I carry her to the bed, stripping the soaked, ruined clothes off her body with hands that won’t stop shaking. She’s so thin. Every rib is a silent accusation. I wrap her in the thickest blankets I can find, but the heat won’t take. The cocaine is leaving her, and as it goes, it’s taking every ounce of her light with it.
“Peter,” she rasps into the dark of the bedroom. The tremors hit her in waves, teeth chattering so hard I’m afraid they’ll shatter. “It’s coming. The shadow. It’s coming for me.”
“I’m right here, Wendy. I’ve gotyou.”
“No,” she shrieks suddenly, her back arching off the mattress as the first real wave of the withdrawal hits. “Don’t touch me! Your hands—they smell like him. They smell like the metal. Everything is grey, Peter. Why is everything so grey?”
She begins to vomit—a bitter, yellow bile that burns her throat. I hold her hair back, rubbing her spine while she heaves until there’s nothing left but dry, racking shudders. She looks at me then, her eyes bloodshot and hollow, and for a second, the girl I married is gone. There’s just a stranger looking for a fix.
“Give it to me,” she pleads, her fingers digging into my forearms, her nails drawing blood. “Just a little. Just to stop the shaking. If you love me, Peter… if you really love me, you won’t let me feel this. Please. I’ll do anything. I’ll be your girl. I’ll be whatever you want.”
The words are a poison. She’s offering herself to me the way she had to offer herself to Felix, and the realisation that she can’t tell the difference between my love and his cage makes me want to scream.
“I’m saving you, Wendy,” I choke out, pinning her wrists to the pillow as she starts to thrash again.
“You’re hurting me!” she screams, her voice cracking, echoing off the bare walls of the safe house. “He gave it to me! He made the world bright! You’re just making it dark! I hate you! I wish you’d died in that hole!”
She spends the night screaming at the walls, fighting ghosts I can’t see. She sweats through the sheets until they’re drenched, her skin clammy and smelling of chemical waste. I stay through all of it. I watch her face contort intomasks of agony and rage. I listen to her beg for the very man I butchered.
By dawn, she’s quiet, but it’s the silence of a tomb. She’s staring at the ceiling, her breath hitching in small, jagged gasps. The fever has broken, but the girl who wakes up isn’t the one I lost. She’s something new. Something forged in the white dust and the blood of a brother.
She turns her head slowly, looking at my hands—raw and bruised from holding her down.
“Is he really dead, Peter?” she whispers, her voice devoid of any emotion.
“He’s dead, Wendy. I promise.”
She looks back at the ceiling, a single, cold tear tracking down her temple. “Then why do I still feel the needle?”
The silence of the room is heavier than the screaming was. It’s a thick, suffocating blanket that smells of sweat, bile, and the metallic tang of the blood still dried under my fingernails.
Wendy is staring at the far wall, her body finally still, but her eyes are wide and glassy, reflecting a world I’m not part of. Every few seconds, a fine tremor ripples through her—a ghost of the seizure, or maybe just the cold reality of being alive.
I reach out, my hand hovering over her hair, but I stop. I’m terrified that if I touch her, she’ll shatter into a thousand jagged pieces and cut me to the bone.
“Wendy,” I breathe. “Talk to me. Tell me where you are.”
She doesn’t turn her head. Her voice comes out like a dry rustle of dead leaves. “I’m in the booth, Peter.I’m always in the booth. The red light is on, and the floor is sticky, and I’m waiting for the click of the lock.”
“You’re not there,” I say, my voice cracking, desperate to pull her back. “You’re in the safe house. You’re with me. Felix is gone.”
At the mention of his name, she finally snaps. She turns her head so fast I hear her neck crack, and the look in her eyes is so raw, so filled with a jagged, bleeding agony that I instinctively flinch.
“You think killing him fixed it?” she shrieks, her voice rising into a hysterical, broken laugh. “You think because he’s dead, the things he did to me just… evaporate? I prayed for you, Peter! I spent every fucking second of every fucking hour on my knees in that dark, filthy hole, screaming your name into the dirt until my throat bled!”
She sits up, the blankets falling away to reveal the skeletal frame of the woman I failed. She’s shaking so hard she can barely stay upright, her fingers clutching the sheets like they’re the only thing keeping her from falling into an abyss.
“I counted the tiles on the ceiling,” she sobs, the tears finally breaking through, hot and thick. “I counted them a thousand times. And every time I got to the end, I whispered, ‘Peter is coming. He’s right behind the door. He’s going to stop the needle. He’s going to stop the hands.’ I begged God. I begged the devil. I promised I’d give up my soul, my mind, everything, if you just walked through that door before the white powder hit my blood.”
She lunges forward, grabbing the front of my shirt, her knuckles white, her face inches from mine. I can smell the copper on her breath, the scent of the trauma she’s exhaling.
“But the door didn’t open,” she whispers, her voice dropping to a terrifying, hollow tone. “It never opened for you. It only opened for him. Every time I prayed, he came instead. Every time I screamed your name, he put his mouth over mine to swallow the sound. I prayed for a saviour, and I got a monster who fed me heaven until I started to love the hell.”
A fresh wave of racking sobs pulls her double, her forehead thumping against my chest. She’s hitting me now, weak, rhythmic blows against my vest that feel like they’re cracking my ribs.
“I hate you for not being there,” she gasps between breaths, her voice muffled by my shirt. “I hate you because I had to learn how to survive without you. I had to learn how to like the way the drug made me forget you even existed. I prayed for you until I ran out of words, Peter… and then I started praying that you were dead, just so I could stop hoping.”
I wrap my arms around her, pulling her into me with a force that’s almost violent, burying my face in the crook of her neck. I don’t apologise. There are no words big enough for this kind of ruin. I just hold her while she bleeds her truth all over me, the weight of her prayers and her hatred sinking into my skin like lead.
