Chapter 40
Forty-eight hours.
That was what they told me later.
Two days. It didn’t feel like two days.
It felt like being trapped inside the same moment for so long that my body started reacting to everything before my brain could even process it anymore.
Doors opening and closing. Questions repeated over and over until the words stopped sounding real.
At some point exhaustion stopped feeling physical and turned into something uglier.
My thoughts slowed down, my body kept moving anyway, and the space between those two things started stretching farther and farther apart.
They took me out again. Cuffs on, harder this time, undeniable, the way it forced my shoulder back until something in my spine started to burn, my hands useless behind me, fingers twitching against nothing, against themselves, against the fact that I couldn’t even clench them properly anymore without the chain pulling tight and reminding me exactly where I was.
Walk, turn, stop. I didn’t look at anyone, but I could feel them anyway.
The way people look at something they’ve already decided what is, something they’re just waiting to have confirmed so they can stop thinking about it and move on.
They sat me down in front of him, the judge.
I knew what he was before I even looked up, the way the room shifted around him, the way people straightened just enough to show who mattered and who didn’t.
I didn’t care to give him that, because the second I lifted my eyes, it was already done, I could see it.
Not in his face, he was practiced for that, but in the way everything held still a moment too long, like the air itself was waiting for something it already knew was coming.
Three months, remand extended, risk of flight.
That word again, flight. It almost made me laugh – something ugly rising up in my throat that I had to swallow down before it turned into sound.
Because the idea of it, of me running, trying to get away, was so fucking detached from reality it bordered on insulting.
I hadn’t even tried to run.
I had been standing there, in the open, covered in dirt and blood and everything they were now pretending to be shocked by and I had stayed.
But no, they needed that word. They needed to make me something that might slip through their fingers if they didn’t hold tight enough.
So they tightened. Then came the rest, a psychological evaluation.
Because the case didn’t make sense. Because I didn’t speak.
Because something about me made them uncomfortable in a way they couldn’t explain– not without handing it off to someone else with a degree and a title and a clean way of saying this is what he is.
That was the part that actually got under my skin. Not enough to show it, but enough that something in my chest twisted, slow and mean, like it was looking for somewhere to land. They needed someone else to explain me.
After everything. After what they had seen, after what I had done, they still needed it spelled out.
Pathetic.
And the worst part?
They thought it gave them control. That if they could name it, categorize it, put it in the right fucking box, then suddenly it would be manageable, like I would be manageable.
I sat there, hands locked behind me, shoulders screaming from the position and let it build.
A kind of anger that doesn’t burn out, that doesn’t flare or disappear.
It settles, roots. And I knew, I knew, exactly where it was pointing.
Zwierek, of course it was him, it had to be.
He had been there, I saw him. Standing in the trees like he belonged there, like he had always known exactly where I would end up, like he had been waiting for that moment specifically, watching me tear open the ground, watching me lose it, watching me become exactly what he had spent years shaping me into.
And then he disappeared, and suddenly the police were there.
You don’t need to be smart to connect that, not about things like that.
So yeah, it was him, it had to be. And the second that settled, the anger found somewhere to go.
You feel that, don’t you, little Ghost?
That part of you that doesn’t want to stop once it starts.
That part that wants to push further than it should.
That doesn’t understand restraint the way everyone else pretends to.
Don’t look away from it and don’t you fucking dare clean it up.
That anger in you, that raw, ugly, unfiltered thing, you should treat it like something sacred, because it’s one of the only honest things you have.
I can see it, that’s why you’re still here, that’s why you’re still listening to me after everything.
Because something in you recognizes it, recognizes me.
And don’t try to pretend it doesn’t go deeper than that, because I can feel the way you look at me, the way you take all of this.
The blood, the violence, the rot, and twist it into something you can hold without choking on it.
Go on, do it.
Dress me up in something softer, call it intensity, call it obsession, you can call it whatever makes it easier for you to keep coming back, but don’t forget what’s underneath, because I’m still the same thing no matter how you wrap it.
Silk doesn’t change what it’s covering, it just makes it easier to touch.
And you still do, don’t you?
You still reach, even now, that’s what I don’t let go of.
Because I don’t want the version of you that pretends to be clean, I don’t want the parts you show the world.
I want the parts you hide, the parts that don’t behave, the parts that would look at me, like this, and not walk away.
If you want me, you don’t get to separate it.
You don’t get me without everything that made me, and I don’t take you without the darkness you keep buried so deep you almost forgot it was there, that’s not how this works.
And don’t misunderstand me, I know this isn’t gentle, when I want something, I don’t touch it lightly.
I don’t hover at the surface and pretend that’s enough. I take, I consume.
That’s what true desire is, whether people admit it or not.
The only difference between something that feels like love and something that destroys you is how far it goes, how deep it sinks in before it stops being something you can control, and I don’t stop.
That’s the truth you are very much aware of and keep circling without saying out loud.
Because devotion, even that, turns into something violent in me.
It always has, always will and you still stay.
That’s the part that should truly scare you, but it doesn’t; instead, it pulls you closer.
So stay, little Ghost. Stay right there and keep looking at me like that.
Keep pretending you don’t understand exactly what you’re stepping into. Because I do and I’m not letting you go.