17-Zach
“I’m telling you the judge is going to eat it up,” Bobby, my lawyer, says through the phone like he’s reciting a script he’s used a hundred times. “Even if you don’t take this deal, this guy’s going to get probation at worst. Matthew is a young doctor who saves little kids for heaven’s sake.”
“Yeah, and who happens to have a very rich daddy,” I snap back, cracking my knuckles one-by-one. “He killed someone!”
Wood digs into my palm as I grip the edge of my tiny two-seater table. I’m ready to flip it over. I need to throw something, to scream—anything to drown out Bobby’s voice.
“I don’t care if Matthew is a pediatric surgeon.” I hate that my voice shakes. “I don’t care that he was ‘slightly under the legal blood alcohol content.’ He took Nicole’s entire life away!”
We were supposed to go to trial, but his rich daddy swooped in and convinced the courts that the loss of Nicole’s life is worth a quarter-million dollars.
Two hundred fifty thousand: the price they offered me and Steve, Nicole’s dad, for our grief and lifelong chronic pain. It doesn’t matter—they could offer a million dollars, and it wouldn’t cover the loss of my best friend.
The floorboards groan as I pace across the apartment.
Lavender from the candle I lit last night weaves itself through the air, stinking up the place.
I used to find it relaxing, comforting, but now it smells like shit.
My fingers brush the back of my secondhand loveseat, the rough fabric grounding me for half a second before the anger surges again.
“I’m telling you,” Bobby’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts, “take the deal. Put that money to some good use. It doesn’t matter how much time he gets, which won’t be much, it’s not going to bring her back.”
That knocks the wind out of me.
“I know it’s harsh,” he adds, softer now, “but I’ve been doing these civil settlements for a long time, and I’m telling you at least you can do something with the money.
Take a vacation, start a new life, devote your time to that arts charity.
Anything that helps you keep living. Money ain’t gonna buy you happiness, but neither is revenge, and most of the time people like you aren’t going to get that, either. ”
He’s fucking right. The justice system is built to fail women. We’re told that our pain is always worth less than a man’s future.
Ironic it’s today, of all days, too. The anniversary of when Carter put me in the hospital.
My lack of a digital footprint is survival. Carter got a slap on the wrist after beating me within an inch of my life, and I’ve been peeking over my shoulder since. After Nicole died, it got worse. Every shadow feels like a threat.
“Give me and Steve some time,” I manage to say.
“Take as much time as you need. The kid’s out anyway, I’m sure he’s in no rush.”
“Yeah.”
I hang up, and the phone nearly slips from my fingers as I set it on the counter. My hands tremble, so I tuck them into fists and dig my nails into my palms. The sting keeps me from falling apart.
My body buzzes with adrenaline, anger, and grief; all of it tangled into a knot. Pacing grates on my nerves, but I can’t stop. My skin’s ill-fitting, like I’m wearing myself wrong. I need something other than rage to anchor me.
The air vibrates with everything I don’t want to think about.
Every breath scrapes like sandpaper. My mind claws for distraction, meaning.
It screams for a drink, just one mini sample bottle to take the edge off.
But I’ve been sober for months. And I’ve made it to that church for every Friday morning meeting.
I’ve come too far with my sobriety to fall off now, especially with what’s at stake.
I grab my necklace and roll the vial between my fingers, thinking of the cop who gave it to me, and Kit-fucking-Rotherson’s face when he saw it in that bathroom all those months ago. I haven’t seen Kit since I dropped him off in front of his hotel, and I’m not ready to face him again.
Because the truth is that wasn’t the first time I’d seen him.
I don’t understand how, but he’s been in my dreams for as long as the god himself; a slender, blue-eyed figure standing across a riverbank, sharing skins with the god as he kisses me, or half-hidden in the thick woods as he calls to me in a voice I can never quite hear.
Every time he appears, I’m wound tight with a bone-deep terror.
I always run. My body reacts before my mind can catch up, like it knows our meeting would spark irreparable disaster.
The god, for whatever reason, has dug his claws into Kit too. I felt it in the way Kit looked at the vial like a phantom come to personally drag him to hell.
I can’t stop thinking about all the things I thought connected me to this project, the tiny signs that felt like fate.
Was any of it real? Did the music ever mean what I thought it did?
Or was it all just the god, pulling strings and twisting threads, nudging us toward each other like pieces in a story he’s trying to resurrect?
It taints the whole experience, like my feelings about the band aren’t even mine. I force myself to breathe. To steady and stand firm.
No.
The god has no power. He’s fractured and fading, desperate. Whatever he’s trying to stitch between me and Kit won’t define us. It doesn’t get to rewrite my life.
I close my fist around my necklace, grounding myself in the weight of it.
The Somnium tour starts in a few weeks. Yeah, they signed the contracts, but with a metaphorical gun to the back of their heads.
I’m not anticipating this to be anything more than the bare minimum of what’s expected.
Still, I’m excited to see my Daemonium girls again.
I called Pamrata last week, and she assured me that the rest of the band is excited to meet me.
‘Rest,’ meaning not Kit. Not that I care.
Heat prickles beneath my skin, my nerves sparking.
I move to the bookshelf, dragging my fingers across the spines of old film books and journals. Each one is a memory from a version of me I barely recognize. I grab one of the books, a bulky cinematography manual from college, and flip open the last dog-eared page.
Dust, parchment, and ink fill me as I sniff the old textbook.
My handwriting fills the margins with messy notes from a girl who believed in things.
The woman before the abuse, accident and settlement.
Before the dream god wove this damned curse through me.
He guaranteed a different life; achievement. Resolution.
His promise of salvation left me in ruins.
Success means nothing when I’m too hollow to feel its effect.
How can someone powerful enough to shape a future be too weak to serve due justice?
They can’t. And that’s the truth the god never wanted me to learn; power is a ruse.
A fallacy disguised as divine insight. Shutting him out of my dreams as easily as I did proves it.
I slam the book shut and squeeze it back onto the crowded shelf. My legs are restless, so I pace toward the half-open laptop on my desk. There is chocolate smeared across the keys from the granola bar I ate earlier.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever: a simple tattoo I saw inked across a random woman’s shoulder a week ago threw me into a spiral trying to figure out why it felt familiar. Pulling up lyrics from Somnium’s newest album, I place it next to the John Keats poem, studying them side by side.
From the imagery to cadence, the parallels are undeniable.
Scouring the internet, I stumble across a fan series discussing the band’s possible inspirations from Greek mythology, ancient rites, and forgotten gods. I dig deeper, and the pieces click together, forming a picture I’ve been too afraid to view.
A stony sureness settles in my stomach.
I click on an antique painting of an angelic figure as he sleeps beneath a willow, the halo of silver moonlight serene and forbidding all at once. I lean closer, breath held, as if the painting might breathe back.
There it is—the smirk he retains no matter what skin he wears.
“I found you, you son of a bitch,” I declare to the brunette pretty boy as something hacks its way through the fog of despair.
Purpose.