1219. Awake
“ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?” Daddy dearest asks me when the smoke finally clears.
Happy isn’t the word, of course. I never liked the grifters he consorted with, but I didn’t want them dead, either.
Still, I know the nature of his temper, so in that sense, I suppose you could say I knew the risk.
That everything would end this way was very much an outcome I foresaw the moment I sent the dominos cascading.
Good riddance, Will, all she did was use you, she wanted everyone but you—
His wail in response, like a dying animal. Shut your fucking mouth! All of you, shut up!
“You’re next,” I say. A childish taunt. He takes two steps across the courtyard to clock me hard from the base of my jaw, the gun still clutched in his hand, and I relish it, really, the knowledge of how frayed he’s become, how far gone he is.
It means that finally, something is changing.
At last, we are writing the ending. What does he become from here, without her?
The only thought I held in my head when I dragged us all to the brink was this one: At least we can’t go on like this.
Still, he’s stronger than I thought. My head snaps back from the blow, and for a moment, my body fails.
Behind the dazzle of my eyes, I see her.
Anya. She wears the lipstick again, and now I know that she has always been your target.
Not because of her, but because of me. Because I defied you to have her.
Because I defied you just to want her. Because what she gave me was possibility, the unforeseen manifestation of another world, one where I was awake, and I was ordinary.
So you crafted her ending by my hand, and then you took it from me like a rib.
I was created to be your monster; I have always lived and breathed and moved at your behest. I was meant to believe as you believe, to see what you see, which is that she is nothing, a mere plaything, a doll to dress up and deglove.
It’s true, she is ordinary—as I am ordinary.
She is just a person, unprophesied, unchosen, with nothing specific about her to mark her for divine.
To you, she could have been anyone, a revolving door of women—she was supposed to have been a revolving door of women.
I was supposed to choose a role, a pursuit, not a person.
I was supposed to grow familiar with disposal, to sow the seeds of your eternity with untold faceless pools of blood.
Love was meant to be justification. A tireless search, not a place to land. You looked for love and when you couldn’t find it, you made it. You trapped it. This close to the mirror, I see we don’t look so much alike.
So I’ll tell you the truth: Emmanuelle de Witt was only the first piece to fall.
And I’ll end it with a prayer: She won’t be the last.