Seven
I couldn’t sleep at all. The night’s events played over and over in my brain like a gunshot wound on rewind and then fast forward.
I’d almost liked it.
Maybe I did.
Fuck.
He was an addiction. I’d never craved or hated something so much as his touch and attention.
I touched my lips, staring at my reflection in the en-suite bathroom’s mirror. You know how when you look at yourself long enough, you sometimes question who you are? Like, who is that person staring back at you? Well, I stared into my eyes and it went beyond that. I knew who was staring back at me—I just didn’t like her.
He’d given me rules. Fucking rules—like not saying “fuck.” Yeah, well, fuck him. Fuck fuck fuck him.
“Ahh!” I screamed, thrusting my fist into the reflective glass. It shattered on impact. There was a moment, right before the pieces fell to the floor, when I could see my reflection. I saw my face disintegrate, my cheekbone falling away from my eye, my eyes splitting in two, my lips falling from my face. I shattered away.
The glass fell, revealing the gray glue beneath the mirror. I stared down at the floor, blood dripping from my fist. My reflection refracted, even more distorted from that angle. Blood dripped onto the fragments, splattering. I stared at myself for maybe a half a second longer then shook my head.
My anger dissipated with each drop of blood, replaced instead with the pain radiating from the side of my hand. Without the fury to blind me, fear was creeping in. How is any of this possible? I never imagined when I traded my life that this was going to happen. It’s barely been a week and I feel myself irrevocably changing.
I shook my head.
I wasn’t ready to deal with that. I stepped over the fragments, grabbed some toilet paper, and wrapped my hand.
I walked over to my window and pushed it open. A fresh gust of New York winter wind whipped my cheek. In the winter, the city smelled different. The smells froze. The aroma of bus and subway shivered. Up so high, I almost didn’t smell it. It was almost clear, like in the country.
Almost.
Blood poured through my shoddy wrapping job and dripped onto the sill. I don’t know if it was being confronted with my own lifeblood or the fact that I was leaning so far out, but I contemplated jumping. The longer I stayed with the Beast, the less I cared about Papa.
I obviously didn’t want him to die, but that feeling had become an archetype. I had no feelings attached to it anymore because all I could feel was hurt and want and shame and need. Papa was my old life, a life where a girl could feel love and duty and selflessness. Now…
Now I was looking down at the pavement, at the small ant-like people, and wondering. I scooted up to the lip of the sill, putting one foot out. It was freezing, but the bitter air was awakening. I would let fate decide. If the wind pulled me out, so be it. That wasn’t technically suicide. So what if I was leaning a little to the right? So what if
I was letting my right leg dip toward the ground? So what if—
Something skittered across my foot.
“Oh, Jesus.” I jumped back. I gripped the sill and looked around. What the fuck was that? I gripped the sill, looking at my foot, and gasped.
A tail.
Had I just seen a tail? Either that or I’d officially cracked and was inventing things in my brain so I didn’t go insane. I looked down again. Some people think suicide is a sin, was my god a rat?
Oh my God.
I’ve lost it.
“There’s no rat,” I said to myself. “Just fucking do it.” The sill was starting to get slippery with my blood. I took a deep breath, sucked in the gelid winter air, and prepared to fall. As I let my fingers loosen, something jumped onto my foot. Startled, I fell backward into the room.
Holy shit.
It was a fucking rat. White and fluffy with a cute little nose. It quickly jumped off me, obviously just as freaked out as I was. It dashed back to the sill with such speed I nearly missed it. Then it paused, small pink paws up as if studying me. Nose twitching.
“What are you doing here?” I reached over to touch it.
I know what you’re thinking—plague, motherfucker, have you heard of it? Yes, I have.