He’s tall, over six feet, dressed in grey trousers that have seen better days, a moth-eaten sweater, and a plaid vest, with a newsboy cap. His eyes rake over me in a way that I’m familiar with from the pub, but there’s something different about it this time. This is a man who knows he could have me in his pocket, and will, before the night is over.
It’s just a matter of whether or not I can negotiate the terms I want.
“That’s me,” I say with as much bravado as I can muster. “I wasn’t aware of the debts my father incurred while he was alive, sir. But I’m here to discuss how they might be paid. If you’re the man I need to talk to—”
“I’m not,” he says, a smirk curling one side of his mouth. “But I can take you to him. I daresay he’ll be interested to hear what you have in mind.” His eyes drift over me again, and I have to fight the urge to clutch my coat tighter around me.
A moment passes, and then he shrugs, motioning for me to follow him. “Come on, luv,” he says, his accent thickening as he turns away, heading towards a doorway at the far end of the bar. “I’ll take you to the man himself.”
I don’t want to go with this man, through that door, into whatever unknown lies beyond. But I think of my brother, bruised and bloody and sleeping in our flat that we’re clinging to by our fingertips, and everything we stand to lose if I don’t.
Stiff upper lip,I think to myself. The man is holding the door open for me in a parody of chivalry, and all I have to do is walk through it, down the stairs, and into the darkness below. I do that, and we have a chance. I don’t—and we might lose much, much more than we already have.
I glance at the man and see not a single speck of emotion on his face. There’s no help for me here, not that I won’t have to buy. But I knew that already. The bartender might have been the last one who had my best interests in mind.
The choice is made—as if I ever really had one to start with. The stairs stretch out in front of me, the black mouth at the end of it opening up into an unknown room, with unknown men, and an unknown night ahead of me.
I take a deep breath, and walk through the door, into the darkness beyond.
2
ALEXANDRE
The apartment is dark.
The curtains are drawn, the antique lamps left switched off, and the only light that trickles into the kitchen is the dimming twilight outside. I can hear the echoes of people on the street, but I tune them out. None of that matters anymore.
I stumble through the rooms to the kitchen, dust hanging in the air around me. It’s everywhere, collected in thick drifts on books, art, and rugs. The apartment is a neglected and forgotten place now, a haunt instead of a home, and I’m the ghost living here.
The mirrors are covered. I don’t want to see my thinned face, the way clothes hang off of me now. I don’t want to see myself, the hollow look in my eyes, my mistakes and losses echoing back at me in a never-ending cacophony of hurt and disappointment.
If anyone visited me, if I talked to anyone, they might call it depression. But it’s deeper than that, a bone-deep hurt that makes me feel sick down to my very soul, though from what they all say, I’ve always been sick. A twisted monster of a man, who should have died in that Boston hotel. Who should have died long ago. Beautiful on the outside, rotten to the core.
I thought they were liars, jealous, that they didn’t understand me. That no one saw me for who I really was, who I tried to be—but the truth is, they all saw me.
I was the one who was blind.
Since I’ve come back, I shut myself up here, my apartment now a tomb instead of a museum of lost, broken and forgotten things. Nothing here is as broken as I am, as lost as I’ve come to be. Day after day, night after night, I prowl through the apartment like an animal in a cave, eating erratically, sleeping erratically, fighting off terrible dreams, and shutting myself away. When I go out, it’s only to get what I need to eat and live, hating myself all the while for being too weak to simply let myself die.
Sometimes I wake from dreams of her, my beautiful scarred ballerina, hard and aching. I know I don’t deserve to dream of her, to remember her, to eventhinkof her, but I do anyway. There’s a picture of her in my drawer, one that I took when she was still mine, my perfectpetite poupée,my little doll.
Those nights, sick with desire, I look at the picture of her in the dress I bought her, her coy smile tilted up at me, her small breasts peeking at the edges of the neckline, and I touch myself. She’s the only one I ever look at; the pictures of the others all burned to ash. There’s only her, only ever her. In the close, suffocating darkness, I imagine her mouth on mine again, her body riding me, her sweet tight heat clenching around me as I filled her, the only one who ever let me possess her in such a way.
I stroke my cock, hard and fast, rubbing myself raw as my flesh strains against my hand, tight with the need to come, to feel the momentary relief of pleasure. I let myself feel the sensations washing over me until the very brink, until I can feel the heat of my pre-cum slickening my palm, my balls tight and bruised with the many, many times I’ve repeated this—and I stop.
Last night was one of those nights. I clutched the sheets, cock spasming, body screaming for relief as I denied myself. I stared at the picture of my Anastasia, my love, the woman who turned away from me. I refuse to let myself come thinking of her, as much pain as it causes me every time.
As far as I’m concerned, I never deserve to come again. I only deserve torment and pain for what I’ve done to her and to others, all the way back to when I was nothing but a boy, and my selfish desire killed the one I loved the most. The only woman other than Anastasia that I ever loved.
There won’t ever be another for me.
I have other dreams, too. I dream of her with Liam, the handsome Irishman who saved her from me. I dream of them living the life I thought I’d have with her, the one I never deserved. I see her face upturned and laughing, smiling, and sometimes in those dreams, the ones of them together, I hear a baby’s cry. A baby with my eyes and my nose and my dark hair, held in Anastasia’s arms, and Liam bends down and calls the babyhis.
I can’t say I’ve lost everything, when none of it should ever have been mine.
It should have been me who died all those years ago. I should have died again in Boston. I don’t deserve to live, so why am I still here, breathing, needing, wanting, hurting?
Sometimes I think that’s my punishment, my purgatory, my own personal hell. Death would be so much easier than this half-life, rotting in my misery, day after day.