Peter
The rain is a relentless, cold hammer against the windshield of the blacked-out SUV, but it’s nothing compared to the storm sitting in the seat next to me.
I’ve spent months imagining this moment.
I’ve killed, I’ve bled, and I’ve turned my soul into a hollowed-out shell just to get her back.
But now that she’s here, she’s not here.
She’s a ghost vibrating at a frequency I can’t reach, her skin a map of bruises and sweat that I’m almost too terrified to touch.
The safe house is a concrete bunker disguised as a luxury cottage, hidden deep enough in the trees that the world feels like a distant, dying memory.
I don’t wait for Hook to open the door. I don’t wait for anything.
I scoop her up, her body so light it scares the shit out of me, and carry her inside.
“I’m here, Wendy. I’m right here.”
I set her down on the edge of the oversized tub in the master bath. The porcelain is cold, and she flinches, her pupils so blown out they swallow the green of her eyes entirely. She’s shivering—not just from the cold, but from the chemical fire Felix pumped into her veins.
“I need… I need it, Peter,” she rasps. She begins to claw at her own thighs, her nails dragging jagged white lines into the pale, bruised skin of her legs. “Please. My heart is jumping… it’s jumping out of my chest. I can’t… I can’t feel my hands.”
“No,” I say, my voice cracking. I kneel between her legs, the same way that bastard did, but I’m holding her hands, pinning them gently so she stops tearing at herself. “No more, darling. We’re done with that. You’re coming down.”
“It hurts!” she shrieks, a sudden, violent burst of energy making her buck against my grip.
She tries to shove me away, her eyes wild and darting toward the corners of the ceiling as if Felix is still watching from the shadows.
“You fucking left me! You left me there with him and now you’re taking the only thing that makes the dark go away?
You’re just another cage, Peter! You’re just another fucking cage! ”
She spits the words at me, her face contorting into a mask of pure hatred.
She lunges forward, sinking her teeth into my shoulder, biting down through the fabric of my tactical vest until I feel the sharp, hot sting of her teeth hitting my skin.
I don’t pull away. I let her do it. I deserve the pain.
“I’m the only thing that makes the dark go away now,” I growl, pulling her face away from my shoulder and forcing her to look at me. I don’t care that I’m covered in blood. I don’t care that I’m a monster. “Look at me, Wendy. Focus on my voice. Not the drug. Not him. Just me.”
I turn the water on, the steam beginning to rise and fog the mirrors. I start to peel the residue of Felix’s house off her. I’m methodical, my hands shaking as I wash the salt, the honey, and the copper tang of blood from her skin. Every bruise I find is a new reason to burn the world down.
“I wish you stayed dead,” she sobs, her head falling onto my shoulder, her body racking with the first violent tremors of the comedown.
She’s weeping now, the fight leaving her as the drug starts to retreat, leaving her hollow.
“I wish you never came back. I was fine. I was numb. Why did you have to make me feel this? Why did you make me look at what he did?”
“I’ve got you,” I whisper into her hair, my own tears hitting her wet skin. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her into the spray of the water, clothes and all. “I’ve got you, and I’m never letting you go again. Even if you hate me for every breath you take.”
The steam in the bathroom thickens, turning the air into a heavy, suffocating soup. I’m holding her under the spray, my hands trying to scrub away the scent of sandalwood and expensive filth, but Wendy isn’t in the shower with me anymore.
Her eyes aren’t seeing the white subway tile or the blood swirling down the drain. They’re darting, tracking something moving in the mist.
“Felix?” she whispers, her voice a hollow, terrifying sound. She jerks her arm back from me like I’m made of white-hot iron. “No… no, I ate it. I ate the bacon. I did what you said. Please don’t put it in my nose again. My heart… it’s too fast, Felix. It’s going to pop.”
“Wendy, it’s Peter,” I rasp, reaching for her waist to keep her from slipping on the wet porcelain. “Look at me. Felix is dead. I killed him. He’s gone.”
She doesn’t hear me. The cocaine is playing tricks with the shadows, turning the steam into his hands.
She scrambles toward the back of the tub, her wet hair plastered across her face like a veil of mourning.
She’s staring at my chest, but she isn’t seeing the tactical vest or the man who loves her.
“I see the powder on your lips,” she screams, her voice cracking as she claws at the air between us. “You’re going to make me lick it off. You’re going to make me moan while you do it. Stop it! Stop looking at me like I’m a dog!”
“Wendy, stop!” I grab her wrists, trying to pin them before she draws more blood from her own skin.
She starts to thrash, a violent, desperate strength fuelled by pure chemical terror. “Get off me! Felix, get off! I’ll be good, I’ll kneel, just don’t touch me with those cold hands! Peter’s coming! He’s going to kill you, he’s going to—”
She stops. Her whole body goes rigid, her head snapping toward me. The light from the hallway strobes in her blown-out pupils.
“Peter?” she asks, her voice suddenly tiny. Small. Like the girl I married before the world turned into a meat grinder.
“Yes, baby. It’s me. I’m right here.”
A sob wracks her, but before I can pull her in, her face contorts again. The hallucination shifts, darker this time. She looks at my hands—stained red with Felix’s life—and she begins to hyperventilate, a wet, rattling sound in her lungs.
“No… you’re not him,” she whimpers, backing herself into the corner until her spine hits the cold tile. “You’re the one from the elevator. You’re the one who liked the blood. You’re just another monster. You’re just the one who killed my husband.”
The words are a serrated knife to my gut. She doesn’t even recognise me through the blood. To her, I’m just the next violent man in a long line of them.
“I’m Peter,” I choke out, the tears finally blurring my own vision. “I’m the man who loves you.”
“Peter is dead!” she shrieks, her hands flying to her ears as she begins to rock back and forth. “Felix said he died in the dirt! You’re just a ghost! You’re just the white dust talking to me! Go away! Let me sleep in the dark! Just let me sleep!”
She collapses forward, her forehead hitting my knees, her body vibrating with a chill that no amount of hot water can fix.
She’s sobbing into my soaked trousers, begging a ghost to leave her alone, while I sit there holding the woman I burned the world for, realising I might have saved her body, but I’ve lost the girl inside.
The steam-choked air suddenly feels too thin, too hot, like the bathroom is shrinking around us. Wendy’s rocking slows, her spine turning into a rigid iron rod. I reach for her, my fingers brushing her cold, wet shoulder, but she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t even breathe.
“Wendy?” I whisper, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. “Wendy, talk to me.”
Then her head snaps back. Her eyes roll into her skull, leaving nothing but a terrifying, milky white stare. Her jaw clamps shut with a sickening clack of teeth, and the first convulsion hits her like an electric chair.
She thrashes against the porcelain, her limbs flailing with a violent, mechanical strength. I dive forward, catching her head before it can crack against the edge of the tub.
“Hook! Get in here! Now!” I roar, my voice breaking.
She’s shaking so hard the water in the tub is splashing over the sides, mixing with the blood on my clothes.
Her skin is turning a ghastly, mottled blue-grey, her lips stained with a foamy, pinkish spit where she’s bitten her tongue.
Every muscle in her body is coiled tight, snapping and jerking in a war against her own nervous system.
The cocaine is trying to kill her. It’s the final fuck-you from Felix, a chemical ghost tearing her apart from the inside out.
“Baby, please,” I sob, pinning her hips with my weight, trying to keep her from breaking her own bones against the tile. “Stay with me. Stay with me, Wendy!”
She lets out a sound—a low, gurgling rattle that isn’t human. Her back arches so high I’m terrified her spine will snap, her heels drumming a frantic, hollow beat against the tub.
The door bursts open. Hook is there, his shadow long and jagged against the steam. He doesn’t make a joke this time. He sees the blood, the foam, and the way I’m cradling her head like it’s the only thing keeping the world from exploding.
“Hold her side,” Hook snaps, his voice clinical, devoid of its usual silk. “Don’t let her choke. Peter, move her onto her side!”
I shift her, my hands slick with water and sweat, feeling the terrifying heat radiating off her skin.
Her heart is a frantic, dying bird beneath her ribs, thudding so fast it’s just a blur of vibration.
She’s staring at nothing, her body jerking in rhythmic, brutal spasms that make her look like a marionette with its strings being yanked by a demon.
“Is she dying?” I choke out, looking up at Hook, my vision blurred by hot, stinging tears. “Is she dying, Hook?”
“She’s overdosing on the comedown. Her heart is red-lining,” Hook says, reaching into his tactical vest for a kit.
I look back down at her. This is the girl I loved. This is the girl who used to laugh at the way I made coffee. And now she’s a shivering, blue-lipped ghost, dying in a bathtub because I wasn’t fast enough. Because I let the dark in.
The seizure finally begins to taper off, leaving her limp and blue in my arms. Her breathing is shallow, a wet, rattling hitch in her chest. She looks smaller than she did ten minutes ago. Hollow.
“Wendy?” I press my forehead to hers, my tears falling into the foam on her lips. “Please. Don’t leave me with the monster I became to find you. Please.”