Not for a while at least. Maybe he liked the chase. Maybe the sounds of my crying and gasping did something for him. For the demon that’d taken him over.
My fingernails scraped as I crawled, reminding me of the night I met Crescent. I made it to the living room, wincing with each sharp pain in my side. Blood was dripping everywhere, and I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. A trail of my suffering followed me, its very essence screaming at the molecular level.
I gave life to the floor beneath me, pouring my blood, tears, and soul into the grains of wood. It panted, heaving newfound breath into the room around me, and I was starved for it.
A foot slammed into my back, between my shoulder blades. Right where my wings had once been. The permanent, empty vault of memories full of freedom cried at the impact.
“You can’t run away from me, Elio.” Jude moved to myside. “I’m the only one who cares. The only thing you have. But you know that, don’t you?”
I looked up at the front door, begging it with my eyes to come closer. I didn’t look away, even as his foot slammed into my side. With or without shoes on, his kicks hurt enough to make me nauseous.
“The goddamn Millers didn’t do shit for you like I did.” He kept yelling, some of it incomprehensible. Over, and over, he kicked me.
I lost time. My eyes had closed of their own volition. Perhaps to save me from watching the world twist and turn as consciousness began to leave me.
I was once an angel. In another time, and another place. In a world where I was beautiful, and important. My feathers were precious, as was my soul. I was loved. Cared for. I’d meant something to someone. I once was an angel, yet I’d never gotten the chance to fly.
And then my wings had been broken, my feathers had wilted, and nothing would ever be the same. In another world, I was happy and ethereal. There was nothing I could’ve wanted, nothing I couldn’t have. In another world, I could breathe without pain.
I lay on the living room floor, no longer sure of what was being done to me, and I cried. I cried for the other version of me. The past me. The present me. The boy whose name meant the sun.
When Jude finished, I wasn’t even sure which parts of my body were injured or not. It felt like everything had been pummeled, which should’ve scared me more than it did.
But what’s the sun without a crescent moon?
Crescent’s face flitted its way through my mind. Honey-brown feathers fell around me. My feathers. My wings. My angel wings. My flight.
He loves me.
No.
He loves me not.
I couldn’t breathe.
He loves me.
I couldn’t move.
He loves me not.
I waited until Jude slammed the bedroom door before I turned over.
He loves me.
I crawled. In agonizing fucking pain, I crawled toward the night peeking through the bottom crack of the front door. I could feel each bone in my shoulder blades turn as I pushed.
He loves me not.
Daisies swirled around me, getting stuck in my throat. I tried to stay quiet, to keep my harsh breaths to a minimum, but I couldn’t. I pretended my body was numb. That I couldn’t feel every pull of my broken skin.
When I got to the front door, I grabbed onto the knob and hoisted myself up. I pressed the back of my hand over my mouth, biting down on my knuckles to keep from crying out in pain.
I’m numb. I’m numb. I can’t feel anything.
I kept chanting it to myself, a little mantra I’d used before. I kept chanting it as I turned the knob. I kept going as I slowly, quietly closed it behind me. As I walked down the porch steps. And as I started to run.
I ran, despite everything in me trying to slow down. The moment I got to the park, I started to stumble. It was like my body recognized the safe place—or as safe as it could be—and decided it was time to give up. I slowed to a walk as I heaved and panted through the side road, close to where Love ’n Sugar was.
