Shadow is gone… again. I have even more questions and no answers. Not to mention a throbbing need between my legs that I know is soverywrong.
Examining my arms and legs, I find only the faintest scars showing where I’d been cut. His tongue healed my wounds.
The possibility that I made it all up flits through my mind, and not for the first time.
Maybe I’ve been held captive by a mental illness with hallucinations all these years?
Maybe I stood here over a pot of SpaghettiOs, and watched it burn while my mind played with monsters?
Meow.
I turn to find the cat pawing at the door, asking to be let out.
And my only witness can’t corroborate which it is.
Crouching down, I scratch the cat’s head until it closes its eyes in bliss and purrs.
"Even if I could afford the meds I need, who has time for that kind of therapy?" I ask the cat, who only pushes up harder into my nails. "Besides, I’m not hurting anyone but myself."
I’m reluctant but grant the cat’s wishes to be let out of the apartment into the blustery cold night.
Hallucination or not, I’m held captive by it, and I plan to court it every night if it lets me. Before I slip into bed, I kneel down to check for monsters—resuming the ritual I did for four years after Shadow abandoned me.
Closing my eyes, I say the words as if they were a prayer and the dark floor was the brightest star I could wish on. "Come back to me."
When I step out of my apartment the next morning, my neighbor is standing on her front stoop, a puffy coat like mine over her robe as she puffs a cigarette. Her short hair is a messy array of curly tufts.
Smoke billows from her dry mouth, blending and fading into another bright ashen morning sky.
Her already suspicious-set eyes, dragged down by heavily lined bags, narrow when they land on me.
"You’re too fucking loud," she croaks without preamble.
"Sorry," I apologize, though I never comment on the knock down drag out fights between her and her husband that the whole street can hear.
"People your age are so fucking classless and rude," she says contemptuously before taking another drag from her cigarette. I’m not sure what she expects me to say.
Thankfully, Helena pulls up then and I dash off, careful not to slip on the ice that formed overnight.
I barely slept, but I feel more invigorated as I clean throughout the day. I start to wonder if Shadow’s tongue had more healing abilities than I first gave it credit.
As I scrub toilets, vacuum floors, and dust other people’s beautiful belongings, I think how he’s in my veins now.
I wish he’d stayed with me until I drifted off to sleep in the safety of his embrace.
I hadn’t felt that in so long.
The memory of his tongue and the sinful way it made me feel also hadn’t left me. Throughout the day my breath would hitch, legs clamping together as my eyes unfocused. In my mind, his tongue had traveled further, burrowed under my shorts entirely until it licked up where I wanted it most. Until he filled me and tortured me into a screaming mass of orgasm and flesh.
… I really do need that therapy.
The euphoria of the memory slowly dies over the next several days when the nights yawn long and painfully into the dawns with no trace of Shadow. By the fourth day, I start to think I really am mad. That I made it all up only to torture myself. Maybe during the last four years, my mind had been healthier and only recently taken a decline, bringing back my imaginary savior.
But no, I know better. The way he held my hand in my youth, protected me when I needed it most…
Shadow is real. There is simply no way for me to get to him. I am at the mercy of time and uncertainty. And just like last time, it makes me bitter.
By the end of the week, Helena comes to me during our Friday shift. Despite the intensive labor of our job, her hair is perfectly smoothed back into a dark braid. There aren’t any stains on her tee shirt or jeans, unlike mine.
