Cleo
The house is too quiet.It should feel like relief, but instead it reads like a test I’m failing.Fog presses against the glass as if it’s watching me.The ocean keeps working itself against the cliffs in the same tireless way, and I tell myself to drink water, be grateful, and breathe in threes like the therapist taught me yesterday over the phone—three in, three hold, three out.I try.The numbers won’t catch.
I don’t think I was built for this kind of mercy.I keep waiting for the fine print to show up—Eddie’s pen, Barret’s signature, a bill I missed.I owe them something, I just don’t know what.They’re somewhere in the house, orbiting like satellites: close enough to help, far enough to let me have some space.
Are they afraid of me?Maybe.Maybe they believe I’ll survive if kindness arrives in teaspoons.
And that ...that makes me want to scream.
I drift in and out of the terrace during the day, and at night when nightmares throw me awake.This is the third morning I woke in this big room, and I still haven’t mustered the courage to ask the obvious questions—how I got here, what I did to deserve this, whether Dorian will find me.
I’m not that brave, and I doubt I’ll ever be.
On the terrace, the air tastes of salt and something earthy, pine, or wet moss.The gulls call, and the sound pulls a thread inside me.For a second, I imagine being a person who can just watch.My eyes track a horizon that claims nothing from me and asks nothing of me in return.I’m glad for that blankness, because I have nothing to give now.
The truth is ugly and straightforward: I feel like a liability.
If I’m honest, I’m pretty sure I ruin things.I am an old stain in a new house.A moth that pretends it won’t love the fire.The thought sits in my ribs, and I let it.I want to be wrong.I want someone to correct me.
I turn away from the rail and start walking as if I own the place—pretending confidence so my knees won’t give out.The bedroom door is open, just as they promised.No one’s in the hall.I move quickly, rushing because I don’t want anyone’s eyes on me.The house feels like a celebrity’s cabin—cedar and glass perched on the cliff, floors that seem alive, a foyer that opens into space and light.I slip down the stairs, and the foyer swallows me for a moment—grand, absurd, a stage I never auditioned for.
I don’t walk.I run through it.
I don’t bother with shoes.I fling the door open and step into the air that stabs at my face.My socks soak through before I reach the steps.I’m on the path that snakes through a stand of fir, and I don’t look back.
If I look back and catch someone watching, I’ll fold.Folding is a survival skill I’ve honed into instinct.
I run.
It’s not pretty or graceful.My mother will say I’m a fucking mess and that I should clean up and do what I’m told.The last time she saw me, she told me I was such a stupid girl.
The sleeves of my sweatshirt slap against my thighs.My sweatpants bunch, then slide with each stride.My breath goes ragged as the path changes from planks to dirt to grit and scrub.The trees smell clean in a way that angers me—like home but not mine.The land ahead is vast and empty—open enough to lose yourself in.I run because if I stop, I’ll hear the movie in my head again.Dorian and the old apartment reel themselves out in frames: marble floors, glass that keeps secrets, a door that looks open until the handle refuses you, perfume layered over bleach so it smells like someone meant violence but dressed it up, a clock with no hands, shoes lined up like obedient soldiers.His voice low and controlled.The images unspool so loud they become my pulse, and the only way to mute them is to pound my feet into the earth until the projector snaps.
My legs burn and my hips ache.My lungs feel like they’re trying to learn a new language—one that doesn’t include the word surrender.This pain lives in my calves and under my feet, real and fixable.It doesn’t compare to his bruises.His hurt was a tool, made to erase me.It came wrapped in charm and rules.Running hurts in a way that’s mine, not handed to anyone else.
I won’t stop.There’s no road, no gate, no car to flag—just more land.It should feel like freedom, but it feels like being lost with better scenery.The cliff arrives all at once.One turn and the earth becomes a line; beyond it the ocean opens its gray mouth—patient as weather.
I don’t think about falling.Not yet.
I think about how quiet it looks where the water is darkest and where the wind doesn’t reach the bottom.I scramble onto a shelf of rock and sit.My socks squelch.My toes go numb.There is only breath, the wind, and the pain for a long minute.
I close my eyes and let the ocean shout, let the gulls stitch their calls into something that keeps me here, in the now.The ache folds into breathing.My heartbeat slows, not into calm but into a rhythm that stops making me feel like I’m drowning.
The cliff judges nothing.I don’t have to be brave.I only need to be able to go back when I’m ready—if I’m ever prepared.
This is where the film starts talking again.Not a voice, just rooms I carry like luggage.Marble floors that will not forgive scuffs.Glass that reflects you into angles you learn to fear.A door that looks open until you touch the handle, and it will not turn, no matter how well you perform.The camera with its red eye that never blinks.A ring box that stays shut because my fingers might tremble if I pry it open.
Dorian never had to shout.He made the air thin with a shrug.My body learned the rest: a smile that was not mine, a mouth that saidthank youwhen it wanted to scream, hands folded in my lap so he could call me gracious.He would touch the small of my back and tell me we were late as if lateness were a sin he invented.He named who mattered and who did not, then told me what it would cost to mix up the two.
He promised punishment without announcing it.His promises became a hallway with no doors, lights that never went out, and someone at the end waiting with a ledger.He never struck where a camera could catch him.He never left a mark somewhere obvious I could point to and say, “See.”He knew how to wound.
I curl my knees to my chest on the rock and press my forehead against them.The fog beads on my sweater.The cold tastes of salt and something like green.For a moment, I am sure the kindest thing would be to stand and step forward.
Not jump.Not fling myself.Just let the edge make the choice I keep ruining.Be done with the bleach in my mouth.Done with the silence that digs a burrow behind my ribs and breeds.Done with waking up to footsteps in a hallway and not knowing if the man walking toward me is a savior or just another scene I failed to survive.
Below, the sea keeps opening and closing its gray mouth, patient as the weather.A gull lands nearby and squawks like a rude relative.I laugh, and it collapses into a sob that doesn’t fit me.I hold myself tighter and try to make my head small.
I hate that part of me that wants to call for them.I hate more that another part believes they would come without demanding an explanation for why I ran.I hate most of all that I asked them to give me space two years ago, and disappeared without an explanation, so maybe they won’t come at all.
