Had to clear my head. Will be back tonight.
I lie.
Because it’s not just my head I need to clear.
It’s him.
But how the fuck do you burn someone out of your soul when they already turned it to ash?
I step outside into the morning like it owes me a fucking apology. The sky is too bright, the air too fresh, the city too loud, too alive, too shamelessly indifferent to the disaster in my chest.
I want the night back.
I want the quiet.
I want the way he said my name like he was choking on it.
I want the way his voice broke when he realised I was real.
I shouldn’t have touched you.
Then why did you?
Why pull me closer like I was something you were terrified to lose?
Why kiss me like you were dying for it?
Why look at me like I was real…
Only to take it back the second your fear caught up?
I don’t remember walking here — feet moving, pavement shifting beneath me — but suddenly my boots stick to a floor I swore I’d never touch again.
The Crimson Room.
Red light.
Red walls.
Red memories.
And every one of them bleeds him.
That’s what it’s called — like it’s glamorous, like it’s some velvet-drenched fantasy instead of a dressed-up hell where the walls breathe secrets and the carpet swallows sins whole, where broken girls sell fragments of themselves for the price of a drink and a nod from a man who doesn’t give a shit if they make it home, as long as they leave their dignity at the door.
The bouncer doesn’t even blink when he sees me.
Just tilts his head, shifts his weight, and opens the door like I belong in the dark, like the shadows already know my name and have been waiting to pull me back in.
The second I step inside, it hits me — like it always does, like it will every time until the day I finally leave this city behind.
Sweat.
Smoke.
Cheap perfume wrestling with vanilla body spray until the air tastes sweet and sour and wrong.
Desperation with a glittery finish.
