning.”
“Whatever you need,” Morgan offered, placing a strand of hair behind Lee’s ear.
At present time, Lee Holmes needed a glass of water and some time alone to herself in the kitchen.
Retracting her body from Morgan’s, she shifted out from underneath her arms and stepped onto the inviting carpet beside the bed.
“Go back to sleep,” she said, placing a kiss on Morgan's own temple before stepping out of the room, and into the hallway.
The scent of a dozen flowers centered her back down to earth as she crossed the cramped space outside their bedroom and stepped into the kitchen.
Opening one of the upper cupboards, she pulled out a glass and turned on the sink, filling it with water.
She opted to stand, leaning against one of the counters as opposed to sitting down, her adrenaline still coursing through her.
Taking a sip now, she sighed into the glass, tapping her fingers rhythmically against the counter with her other hand in agitation.
At present time, Lee Holmes didn’t know whether to smash the glass into a thousand pieces against the wall, or cry into it, because she could be the girl who jumped into fountains and drank whiskey out of a paper bag, but it didn’t absolve the person she had been in their apartment, aiding her girlfriend in doing the unthinkable.
Her frustration boiled as she pondered over her own reckless decisions. She was standing in this kitchen, now, because of the choices she herself had made.
Choices that meant she was terrified to sleep at night next to the woman she had spent the last five years of her life with.
If there was a way to harness the emotional purgatory, Lee thought, she would wield it with both hands.
And yet, life wasn’t as simple as staring into a cigarette, just as Morgan had done at the cemetery, allowing herself to disassociate from everything surrounding her.
Lee had tried to disassociate herself, stare into the proverbial cigarette of her life, and pretend that nothing had changed.
But perhaps she wasn’t like Morgan Finch.
Perhaps the longer she stared, the larger her guilt grew, as if a seed had been planted and blossomed all in the same night.
Taking a sip of her water, she imagined the liquid feeding the seed inside of her, growing at an exponential rate.
It was as if she could practically feel the culpability blooming inside of her, upsetting her stomach, and making her nauseous.
As if buying into her own ludicrous metaphors, she poured the remaining water down the sink, and, upon taking her leave, turned out the kitchen light.
When she arrived back inside their bedroom, she found Morgan sitting up against the headboard, the bedside lamp turned on, painting her body in a dim and yet pleasing light. Her hair was sticking out at multiple angles, and her green eyes had a sullen look about them that made Lee want to hold her.
Lee thought at that moment that if emotion was a spectrum, Morgan Finch had transcended somewhere far beyond it.
She had the power to wield all of Lee’s own power simply from gazing at her from across a table, staring at her with two predatory pupils, whereby she didn’t know if Morgan wanted to ravage her intimately, or end her.
At the same time, she could also adopt a look about her that made Lee want to cry.
“You didn’t have to wait up for me, baby,” Lee said, taking a seat beside her on the bed, holding in her tears as if to maintain some of the power that she knew Morgan was capable of taking from her. At present time, it felt like Morgan Finch had no power at all.
It was at that moment that Lee Holmes started to wonder if Morgan could sense what was keeping her up at night. As if she could sense Lee’s own hesitation towards her and felt ashamed.
“I wanted to,” Morgan offered back, taking Lee’s hand in her own underneath the covers. “Just like if you wanted me to sleep on the couch, you know I would, right? Because I also want you to feel comfortable.”
Morgan was offering all of the power between them and giving it to Lee. The last thing she wanted to do was wield it as a weapon against the woman she loved.
Truth be told, a part of her was uncomfortable, and yet, she knew that distancing herself from Morgan would only make the discomfort expand, not unlike the guilt that was currently blossoming inside of her. Sooner or later, she’d be overgrown.
“Stay,” she whispered, squeezing Morgan’s hand ever so gently. “Fall asleep with me.”
Lee Holmes didn’t know if sleep was even possible for her, and yet her intent to focus on ensuring that Morgan felt safe enough in their relationship to fall asleep herself only affirmed her love for her.
Even if a part of Lee felt frightened on a level outside of their relationship, a larger part still adored the woman she was sat beside.
Extinguishing the bedside light, the pair sunk into one another, as Morgan wrapped an arm around Lee and placed the other in her hair, wrapping individual fingers around equally individual strands. She whispered above the top of Lee’s head after placing a kiss in that very spot. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Lee said back immediately, acknowledging that she had been hesitant about many things this past week, but never that.