“What?” he asks with a little smile. “You don’t like being touched without consent? Strange. I thought you were into it, considering how you abused Helios for two years when he was a kid.”
His words echo in the cave, and they bury themselves in my mind like claws.
“He—he told you that?” I whisper.
Helios thinks I abused him sexually. Somehow, somewhere down the line, our experiences of the same events diverged completely. We were both teenagers, but where I remember love and intimacy, he remembers something else entirely…
There’s a buzzing in my ears.
“Oh, yes. I’ve also seen the scars,” he points at his fern-like scars, so similar to the ones I gave Helios a few times.
I always hated myself when I hurt him. I couldn’t control my electricity for years. It burst out of me with some emotions. Rage, jealousy, fear…
“It’s okay… Oliver. I’m okay…” Helios repeated when I cried for forgiveness.
But he never cried when I hurt him. He never complained, called me a monster, or pushed me away. Maybe he should have.
He didn’t just run away because he didn’t love me anymore. He ran away because he hated my touch. He hated me.
I’m the fucking monster in his story.
“Come, now. Tears? Really?” says Jude.
I didn’t realize I was crying. I wish the solar lamp wasn’t so bright. I wish I was back underwater and that I could drown.
Jude throws the soap at my chest, and I catch it out of reflex. “Clean yourself down there. There’s still crusted blood everywhere.”
He climbs out of the pool and leaves me to fend for myself with the soap. I clean my intimate parts and legs slowly and mechanically, as best as my weak body lets me as my thoughts rage like a hurricane.
I sit in the water for a long time. Jude might expect me to suffer from the cold, but I don’t.
I suffer enough with the harsh reality he has painted around my memories, anyway. My love story—the foundation of my adult life and my reason to live for years—dissipated like smoke under the sun.
It’s somehow worse to know Helios was right to leave me for his devil. I can’t blame him and pretend he’s just a callous person. He didn’t abandon me. He ran away from me.
At some point, Jude realizes that punishing me is not worth risking my death and losing control of theFirefly, and he pulls me out of the freezing water. He wraps me in a blanket and drags me to the fire he has built. The cave is so wide, the smoke disappears far above our heads. He helps me get into a new pair of cargo pants he brought back from theFirefly—certainly given by Stellan and Perri with the rest of our new supplies—and the Hawaiian shirt.
I lie over the sleeping bag and close my eyes.
Later, when he tries to feed me, I pretend to be asleep, no matter how many times he stabs me in the cheek with a fork.
Two days fly by without us sharing even a word. Jude is content to talk to Fyfe, as fruitless as those exchanges might be. Twice a day, he leaves a plate at my side with food. I don’t eat. I’m not hungry. And yet, against my will, my body is slowly healing. I can feel a spark in my chest, a sign that my organs are building electricity anew. I can move again. At least, enough to crawl a little farther away in the cave to relieve myself when needed. Jude watches my every move but doesn’t say a word.
It’s on the third night that he finally breaks the silence.
“There are faster ways to die than starving yourself,” he says over the fire.
I hesitate for a moment, then say, “As if you would let me die.”
“You’re right. I can’t afford to let you die. So, eat. I promise you that as soon as I have full control over theFirefly, I’ll bury a bullet in your brain.”
“How kind of you.” My voice sounds hollow even to my own ears.
I wouldn’t kill myself. I’m not such a coward as to give up entirely. Or just not brave enough to end it. I’m just… not hungry. Feelings like hunger, pain, discomfort are overshadowed by the vast emptiness of my life. I’ve built sandcastles after sandcastles, trying to pretend that all this mess has a meaning.
I’m the little monster that should have never escaped the lab.
“They tried to kill me, you know?” I say.
