Alexis

It must have been hours of walking in the heat of the desert, through dunes of sand and a thicket of heat, but I blink and I am in Elis, slightly sunburned and thirsty and still running circles in my mind.

But I know I need my full attention now. All these fears and hopes and worries will have to wait here for me. So I quiet my thoughts, and step onto my street with nothing in my head and nothing in my heart, as I have learned to do so many years ago, long before becoming a soldier.

Even when the ghosts of memories taunt me from the drawn shutters of my childhood home, from the beckoning swingset of the playground that took Neriah from me, from the bench my mother and I used to count our dwindling hours of peace on, I do not let myself feel a single thing.

Unlike Aiden who feels so easily, who hurts and loves and hopes so quickly, I am not so blissfully swayed. I do not understand how he can process his emotions so swiftly, so beautifully, so strongly. I will always be awestruck by that ability he possesses. If I were to let myself experience all the pain in my heart inflicted by this place I would never recover. I would sit down on this curb, this cracked sidewalk, and I would shatter. I would never get up again. I’d cry and cry until it killed me. Or maybe, even worse, I’d realize I couldn’t cry. That kind of heartbreak would destroy me instantly. Too broken for even tears to mend.

The necessary hollowness in my chest follows me all the way to the black pond. In the water, reflected back at me, is the teary-eyed face of a younger me. And I hate the way this gate will always be my stain on the world, an infection I caused. The imprint of my curse.

But I left my soul at the door. And I have no heart to bleed as I step into the dark waters, warm as skin climbing up past my knees.

Still something manages to slip through. It isn’t like me to let that happen. But maybe… maybe I need it to.

It isn’t just pain or sorrow. But a drop of something else. Something hopeful. The tip of those filaments of fire that become smoke.

And it’s dangerous.

I am counting on it.

***

When I open my eyes I am still blind.

There is no light to frame the world past my eyelids. I know it only gets worse from here. No amount of preparation can brace me against the darkest corners of my mind.

It starts off tame. It always does. Desire then fear then regret.

Colors blossom around me with splashes of light. The rays of early morning are dulled, however. It’s a convincing image, but not yet convincing enough. Shadows still stain this mockery of sunrise. They cling to every crevice, every sun-washed wall.

He’s framed by thin bedsheets and that soft golden glow. And, as obvious as this trick is, my heart still lurches when his eyes flutter open, when his lips tug into a warm smile at the sight of me.

“Come back to bed,” He murmurs sleepily, throwing the blankets on the empty side of the bed aside. I want nothing more than this simple moment to be real. But I know better.

“You’ll have to try harder than that,” I say, forcing coldness to the forefront of my voice.

The scene changes. I am a child wading in the pond on the edge of Elis. My father is beside me, hands guiding mine around a fishing rod. He is teaching me how to fish.

It is a simple desire, to be able to look up to my father, for him to remain the way he was when my world was still tinted behind rose-colored shades. To remain the man who loved my mother, who took us swimming, who collected armfulls of irises for her. To remain as he was before tragedy took both of them from me.

I reach down into the water, watching as the murky green begins to bleed, erupting in a deep red that pools around me. When my hands resurface, they are not empty. They are clutched around a knife. In its reflection is a monster, a figure of darkness with glowing silver eyes. When I look back at my hands, there is no more flesh to cover the bones. There is nothing but shadow. And blood.

“It’s not real,” I shudder, closing my eyes. But darkness does nothing to hide me from darkness. Behind my eyelids are images of the blind rat, of Cody Mueller - the boy whose arm I broke, and this time I am breaking every bone in his body. And when I rip out his teeth, his mutilated gums bare fangs. Fangs that mirror the ones that now protrude from my own bloodied lips.

He is replaced with Aiden’s face, with his bare body. Bloodied and broken, begging for death, for me to save him. Or kill him. The knife from the lake is in my hand. And I kneel, placing the tip to my throat. But when I push the knife into myself, it pushes itself into Aiden’s chest. There is a knife in his heart, our blood on my hands.

“What do you fear most, Alexis?”

I open my eyes, blinking away a burning feeling.

Neriah is sitting on my lap, bright eyes cast upon me.

“What do I fear most?” I echo. I am struggling to separate dreams from reality, stuck on the cusp of consciousness the way one does in a lucid state beyond dreams. But Neriah feels real. Her hair beneath my fingers feels just like it always does.

“Do you fear being alone?” she asks, smiling. “Do you fear death? Or maybe abandonment?”

“No,” I whisper, brushing her coarse hair away from her forehead, securing the stray strands back into their braids.

“I… I am afraid that I deserve this.”

“Deserve this?”

“Every terrible thing that has ever happened to me.”

My little sister reaches up and caresses the underside of my jaw. She fits herself to my chest, hugging her small body tightly to mine.

“You do.”

A ragged sob stabs through my throat, cutting all the way out of my mouth. The darkness around us ignites in flames, casting dull light on the dead eyes of mutilated corpses. Some are destroyed beyond recognition, but some I do recognize. Those I killed. And those I couldn’t save.

And in my lap is the bloodied body of my sister, her eyes plucked out of her skull. Her blood all over me, sifting through me. Her lips fall open, and for a moment I think she is going to speak again. But cockroaches pry their way out of her mouth, swarming down her chin. Despite the sharp tears in my eyes, I cannot move.

“Luz.”

“No n-,” I choke out. “Please, no more. No more.”

We’re alone, sitting together in the bathtub, dressed in fine Atlas garments, dark red liquid spilling over the lip of the tub when she reaches forward. 

My mother combs the wet slicked locks away from my forehead.

“Te amo.”

And before I can say anything more her hands are around my neck; she’s shoving me under the red, drowning me with all the strength in her tiny body.

“This is your freedom,” she says lovingly as I thrash under her grip, lungs and throat burning, eyes bulging. “Our freedom.”

The current pulls me down, away from her. It fills my mouth and nose and chest as I sink to the bottom of nothingness. When my back hits the floor, the liquid drains around me. I am forced to cough the blood from my lungs. 

My knees curl into my chest. And when my head hits my knees, I cry. I am not dead. I am not dead. I wipe away my tears as best I can and steady my breathing, knowing the worst has yet to come.

The worst starts with a shovel in my hand, with two graves in the backyard. Time rewinds. I relive.

It feels real. Like living it all again for the first time.

The hunger is the first thing I remember. A sharp ache in my belly that twists and stabs, growing ever deeper even when I have the luxury of eating.

The pain, that is what comes next. My biggest regret is not killing my father, nor is it finding my dead mother. It is not being bullied, or being beaten for the first time, or even the fifth. It is a memory I have shoved so deep within myself that it feels brand new at this moment. It is the day my mother tried to run away. Without me.

I come home to my father on the single couch in the living room, still as stone. Unlike his usual self, he is sober. And he is alone.

Vincent is not yet home from school. But Mom…

“Where is she?” I ask, my voice thin and high-pitched. My hands have not yet been shaved of their baby fat. I stare at them instead of him.

“She’s gone.”

“She wouldn’t run away,” I tell him, shaking on the spot, trembling like a leaf. She wouldn’t leave us. She wouldn’t.

But wouldn’t she?

My old man laughed. He laughed hard, wheezing through it.

“She’ll be back. Not because she loves you though.”

I want to scream of course because she loves us. But I am terrified of being wrong.

“Why then?” I whisper, fighting the face I make before crying.

“Because,” my father smirks, his eyes finding the window. I notice a pain there, but not a righteous one. It is foul and full of envy. I realize in this moment how much I hate him for his hatred. And I hate myself for the same reason. “There’s nowhere else to go.”

It sparked something in me. Something horrible. A dark, bitter seedling found its way between my ribs and started to grow.

Not because my father was right, but because he was wrong, he was so wrong. I knew she wouldn’t return because I wouldn’t. I would never come back to this place, to the ugly cream colored walls, to the ragged loveseat that has started to incubate mold on the underside, to the bathroom with only one flickering lightbulb that remains working. I would never return to him, to this life. To the horrors we are reminded of every single day.

I didn’t know then that I was, in fact, wrong. My mother returned the following morning, not so much as a hushed whisper of where she had run off to. No apology or excuse, or reason why. She sat at that table and poured herself a cup of coffee. She mulled over the newspaper, not quite reading any of it. And she was silent.

That morning I hated her too. Not for leaving, but for returning. For proving my father right. But I did too in the end. I left. And I returned. Not out of love either.

It was almost winter, and I had walked barefoot outside. No coat, no shoes. I was too numb to notice or to care.

But that dark seedling began growing, began rotting. Something wicked in me took shape. I found my way to the creek in the forest behind our street. The same river Vincent, Dad, and I would follow to that lake, back when life was more than this. I remember now, all of it, but I don’t want to. It doesn’t stop me from reliving what comes next.

I find the place where the stream becomes pond. I try to drown myself.

And I nearly succeed. Hypothermia digs its claws into me almost instantly. The only thing that keeps me alive is the monster. The only part of me still screaming for life.

The moment my head falls under, the water becomes black, dense with darkness. It is no longer ice cold, feels instead like flesh–like reaching into myself.

It is not peaceful, but it is silencing. And perhaps that is peace enough.

But the monster had other plans. He reached back through me and lifted me up, out of the pool, and set me down, half conscious, on the snow bank.

I should have died.

Now I step back into the water, into my flesh. Out of the cold.

This water is not red. It is not black. It is gray, the color of the sky after snowfall. And at the very center is a pinhole of brightness. An eclipse framed in blinding light. The doorway.

I hold my breath and dive.

***