Chapter 17
AZRAEL
DAY ONE.
Iwake up at six o’clock sharp, like always.
My body remembers how things should be, even if my brain might not seem to care.
I force myself to get out of bed and continue with my day, but something doesn’t sit right.
The way the experiments go is simple: I have a plan, I execute it, and then I simply forget it ever existed.
But this time, all I can think of is the image of Victoria, pinned against the wall, helpless.
“You don’t care about subjects.” I scoff, like that will help make it true. It doesn’t, and I refuse to admit what this means.
I continue my day, run five miles through air so cold it feels like it cuts my lungs open, but I barely notice the pain under the burning sensation throughout my body. I’m not even sure what is happening or why.
This is exactly what I wanted, to break her, which is just one failed step away from ending everything or making her devoted to me. Just like Vincent, just like anyone else who completed or failed my experiment. But why do I feel like I’m the one devoted to her?
I scrub myself under scalding water until my skin looks like it’s begging for mercy, but that’s just another fact my brain refuses to process.
I eat two eggs and drink the fucking black coffee, but all I taste is bitterness.
Tasteless. Meaningless. A one-man-show for no audience, just to prove I still hold control.
I answer emails with perfect grammar and zero comprehension while preparing materials for my classes today without even realizing what I am doing until the papers are stacked and ready in front of me, all this while checking my phone for the 183rd time.
By noon, there is still no message from her, but I’ve already cleaned the kitchen twice, sterilizing every surface even though I can’t remember the last time the stove was turned on.
Then I alphabetize the spice rack—because everyone does this, right?
— rearrange the pots, and deep clean again because I forgot I already did it the first time. Very normal behavior.
So what if I chose the most distressing narrative with her?
That’s what I do best. I’ve always created the experiment’s framework to destroy the subject, and this time she finally broke.
She fled. This is the undeniable proof, proof that my design works exactly as intended.
Her silence isn’t a failure this time. It’s just the endpoint of a perfectly constructed experiment.
It’s almost time for my evening classes when I decide she is gone for good.
I open the file and seal Victoria’s experiment as a failure.
She would not be coming back, not after what I did to her.
Not after what she saw in herself once she laid alone in her bed.
That kind of trauma doesn’t heal, and my little ember will spiral with her demons forever. My little ember.
“Yes,” I say aloud, talking to the nothingness again. “This is how it ends.”
I say it again, quieter this time, even though my mouth tastes like literal ash: “I won.”
For a second, I almost believe it. I try to feel proud, even managing a shaky smile.
But there’s this nagging feeling deep down that won’t let me enjoy it.
I’ve spent so long convincing myself that hurting her is just part of the process that I don’t even know how to feel about it actually happening.
The first day almost feels like relief and validation. Victoria was never special. Just another name, another failed human pretending she’s more than mediocre.
Day Two.
I didn’t intend to open our messages. It just… happened. Muscle memory, perhaps. Like scratching an old wound to make sure it still hurts. I scroll and reread everything, as if that could explain why she’s still stuck in my brain.
To solve this, I restrict her profile, watch the setting change and see the way our messages vanish. A forced silence. My choice.
It lasts exactly three minutes before I un-restrict her.
A pathetic attempt of a man desperate to see the green dot again, even though it hasn’t appeared since Thursday.
She hasn’t blocked me though, so that’s at least something. Wait, why does it matter? It doesn’t. Why am I still checking it, then?
I refresh.
Again.
And again.
I tell myself I’m analyzing the results and the reaction. But her file in front of me stays empty, with no extra input while my brain frantically tries to find a way to bring her back into the experiment, and my life, subsequently.
And that really infuriates me.
Day Three.
She should have reached out by now, even if it was just to spit venom and throw accusations or maybe a tantrum. Silence isn’t the way she operates. Victoria likes confrontation.
I ran thirteen miles this time—way over my self-imposed limit—and my body can barely hold up with my brain, but I don’t care. The pain feels deserved, like somehow this is my repentance for…I don’t know what.
This only resulted in me punching the shower wall once, maybe twice, but I can’t actually remember.
My body is reacting to the rage while my brain is stuck on a loop with her, in the bathtub, silent and helpless.
The only clue of my actions after I am done showering is the blood under my nails and the hole in the wall.
I open my inbox and delete every email from the past few days. Useless noise that is taking up too much of my brain capacity, when all I can focus on is a fucking subject. They were all asking stupid questions anyway.
I sit down and try to write—research notes, class prep, my will, literally anything that would anchor my brain back to reality. Anything that could distract me from thinking about what happened to her and how destroyed she must be.
Instead, I write her name twelve times on a blank sheet of paper, then I throw the paper away. Then I write the same damn thing again and again until I’m out of paper. Like this could somehow cast her back into my life.
I need to be in control, but more than anything I need to control her.
By the time midnight comes, I’m watching the university office footage on loop, hoping that maybe I’m wrong and she was in my class. Maybe she came back, and I didn’t notice. But she didn’t, and I would have. She is nowhere, yet my mind sees her everywhere.
Day Four.
There’s no such thing as unexpected madness. This is only misinterpreted thinking.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself at 03:12 a.m., sitting on the floor in my bedroom, my back leaning against the edge of the bed, like a man who’s forgotten what bedrooms are for.
I haven’t turned off the lights in two days, justifying it by saying it’s for my security—what if Victoria comes back and tries to kill me?
It’s for visibility—I need to be able to see her.
But the bulb buzzes like a fucking reminder that I can’t even turn off the light because the darkness is another reminder of her, of the void she left.
My phone has 4 percent battery left, and its entire usage until now was watching her profile icon remain offline. I watch it stay gone until my eyes burn from not blinking. I know she won’t message, not while licking her wounds, but I refresh that fucking page anyway.
I try to write off my behavior as anything other than what it really is: data scraping, a professional habit.
But I’m not charting her—I’m chasing her.
And somewhere between the third restricted-unrestricted cycle and the moment I rewatched the camera footage from The Place for the eighth time, I realized something horrifying.
She isn’t another experiment.
She isn’t another subject.
She is mine.
In every sense of the word: the way she made me fantasize about her body, the way her brain became the most fascinating thing to study.
She bled under my hands and survived. I had cracked her open and she still looked at me like I was her savior.
I took the perfect woman, built her into the monster I always needed and then let her walk out the fucking door.
She is mine in the way fire belongs to the match that lit it, in the way weapons belong to the hand that forges them.
And now she is gone.
I grip the phone so tightly the case creaks between my fingers. I tell myself the situation is still salvageable, that I’m still in control. But It isn’t, and I’m not, and all I’m doing is panicking.
I don’t sleep. I can’t, in fact.
Every calm breath feels wrong. Every sound outside makes me listen harder.
I even push the premise of the third step, messaging the help with extra information just so I can know she heard from me. If the information gets delivered, I don’t know. I’m almost tempted to double down and reveal all the details of her Step 3, but this would be too soon.
She is somewhere, and that means I can get her back. There is a ghost out there, a variable I no longer hold, and it devours every moment of my existence.
Day Five. Lecture Day.
I arrive early—a change in the pattern—after I spent two hours getting ready like my appearance somehow suddenly matters—change two.
I ran through my slides four times, point by point, to make sure it’s perfect—the trifecta of obsession.
She will be here, and I have a plan on how to bring her back into my experiment.
The hall echoes strangely, full of indistinct faces. All I do is look for her. I look for her repeatedly, but she’s not here.
Sixth row, left side. That seat is empty, of course.
But that doesn’t stop my eyes from flicking back to the door.
Every time someone enters late, I find myself holding my breath for a moment.
Just in case she might suddenly walk in, wearing that infernal mask of disdain, like none of it ever happened or affected her.
And every time she doesn’t, I feel the pit in my stomach growing bigger and bigger until I start considering that I might actually be sick. When did I last eat, anyway?