Monomaniac

Chapter 22

Ophelia

THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A COLD, dormant thing living inside me. It doesn't have a name or a voice, neither an identity of its own, but I know it well and it knows me. It tells me to be quiet, to listen, to assess my circumstances very carefully if I want to keep us both alive.

Over the years it has soothed me with a heavy hand, just as it does now, by warning me that belligerent hysterias will only turn everything against me in the end.

I am terrified, but I refuse to cry. I'll be weak later – there must be one.

Opening my eyes is not an option, not with his footsteps that have just halted at the side of my head as I lie motionless on the cold floor.

My lungs refuse to share the same air with him as he gets on his knees and runs a coarse finger over my cheek before placing it just above my molars.

I start shaking uncontrollably as he twists it like a drill, stopping every few seconds to dig into my gums with his split fingernail. No, I won’t cry because I can physically feel how much he wants me to.

The peculiar motion alone makes me feel violated but I endure it nonetheless. Quiet, I have to be quiet or else…

"Therapists have a habit of not reading me, but around town there’s word you’re special," he states coldly as he sniffs my hair, making my spirit sink. "I don’t have any cash on me but you will still assist me, won’t you?" he asks void of emotion just before he cuts off my air supply by pressing his fingertips roughly against my nostrils.

Swept up in a wave of despair, I squeeze my eyes even tighter, too petrified to see what my life has come to. But any silence has consequences and my refusal to answer triggers something monstrous in him.

Seething, he brutally pushes the side of my head into the hard cement floor that smells of urine and death, his saliva spraying on my face as he says through greeted teeth, "You will beg for a chat once I am done with you, trust me."

Dissociation, derealisation, departure – they all sound so appealing at the moment, but deep down I know that if I’ll choose to hide in the furthest corner of the mind, my earthly existence will soon cease and I don’t have only myself to think of anymore.

Somehow I have to live for Dante, for myself, for our future. So, instead of leaving my body I raise my eyes to the psychotic ones of the inhuman Grave Digger. I wish I hadn’t.

His face is not just a face, but a concealed massacre that has nothing to do with facial features. Muddy orbs surrounded by dilated, wormlike veins speak of his hidden, grotesque insides. A fractured nose, blotchy skin, and severe mouth creating the visual canvas of a soul who takes joy in torturing others because he himself is tortured.

The empath in me may understand his inner distress, but it also sees his selfish and malicious nature, making me want to look away in revulsion.

"And you will fucking answer when you’re talked to!" he barks, causing me to recoil, because, of all things, he reminds me of my father in the days he would find out my mother poured down the drain his secret stash. Not because she wanted him sober but because she thought he was a hoarder and clutter gave her migraines.

"I will listen," I say in an eerily calm voice. The very same one I use on myself just before a panic attack would find me on a crowded boulevard.

For the first time, to my disbelief, it works.

Such is life , I hear Dante's voice in my ear and I want to fall apart. I can envision my love tearing his hair out while combing the streets looking for me, and although it is unjustified, I know him all too well – the feeling of guilt for what fate wanted to be an imminent event from the very beginning, must be eating him alive.

Lord, I beg Thee with my soul on my knees – give him strength, no matter what happens to me after today.

"Wise choice," he says with a filthy undertone as he pats the top of my head before dragging me up roughly by the arm as if I were a tattered rag doll.

My teeth chatter as he forces me into a chair and binds my hands behind my back with duct tape, before binding my upper body with a thick rope, his vile breath making me sick. When he's finished he sits facing me on a soiled couch, less than three feet away.

The incessant pounding in my head throbs in an irregular rhythm as a morbid silence hangs over what I now see is an abandoned warehouse.

It must have been hours since he injected me with what had to be a powerful tranquilizer, which makes me barely able to feel the blood circulating through my limbs now that I am fully awake.

The large room has windows covered with torn plastic bags, empty of furniture except for the ones we occupy and a pile of dirty clothes serving as a makeshift pillow to his left. The only source of light is a hanging bulb that continues to flicker every now and then.

As far as I can tell, no one who would be willing to rescue me knows that he may have been hiding here all this time – a thought that squeezes the air out of my lungs.

"I have a lot on my mind, so you'd better pay attention," he warns while fiddling with an old wooden box.

"Why would my opinion matter to you?" I ask steadily, making an internal pact with myself to keep him talking and distracted for as long as possible.

"You’re one of those spiritualists, aren’t you? Some sympathy for the devil would be appreciated, especially now that I don’t have to hide what I am anymore," he says, flaring his nostrils and clenching his fists.

There’s this sinister air about him beyond his hostile glare, one that makes the hairs on my nape stand and my face to whiten.

"Are you looking for redemption?" I ask, trying to mask my fear while making an effort to transport myself in another time and space. To pretend I am simply speaking with a virtually harmless man who would never kill for pleasure.

"I demand to be listened to for once! All you do is chew me up and then spit me out! You and your fucking…you never–" he suddenly shouts while pointing his finger at me with accusation, foam gathering at the corner of his mouth.

God, is he even aware of who I am or is he just imagining me as someone else?

"You'll be fine; I promise you’ll be heard," I say, trying to control my quivering voice and wondering if something terrible will happen to me in the following minutes if he doesn't calm down. "This is a safe space; you can say whatever comes to mind with no fear of judgment."

Unable to connect to my sight while on the verge of a panic attack, I find myself powerless. What I wouldn't give for a minute of solitude, but something tells me he won't grant me such luxuries. Not when he just booked an indefinite therapy session.

"Women like you are not to be trusted," he states with bulging eyes as he gets up and circles the couch. "You are just like her, like all of them," he shakes, a vein visibly pulsing in his temple.

Is he lucid again? What is happening?

"Of all people, I thought you’d understand," I swallow with sickening dread as I try another angle, wanting to somehow build a kind of rapport in the hopes of buying more time.

"What are you talking about?" he asks warily, the look in his eyes making me fear he can read my attempt to manipulate him.

"Well…we are pariahs. The excluded, the left out, the forgotten exiled at the fringes of society. People judge what they can’t understand and not just because of fear," I say, finding it harder by the second to maintain eye contact as I watch him thrive on my unease.

"Ah, I see. The victim of society, the black sheep," he says mockingly, nodding his head with a glint in his eyes. Weather my strategy is working or not, I don’t like that look at all.

"Not necessarily, but in some ways, yes. Fear creates herds and herds act most times out of ignorance. I’d rather see people as individuals and keep an objective view when it comes to their character."

Am I really going there with a disturbed killer on the run? Apparently yes, since I need to survive through the night.

"So, you’re on my side now. Just like that, huh?" he shakes his head, the shifting energy around him making my nerves to convulse.

He cornered me with this question and I have yet to read him well enough to know if he holds the notion of honesty in high regard or if he prefers to chew on a hasty lie for a while.

"I could be if you’d help me understand," I answer instead, choosing the safest path according to his unpredictability.

"You truly are a special little thing," he eyes me as if I were a worthy opponent for God knows what he has in mind. "Sneaky too," he adds coldly, but thankfully, resuming his seat on the couch.

As expected, he is not an easy one to deceive. Think Ophelia, think.

"Tell me about what troubles you," I say, trying to stir the conversation away from me and keep him as unruffled as possible.

"How does it feel?" he asks hurriedly after a prolonged silence, his sudden attention instilling in me a new wave of nausea.

"What?" I flinch, finding it difficult to hide my discomfort.

"To love someone like me. A monster," he says with condemnation as his left eye twitches.

Confused at his choice of question, I furrow my brows, and then I understand. He has been there in the woods for an unknown period of time, witnessing me and Dante burning a body. Ourselves, burning with love.

However, this heinous man doesn't know him or his reasoning. The why behind his deeds and the deep rooted need of vengeance directed at each kill.

It’s not my place to excuse Dante’s actions, but in my eyes there is nothing to absolve. I will always understand, trust and support him with every drop of blood dripping from his knife.

In the eyes of the majority he would probably never be cleared of his doings, no matter the depth of his suffering. Nevertheless, no living soul could claim that he is on the same scale of evil as Jack Travers.

Dante would never kill for the sake of it or take the life of an innocent who could have lived a good life if they hadn't had the misfortune of crossing paths with fallen souls like the one who is currently dissecting me.

However, I cannot present him with this truth.

He asked such a delicate question because the answer carries weight and I feel bound to appease his curiosity if I am to leave here still breathing.

"There are no monsters. Only hurt people who in return hurt other people," I state quietly, trying to keep my face neutral. "I simply love him, in spite of his sins."

"Is that so?" he asks cynically. "I tried, but just about the time things get interesting, they're so eager to run away. So I had to…" he clicks his tongue, "make them stay."

"I–" he interrupts me before I can avert this threatening subject.

"Riley was different. She fought me every time, never backed down. We had a real connection, but just when we were starting to make progress your fucking man ripped her away from me," he roars, grabbing me by the jaw and squeezing until tears well up in my eyes before I can even register he had moved from the couch.

"He is the real monster, not me! I just wanted to be seen, to be loved without having to hold a knife to someone’s throat for once! And just when I found it he, he –" he stammers, and I nod desperately in his grip, hoping he'll loosen it.

Thankfully, after a long beat, he does.

The gasp of relief I take doesn't last long before he reappears in front of me, along with his putrid breath that turns my stomach.

He's too volatile, too unstable. How am I going to get out of here? There must be something...

"That's why I'm going to destroy what he loves most. I'll hit him with a reality he'll never be able to undo, just like he struck me," he snarls with pure malice. No…

"Please, please don’t do this," I pale, going completely limp with terror.

"Why not? Don't you want to take her place? Be my little button-eyed doll?" he asks, forcing his thumb into my mouth again and scratching the roof with his freshly bitten nail until I taste the metallic tang of blood on my tongue.

"Don’t!" I scream, thrashing in my chair as I fight an uncontainable terror when he pulls out a knife from the back of his pants.

Frozen with terror, I have to stand still while he slashes the front of my dress before he gets impatient and rips it roughly with his bare hands.

No, this is not happening; don't allow it, please...

Disgust and utter fear splinter my heart when his hand finds the inside of my trembling thigh and spreads my legs open with brute force.

"How you screamed for him like a whore in heat ready to please as if her life depended on it. So trusting, wild like an animal – you will do the same for me," he thunders, looking at me as if I were nothing but a pliable still pulsing, piece of meat.

God, please don’t let him do this to me.

"Please, stop! Please…" I beg, breaking into sobs, the chair shaking under the uncontrollable trembling of my legs.

My blood runs cold as he snaps his knuckles before inching his filthy fingers towards my breast. I would rather die…

Before I know it, my teeth slice my tongue open as a sharp sting throws my head harshly to the side. Panic like I never knew annuls the pain when I feel him ripping open the front of the corset.

A terrified scream gets stuck in my throat as my whole being shakes with terror when he grips the underwire and drags me to him.

"What? You think you’re too good for me?" he asks with crazed eyes as he cups himself while twisting my bra and leering sadistically at my breasts.

"You should be looking forward to this compared to what I have in the works," he says, inching his bulge toward my face while his middle finger traces the skin underneath the strap. Bile, I feel the acidic taste in my mouth.

"He’ll kill you if you tou– " the air leaves my lungs.

A chilling growl echoes in the suffocating air before he kicks the chair hard enough for me to instantly crash to the floor with it, the side of my head hitting the cold cement with deafening force.

In that prolonged second before landing with a sickening crunch, I see a flicker of light. Shortly after, a sea of black covers my sight.

The sudden impact breaks the wooden legs, but it’s already too late when I recover enough to realize it.

I am half-conscious when he hauls my tangled limbs away from the broken chair and straddles me from behind. Desperate, I try to escape my taped up hands, to crawl away from him. But he’s too heavy, too strong.

"Why should I give a damn, huh? Thanks to him, I don’t have a life anymore. At least I’ll get to wreck his in return," he says between labored breaths, driven by lewdness and hatred as he roughly lifts my dress and squeezes the back of my thighs.

"Vita mia," I sob hysterically for Dante while the nose of this heinous man trails down the exposed skin and licks my cold, shivering flesh with selfish gluttony.

I want to crawl into the cement beneath my bruised hands, to disappear so I won’t get to live through this. My stomach churns, at the feel of him gripping my thighs and holding me still, followed by his teeth grazing the inner seam of my thong while grunting like a swine.

I revolt with all my being, chocking uncontrollably on my own vomit as I spill all of my internalized terror on the floor. I can’t breathe –

"Fucking hell!" he roars before gripping the back of my head and hitting it multiple times against the floor until my visions blackens and my senses are split in two. "You always do that, Jully! When will you fucking learn?!" he screams the words in my ear, while I'm seconds away from blacking out. Make it stop…

By some miracle, after a charged second of breathing heavily over me, he does.

Evil incarnate stands up abruptly, muttering to himself and leaving me on the floor without another word. When I hear the loud click of a door slamming shut behind him, I cry with relief.

Feeling violated and beyond humiliated, I crawl on the floor with the last of my reserves, curling into myself in the farthest corner of the stripped wall. Numb, I gather the torn pieces of my dress and rest them over my mouth; trying to stifle my whimpers and hoping I might disappear if I force them back for long enough.

Minutes pass as I drown in despair with his necklace pressed to my chest, the heavy silence corroding my mind with viciousness. Long-avoided thoughts try their hardest to distract me along with a string of annotations I've kept in the back of my mind since I was young; all of them being too painful to even bring forth on an ordinary day.

I can see my mother's face through half-opened eyes, sealed with unshed tears. We rarely spoke, other than the occasional "goodnight" and "take care of your little brother", in our last years together. But I know that she too was once young, wild and free. That she had dreams and aspirations beyond her crippling inner war, that in her moments of lucidity she wished things had turned out differently.

My wounded inner child can't help but wonder if she looks from somewhere up above me at this crucial moment and wishes for my survival. I wonder if she sees life through a clearer lens now that she is no longer here, if she misses me the way I miss her in the moments when I forget for a split second what she did to us.

I wonder because she never came to me in spirit. Not once.

"Mom, I forgive you," I whimper, remembering her honey-sweet scent from the dollar store mixed with the cheapest canned stew. How I used to steal my father's stamp collection every night and hide it under my pillow just to feel closer to hi m while he pretended not to notice. My brother's carefree giggles as I chased him around the cluttered living room, his little foot somehow always getting stuck in the same spot where the carpet met the furniture inherited from distant relatives.

We were poor and rarely happy, but it was still a life. Perhaps one that was never meant to be anything other than a bitter 'what if' haunting the back of my mind. Our family portrait – an imprint left on a mirror that no one would dare break if paid in hundreds. Bad luck.

How I wish that day had only been a nightmare, that my mother had accepted the help she desperately needed, that my father had been a different man, a better one. That in the end, he would have stayed without me having to beg, that he would have loved what remained of his family more than the bottle.

But now everything has faded like an abandoned will, after death came and took everything with it.

I can clearly see the rigorous look on my grandmother's face as she shuffled the oracle cards. The way she braided my hair as she talked about mythology and the hidden laws of the world beyond our limited power and control. How she taught me palmistry and stroked the barely defined skin of my young palm, heart line first, without exception – seeing, perhaps, a glimpse of the fate I have been blessed to experience with my Dante all along.

"I forgive everything," I do – not out of fear but out of love.

I lose myself in the memories of people who showed me a crumb of humanity during my troubled course. Mostly old souls, willing to suffer tenfold for their loved ones, but whom I chose to keep at a distance for fear of being hurt once they eventually left after receiving their answers – an inherited fear, as I have learned from experience that the living have a habit of vanishing faster than the dead.

Even so, I remember the mentors, the victims, the families; the souls that are now where trees grow without fear of being uprooted and rivers meet unhindered by barriers.

Time disperses and collapses, then molds into itself like a veil made of untranslatable secrets. From time to time, I try to feel my toes, the rush of blood in my veins, while my mind wanders in places reserved specifically for such a moment.

Places with the greatest of meanings because, in their simplicity they contain the greatest of depths. The smell of a loved book blending with the aroma of coffee, the rain on my bare feet, a caring hand searching for signs of fever, an unexpected 'thank you' when all I did was step aside, a stranger's empathy just before I turned my back on humanity. All of it – a breeze in the storm of a life that I never grasped with both hands, because in truth I was scared and jaded. Do I regret it though?

No, I wouldn’t change a thing. Nevertheless, it hurts.

In life, nothing is promised, but I thought there was so much more to come. That now, having finally caught the train that makes it worth living, I would deserve to hold on to it until the very end.

Was it just naivety, wishful thinking?

Tears stream down my face in untouched rivers as I beg the sky to forgive me, for I must have deeply wronged someone in another life to deserve such a cruel fate. I pray for my love to find and bring me home to our bed, because it can't possibly end this way. No, he won't allow it.

"God, you can't do that to him again. If you don't want to save me, I understand. I truly do, but please do it for my Dante. I can't die with the thought of him being left all alone again. Please, I'm begging you..." I plead, hugging my knees tightly to my aching chest and hiding my face in the corner of the wall where, as the abandoned web indicates, a spider once lived.

Perhaps in this very place another girl cried herself to sleep, hoping that she would wake up and that it was all just a bad dream. In a sense, we are all one and the same.

Minutes or hours pass before the heavy echo of his footsteps stopping in front of the door constricts the blood in my veins, while the sound of the lock opening silences my cries.

He approaches me slowly but steadily. I can feel the loathing oozing from his every pore, without having to turn my head to see the decision written in his eyes – he has made his choice, and I am powerless in the face of its cruelty.

"Please, it’s not too late…" I plead, trying to catch a glimpse of his humanity before another crumpled cloth appears in my line of sight. The realization of what he is about to do drains my last drop of hope.

He leaves me no time to react, pressing it harshly against my nose, long seconds passing before the world turns into mortuary black.

* * *

The distinct smell of gasoline emanates from the dying hum of an old engine. An uninterrupted darkness permeated by the absence of hope lurks at the very bottom. My life has been ripped from its roots.

They all assault me at once, forcing my sedated being to violently come back to life, submerged in cold dread.

Instinctively, with a shaking hand, I touch the rigid spot between my legs, terrified to see, or rather feel, if something had been done to my body while my consciousness was robbed.

I breathe a sigh of relief when, through bound wrists, I feel that, by some miracle, I have been spared in this regard.

Panic creeps over me at the faint realization that I'm in a moving van. For how long have I been asleep? Does anyone else know he's on the run and took me with him? What's going to happen to me? Will I get to see another sunrise?

All these questions drown me with alarm, but I don't have the time to think of a single answer when the car suddenly stops cold in its tracks, along with the engine.

No, no, no. I'm not ready to face him or what will follow. I need more time, more...

The double doors slam open, their resounding creaking and the blackened sky failing to hide the brutality of the man who threatens my very being with just the outline of his menacing silhouette.

He looks at me as if lost in a self-made delusion, as he did that day at the cemetery. Merely witnessing it inspires a searing terror the likes I never knew existed, crawling into my bones like mercury.

This is not real life, but a nauseating illusion. It cannot possibly be how I take my last breath.

With sickening calm he enters the small room of the van, oozing hostility as he grabs my ankle before I can even notice his sudden approach.

I want to scream, to beg, but my vocal cords become useless in the fight for survival as my fingernails try in vain to dig into the metal floor as he drags me out like a barbarian.

The side of my body slams into the floor with brute force as he flings me out, the pain in my ribs screaming for me to somehow banish it.

The familiar smells of earthy dampness and somnolent aromas linger on my senses, while the sound of the wind passing through the trees along with the leaves rustling beneath me makes me shiver.

A forest – its solemn arms embrace me and I have never felt more alone, more powerless.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see it. A shovel stuck halfway through the disturbed earth, rests a few feet to my right.

At the macabre sight and its implications I no longer breathe.

I want to disappear, to pretend like a child that what's happening to me is just a prolonged nightmare that I will eventually be awakened from.

"You see, we could have made quite the pair before we got to the sweet part, but I don't think we're a good match after all," he says with a voice feigning regret as he lazily leans down. "So you’ll face the pit much sooner than anticipated, doll."

I crawl back into my skin as he moves his hands along my legs with a diseased fascination. There is a note of hysteria in his eyes as he probes with vile curiosity a narrow cut made by his broken fingernail on my knee, as if imagining what lies underneath.

"You can still make your escape. I – I can drop off the money at a place of your choosing. You can create a new identity, have a fresh start. It doesn't have to end this way," I plead in a desperate voice that is not my own, trying in vain to negotiate with someone who is unwavering in his macabre beliefs.

But there’s no use. My hands and feet are bound by thick rope and he's long gone into a heinous world of his own creation as he looks through me with unfocused eyes. Not hearing a word.

I have lost to his sick fantasies, I can feel it. Maybe it was foolish of me to think I had a chance to begin with.

"It's funny, isn't it? How much we cling to hope when there was none in the first place," he says with a bizarre glint in his eye. Just from the look on his face and those uncanny words, I know that no matter what I say, he is not here to listen, but to act on his impulses.

He's simply gone, leaving behind only a shell void of humanity.

With one last grope on my trembling inner thigh, he rises on a prolonged sigh. Clicking his tongue, he pulls a flask from his inside coat pocket, taking a few swigs as he stares off into the distance.

What is he thinking of? Why does he seem so content with whatever mental scenario he imagines while I lie nearly naked on the cold ground?

"It’s show time. Give it your best, will you?" he exclaims with a putrid grin before grabbing my ankle and pulling me along a well-traveled trail through the tall, dying grass.

"No, you can’t, no…!" I howl and thrash, but I know is futile. He dragged me here for a simple reason. We're in the middle of nowhere, with no complications or witnesses. But I do it anyway, because it's my last chance of survival, because there's nothing else I can do.

I become an animal, searching in vain for an escape, a salvation in the face of absolute evil.

Feeling a cursing wave of despair, I turn my face toward him – the one I've known all my life, but never with such finality on the horizon that now refuses me.

Death, show me your kindest hand and allow me another day.

As terrifying as the long trail he dragged me down is, I dread the second we stop, because it can only mean one thing. A sudden stub of terror slices me open as I slowly turn my head and see it, even through the nocturnal shadows. I've never cried harder, screamed louder.

A casket.

"Oh, don’t be so dramatic yet. I’ll allow you to die by asphyxiation – that’s preferential treatment, doll. See how hospitable I can be?" he says maliciously, shaking with laughter.

Frantic, I try to pull away from his grasp, but he easily grabs my arm and tosses me into the wooden box as if I were already nothing but dead weight.

God, he will bury me alive.

I, I have to…this can’t be real –

"Don’t do it, think about what I said, please…" I lurch inside the cramped wooden space, trying desperately to push myself up, but he presses one hand savagely on my panting chest while the other unclips a syringe. My eyes widen with final fear when he pushes the needle straight into my exposed thigh.

Like an ominous hawk, he rises up and circles me, dead leaves crushing under his weight. A dreadful sense of foreboding seizes my entire being like a garrote as a trail of sweat falls down my temple.

"I should’ve given you my strongest tranquilizer earlier, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't quality entertainment to watch you try and manage the stage. Misery fits you like a glove, though," he sneers.

I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. I try to raise my limbs and grip the edges of the wooden box, but my fingers grow increasingly numb by the second.

He appears above me like a blasphemy spoken through a tightly sewn mouth, a wicked smile covering his cracked lips while he traces the exterior of the coffin with the lip of the shovel; the vibrations of metal on wood instilling in my bones the kind of fear no soul should ever experience.

"It must be nice to feel this comfortable," he says mockingly, and even if I were able to talk, I wouldn't know how to respond to such a level of sadism.

At any other time I would try to empathize with the pain that must have shaped him into the cruel being he is today, but here he is about to take my life.

I feel nothing but hatred for him, an emotion foreign to me but so vivid as he traces the length of my body as if I were a faintly-breathing trophy on the verge of dying.

He is beyond salvation or redemption. A mere carcass inhabited by a cruelty that knows no bounds. I was foolish to think I could escape him, that in my case it would end differently.

Drunk with a love that made me forget that there was anything but bliss in this dreary world, I overlooked the danger lurking nearby.

I wonder if the girls before me had the same thoughts soaked in terrorized tears and empty hope. If they were at peace with themselves, with their past, with the future they will never get to live.

In my case, one thing is for certain – Death does not discriminate, nor does it practice favoritism. Not even with its acolytes.

There are no privileges, no concessions for the so-called chosen ones, even though I have been by its side for a lifetime and perhaps longer than I can remember. The moment it decides to point its vaporous finger towards a soul, life is no longer an option, and as it appears, the time has come for me to officially meet it.

In the meantime, he paces in circles around me, taking great pleasure in his sick work.

"Don’t you fret dolly, there’s always a next time for your kind, isn’t it?" he asks, oozing power in the face of my helplessness, before looking up at the night sky and dragging the lid into view. No.

When he returns, there is nothing in his eyes but emptiness, barren as a field that has never known life. I can hear the slow, dragging beat of my heart, while a surging state of panic, which I can no longer physically manifest, assails my entire being.

Blinding terror engulfs me when he places it at my bound feet, stealing the view of the sky above, the chance to pursue my calling and the life I could have had – all reduced to nothing.

I can feel the color draining from my face as sheer terror corrodes my extremities when he lets it fall over me with one solid shove, casting me into complete darkness.

Once he starts hammering nails into the corners, cementing the reality of my end with each one of them, he is not only sealing me in but condemning me to eternal restlessness.

He takes his time, humming what sounds like a sinister lullaby, the sound reverberating eerily through the wooden wall between us.

There has never been a time in my twenty-nine years of life when I so desperately wanted to disappear. But soul crushing as they are, these are my last moments and I have to be present.

The ground shudders to my right as I feel his footsteps halting. I have nowhere to fall as he grips the top of the casket, and winces as he starts to shakily drag me towards...

Hysteric, I wonder if he'll let me plummet to the ground, but he seems to have thought of that beforehand as I feel myself sliding down until I hit the bottom violently.

Evil, he is utterly evil in his sickness.

Something in me crumbles as I hear the first shovelful of dirt hit the lid, a trickle seeping through the cracks and flooding the tight, stifling space.

If I were able to move, I would press my palms to the ceiling, but I am completely paralyzed. Every breath becomes almost painful as the panic and shock of my current reality begins to settle further into my bones with each thump of the earth hitting my early grave.

He moves quickly, his experience showing. Not two minutes have passed and I am already desperate for air, the walls appearing to be shrinking around me as they swallow me whole.

The weight settling over me seems palpable as he continues his mission to the end. Slowly, the sounds of the surrounding forest seem fainter as the casket darkens, more soil raining down my petrified face.

Paranoia creeps further into my veins when something with a life of its own that I cannot see but hear, crawls along the walls that keep the underlife away from me.

Before long, after my last breath, I will become part of it – nothing more than a food source. The thought is terrifying.

I can feel it all slither into darkness as the taste of grit further invades my mouth and I am powerless to stop it.

What should one do when faced with imminent death? For some unknown reason, I never wanted to ask those who have experienced it.

In the back of my mind, throughout this doom, I clung to the sanguine hope that Dante would somehow find me and make it all go away. But I have to face the horrific reality that there's no possible way he will – I am in the middle of nowhere, already out of breath and my incapacity to move can’t accommodate the lack of oxygen in my blood. I stand no chance.

More often than not, life is far from idealistic and sometimes salvation comes a minute too late or perhaps not at all.

Having finally tasted the ripe fruit of love after a barren existence does not mean I will have the privilege of keeping it in my mouth for the rest of my life.

Nonetheless, I have been one of the fortunate ones and how I lived since that night. He made me feel like I had reached the peak, the meaning of life just by holding me in his eyes. The rest of the tale is just dust in the wind. A rumor, a flavor I had perhaps been undeserving to taste at the back of my tongue in the first place.

And I regret nothing.

Breathe, Ophelia.

A panic attack will do nothing but steal away the seconds I so desperately need to remember; to forget what doesn’t hold weight anymore now that the end is near.

I am fully aware of my own fragile mortality, perhaps more so than ever, as I struggle to draw every labored breath that may be my last. But I am not ready to accept this inevitability. Not yet.

My lips tremble faintly, as I try to relax my mind. Far above me, the fading sound of him finally stopping, gives me space to fully accept my tragic circumstances – I am dying.

I blink in the face of absolute darkness, powerless and all alone. Silent tears flow down the side of my face as my whole body shakes with every sob I cannot finish, with every unhealed regret, with every unspoken thought marking my bruised insides.

Caroline, now that you have found your husband, in a mortuary freezer of all places, I hope you will wake up every morning with a sincere smile on your face and peace in your beautiful heart. Forgive me for not being a better friend and for my distance lately. Also, remember when we were nine and your dissecting frog disappeared? I just had to do it, but know you were so dear to me.

Coblina, my sweet girl, I will never again get to hold you, to smell the soothing scent of your soft skin, to look into your eyes and find the comfort of unconditional love and quiet understanding. My familiar, do you remember me asking you that night in the elevator if you'd wait for me on the other side? Know that I will.

My opium, my everlasting narcotic, my Dante.

I – I can’t part with you, I…

God, I'd give anything to whisper his name into the night for one last time, but I can't and it kills me in far deeper ways than the lack of air.

My love, you will eventually find me, and even though I will be cold to the touch and still as a statue, I will be by your side until you draw your last breath. I promised you would never be alone again, and I will keep that vow through ghostly teeth beyond the grave. I will wait for you, forever if need be, until we meet again. I love you, beyond this world, this existence, this veil.

Remember me.

I envision his beautiful, inked face as I remember the last time I saw him at the wedding. I shiver internally at the memory of the way he held my face with the reverence of a devotee, at the way his lips felt like my personal heaven, at his freeing possessiveness.

The way he filled the kitchen with his dark energy that first night, the way he wrapped his hand around my neck teaching me how to breathe properly; the sound of his grave voice making love to my ears, his rough touch translating on my skin as tenderness.

His abyssal eyes, pale marked skin, thieving hands, his blood around my neck, the way he looked at me as if I were holy.

And I – all his, his, his.

However, the life we could have had together was so cruelly stolen tonight only because I was reckless, had an egotistical sense of privilege, dreamed of humanity where there was none to be found.

And I'm so sorry.

Silence – for what seems like an eternity is all I have until I feel it , touch my ankles. I close my eyes tightly, seeing the ones of my beloved giving me life beyond what now surrounds me.

Only by doing that, I do not longer fear as I let go for the very last time.

Goodnight, my love.