I scream when I feel a hand touching my shoulder and get up fast, hitting the person next to me. Through the tears in my eyes, I manage to see that it is Lucas. I throw myself into his arms, and he immediately hugs me to his warm and calm chest.
“Everything will be fine, Anmara,” Lucas says with his face buried in my hair. “I promise that nobody will ever hurt you. Nobody will get past me.”
“D-do not make promises you can’t keep,” I say through my sobs, strangling his waist with my arms. “Please, just stay with me this time,” I beg him like a child who was abandoned by her parents in the middle of the storm.
That’s exactly how I’m feeling. Like the orphan I am. I have nobody, besides him. I can’t trust anybody, but Lucas’s presence gives me the comfort I haven’t felt in a very long time. It is like a silent oasis, but my troubled mind doesn’t want to let my body calm down.
“I’m sorry to announce to you that this time you’re tied to me, whatever Cathal will make me do and wherever he’ll send me,” he tightens his hold around me, being careful not to suffocate me in his grip at the same time.
I slowly distance myself from him to look into his eyes. I can read the emotion in them, a fact that I overlooked at Marshall. He was playing me really well, so he didn't have to hide his gaze, especially through sweet kisses and romantic gestures that were melting my heart. In Lucas’s emeralds, I can see a mixture ofhonesty, sadness, and… love. His feelings are so well exposed, and only through his eyes. What I am seeing is more profound than if I were to read from…
A journal.
Actually, I think the situation has just gotten worse.
“What happened?” Lucas feels my disturbance, but I get away from him and go back to the magical box, which I know is hiding even more than I can imagine.
“I remember all too well that every time he came home from a meeting while we were here, I caught him writing in a journal.” I start by saying, while I get the bloody lingerie out of the way, throwing it next to the photos. “He said he was working on a book and never let me read it because I could inspire myself from it, especially when I seriously got myself into writing.”
I see a black material beneath all that lingerie, which I remove, revealing exactly what I was looking for.
A simple journal with the cover made from a delicate black leather.
It looks so innocent in its way, but so erotic and disgusting considering where it was hidden.
I study it for a couple of seconds, running my fingers over the cold leather. I untie the string that was surrounding it and open it to its front page, where I find his elegant writing. I relax, happy that I found what I needed, until I read the notes from that page. The journal’s title is a simple enumeration of three words that makes my skin crawl.
ROMANCE ME IN - activating the emotions of a soulless man
I turn the page, and I start sweating while reading, with Lucas next to me. We are together studying Marshall’s words from ten years ago.
24th of April 2015
Phase I
The first experiment was a total failure.
The combination was lethal. I need to adjust the level of Cadmium and Sulphate, and try other wine combinations.
The solution is here. I can feel it. The only thing I can feel.
Tamwine is the solution to all of my problems.
Other places don’t have what Tamwine does. I tried for four years to find a place where I could come across the right substances, and I know for sure this place is the one. My intuition never felt so hung up on my empty being.
Satisfaction is the only emotion I am conscious of, which is so big when the subjects are not compatible with the injected substances.
My senses are sharper, and an emotion rises from the pool of darkness.
I will continue with these experiments. I will find the right combination for me, too. I want to succeed in feeling love as much as I want to watch how the breath of my pure subjects is the one I hear last.
The experiment will be a success. I can feel it in this bloody air.
I will write all my failures and successes to find the right combination.
I want to be normal.
I need to be normal.
