Something cold and hard settled in my chest. Not pain anymore. Not despair. Something sharper. Cleaner.
Rage.
Pure, clean, white-hot rage.
I stood.
Walked to the kitchen on legs that barely worked, stumbling once, catching myself on the counter. Grabbed the whiskey bottle—new one, half full, cap already off becausewhy bother anymore. Took a long pull. Let it burn all the way down, scorching my throat, my chest, settling like liquid fire in my empty stomach.
The whispers started—soft, smug, circling like vultures.
"He left you."
"Always alone."
"Worthless."
I looked at the empty air where the voices came from. The shadows pooling in the corners. The frost creeping across the windows.
"Fuck off," I said. Low. Calm. Final.
A scratch bloomed across my ribs—hot, deliberate, testing.
I laughed again—not broken this time. Manic, yes. Wild, yes. But dangerous. "Fuck OFFFF!" I roared at the shadows, voice cracking the air like a whip.
The whispers went silent.
Dead silent.
The cold retreated a fraction—frost on the windows melting at the edges, dripping down in slow rivulets. The shadows in the corners pulled back, just an inch, but enough. Enough to know they'd felt it too. My rage. My refusal to break anymore.
I took another drink. Stared at the note on the floor. At his handwriting. At the "D" that used to mean safety and now meant nothing.
"Fucker," I whispered.
Then louder.
"FUCKER!"
I screamed it and threw the bottle—not at the wall this time, but at everything. Glass shattered. Plates flew. The coffee table flipped, legs scraping gouges into the floor. Books scattered, pages tearing. I grabbed whatever my handsfound—lamps that had sat on our shared nightstand, cushions we'd curled up on during movie nights, the sandwich he'd made with his own hands before he left—and hurled them, smashed them, destroyed them.
Everything.
Every piece of him. Every memory. Every lie.
The apartment became a war zone, but this time I was the army. Me. Not the ghosts. Not the grief. Me.
When there was nothing left to break, I sank to the floor amid the wreckage, chest heaving, hands bleeding from broken glass I didn't remember grabbing. The bottle—somehow still intact—lay beside me. I picked it up. Drank. Deep pulls until the room spun faster, until furniture jumped and danced, until the shadows blurred and the whispers stayed silent.
Scared or satisfied, I didn't care.
"Fuck you," I whispered to the note. To him. To the ghosts. To everything that had tried to break me.
I stood up.
Legs shaking, vision blurred, blood dripping from my palms. I walked to the bathroom. To the mirror. The one we used to share, where he'd stand behind me in the mornings, arms around my waist, chin on my shoulder, both of us smiling at our reflection like we were invincible.
I looked at myself.
