Not the good memories, not the bad ones. I want to forget everything, let it sink deep below the waves.
“Aoi…” he reaches for me, and I flinch from his touch.
“Don’t touch me!” I crawl away, shaking as pure terror takes over me. “Who were you talking to?”
“Aoi. Please, Aoi. Listen to me. It was necessary. I didn’t intend for your father and sister to die, too. It was an accident.” He kneels down in front of me. “I swear it.”
“Answer me!”
His cologne envelopes my nose and my stomach lurches over the familiar fragrance. The next second, everything I’ve swallowed in my life comes tumbling out of me.
My throat screams in pain, but I’m devoid of life. My mind goes silent, the thoughts disappear. I peer up from the puddle of vomit in front of me to the horrified expression on my uncle’s face.
“He’s here, isn’t he? I heard you talking to someone. Who was it? Tell me it’s not true. Tell me it’s not him!”
My voice is hoarse from the constant screaming and crying. It sounds so foreign, so old and new. It’s mine and yet it isn’t. Same as the man in front of me.
He’s my uncle, but he isn’t.
He’d been my lover, yet he hadn’t.
It was all a lie. Everything was a lie.
I’m a lie,a fraud.
He doesn’t dare speak up and instead slides closer to me on the ground, silently and carefully watching me.
But there is nothing resembling guilt or even sympathy in his eyes.
I know there was someone else in that room with him. I may not have seen who it was, but I can imagine Jason doing something as twisted as kidnapping the man I love.
Fuck, if I had snuck out of that room sooner, I could have donesomething. I could have found Visha–if it was him–and get him out of here.
“Answer me.” I grab his collar and shake him violently, trying to get something out of him, but he remains silent. “How can you choose to shut up now? Why couldn’t you do that earlier? You bastard! Why did you have to pull me out of the lake? Couldn’t you have left me to die? Why do you hate me so much?”
Nothing matters anymore. I have nothing. I am nothing. So, what’s the point?
I just want to kill the grief, the pain, the guilt. I want to kill that void inside me. Rip it out of my chest and squash it underneath my feet. The need for rage claws at my skin, carving circles into my soul and scooping out every ounce of hope I dared to entertain.
The hazel of his irises is soaked in envy. “Because you’re mine. You aren’t allowed to die as long as I haven’t decided it.”
I let go of him, stunned and speechless until the words settle inside me. Like a sponge I absorb the truth as it starts to scrape at the insides of my throat.
The pain of betrayal, lies, and truth twists my intestines and makes me want to hurl again. Instead, I end up feeling a depraved kind of numbness take over.
I want to forget. I don’t care about the truth anymore.
Please, if there’s a god. Let me go back to being ignorant. Reality is too much, it’s too painful. I can’t stand it.
Every time a memory flashes, a stab rips my heart open, and I bleed. I bleed and bleed, more and more. Until everything is drenched in blood, guts, sorrow, and wasted love.
“Jason.”
His eyes are bloodshot and humid when he looks up at me.
He hates to see me being happy, doesn’t he? If he hates me so much, if he hates my possible joy, then why not have me killed along with the others? Why did he pull me out of the lake?Why?
Suddenly, as I gape at his pale face, a memory bursts my train of thought.
