37. Leandra
I’m not her. I’m not her. I’m not her.
The words are a frayed rope I’m still clinging to, but my grip is slipping.
They thud through my skull, not like a drumbeat anymore but like a dying pulse, wet and faltering.
I sit on the edge of the bed, hands clasped so tight my knuckles ache, and I can feel the tremor starting in my thighs, the cold sweat tracing paths down my spine.
I’m so tired.
I’m so hollowed out that even fear feels distant, like a scream underwater.
It’s been days. Days that have bled into each other until time is just the space between his visits.
The same awful torture, yes, but it’s worse now.
It’s the way my body has learned to wait for him.
The way my breath catches at the sound of the lock, not just in terror but in something more shameful, a sick, desperate relief that at least the waiting is over.
He comes in, and he looks at me with those eyes that don’t see me at all. He sees her.
His dead fucking wife.
He touches me like I’m sacred, whispers her name against my throat, and for a few moments I’m not Leandra anymore.
I’m a ghost wearing my own skin.
And the horror of it, the true, rotting horror is that I’m starting to crave those moments because when I’m her, he’s gentle. When I’m her, his hands don’t hurt. When I’m her, I can almost forget what comes next.
But I always ruin it. A flinch at the wrong time. A sound he doesn’t recognize.
And then the illusion shatters, and he sees me, sees the imposter, and the punishment begins.
He hurts me, he violates me.
He carves his grief into my flesh until I’m nothing but a vessel for his rage.
And the worst part, the part that makes me gag on my own despair is that afterward, when I’m broken and bleeding and sobbing into the mattress?
Some small, shattered piece of me is grateful.
Grateful that he’s still here. Grateful that at least I’m not alone in the dark.
I feel myself spiralling, losing the shape of who I was. I’m reverting back to that creature Isaac and Ezekiel made me, the one with no name, no will, no voice. I can feel her crawling up from the pit of my stomach, that hollow, obedient thing that only knows how to survive by surrendering.
But I can’t go back to that. I can’t…
The thought dissolves before I can finish it, and I realise I don’t have the strength to hold onto it anymore. The defiance that used to burn in my chest is just ash now, cold and weightless.
I’m so fucking tired.
Maybe it would be easier to just… let go. To stop fighting. To become her, to become nothing. The thought should terrify me but all I feel is a dull, aching nothing, like sinking into a lukewarm bath after too long in the cold.
I’m not her.
I know I’m not.
But I don’t believe it anymore.