TEN YEARS EARLIER
SELENE
The puddle of blood inches closer toward the toe of my sandal, and I somehow hold back the roil of vomit climbing up my throat, noticing how the color I painted my toenails matches the blood creeping closer.
I wish I could swallow the red pill. Or is it the blue one? Whichever one it is that wipes your mind clean and takes you out of the nightmare you’re living in. I believe it’s the only thing that can save me from what I witnessed only seconds earlier.
My skin is ice cold as I press my back firmly against the wall. Silent tears stream down my face; my watery gaze refusing to break away from the two lifeless bodies in front of me. Bodies that don’t belong to just anyone. Within a matter of seconds, I’ve witnessed the people who brought me into this world leave it.
Footsteps pound up the stairs, muffled by the decades-old carpeting. I know who they belong to. I want to stop her and shield her from the darkness of this room, but I’m frozen stiff, unable to move.
I shouldn’t have followed the shouts. I shouldn’t have followed their voices.
Would it have been better if I’d just found them this way? Him on top of her, their faces sprayed with each other’s blood. The shiny metal of their wedding rings glinting in the afternoon sun, now coated in crimson.
Or is the pain of what I’ve just witnessed worse?
The only thing I know for certain is that my life will never be the same.
They taught me to believe in the fairy tale type of love, everlasting and true. But this isn’t love, and I won’t ever be able to think of it the same.
I’ll never look at love or death the same, because when I see their lifeless expressions, his body draped over hers over a pool of damaged flesh and freshly spilled blood beside an empty pistol, I know that’s all I’ll see forever.
I’ll be haunted by this memory for the rest of my life.
I’m frozen stiff against the wall when my sister appears in the doorway. It only takes a split second for her to register what she’s seeing before her ear-piercing scream floods my ears. All I can do is stare at my mother’s now-vacant eyes staring back at me, giving me all the answers I couldn’t answer for myself.
Love is the master manipulator, existing only in storybooks.
Death lives on in real life, and, I think in this moment, I’d rather be dead than suffer with the memory of this for rest of my days.
ONE
SELENE
The giant, shimmering rock in the palm of my hand is heavy and meaningless. I turn it over several times, staring at it as though it isn’t a real, tangible object resting against my skin. Blinking, I’m convinced I’ll make it disappear, like some sort of naïve, twisted magic trick.
Love can’t be trusted—a lesson I learned a decade ago.
While my life may be lacking faith in love, there’s one thing it certainly isn’t short of: death.
Death is real. It’s an aching fact we spend our entire lives pretending it isn’t coming for us, hunting us down. It’s the elephant in the room we pretend doesn’t exist.
From the moment we take our first breaths, death is humankind’s fate. We’re all doomed to die one way or another, whether by natural causes or someone else’s hand. Torturous? Peaceful? No one knows how they’ll leave this world. Still, it doesn’t change one simple truth: no matter if it’s expected or not, death still catches you by surprise, dragging you into a spiral of pain and grief, no matter the circumstances.
When I think about my life, I suppose the same could be said about love. Love, like death, only brings heartbreak.
That’s where the similarities end, though.
Death is reliable, and love can’t be trusted.
After dropping the pale blue, gleaming stone from my palm, I dangle the long chain from the ends of my fingertips and trudge up the last flight of stairs leading to my apartment floor. The stone swings like a pendulum, reminding me of the weight of its meaning. Do the dead miss the living like the living miss the dead? Does it even matter in the end?
I will the dark cloud hanging over me to disappear, thankful to be out of that jewelry store and heading home.
“Strange, isn’t it?” my sister asks through the phone, tearing me from my thoughts.
“What is?” I hitch my purse higher on my shoulder and blow a loose strand of hair away from my face, but it flies back, shielding half my eye. I jerk my head and fish my apartment key out of my purse, keeping my grandmother’s necklace tight in my grip and my phone pressed between my cheek and shoulder.
