“In a coffin, at least somebody gives you flowers when you finally shut up.”
I barked a laugh. “I could almost smother you if I could reach through the divider. You’re not funny, you know that, right?”
He grinned, or at least showed his teeth. “You keep saying that, but you keep listening.”
He was always better at making you want to die than at making you feel alive, but here, at the bottom of the food chain, maybe that was a kindness.
Maybe he was the closest thing to comfort I’d ever get.
I felt the panic rising, the urge to claw out of my skin.
I pressed my face to the divider, exhaling until the sweat on my upper lip fogged the spot, and watched him, blurry and distorted, on the other side.
He mimicked me, his breath the same, and for a moment our fog blots kissed, merged, evaporated.
I didn’t want to let go, but I wanted to run, to bash my head against the wall until there was nothing left to think or feel.
I wanted both. I wanted Caiden to crawl through the glass and smother me, to eat me alive if it meant Iwouldn’t die alone.
Instead, he said, voice lower than before, “If you had to choose, would you rather starve to death or be shredded by that bastard upstairs?”
I thought about it. “Starvation is easier. You get to hallucinate a little before the end. Plus, your body eats itself. It’s poetic, in a way. The only time you’re truly self-sufficient.”
He snorted. “That’s the most you answer I ever heard.”
“And you?” I said, curious in spite of myself.
“I’d rather be eaten. At least there’s a fight. At least you don’t die for nothing.” His throat flexed. “My dad would respect that.”
I made a disgusted noise, deep in my chest, the way you do when you smell something rotten but are too tired to move away. “Don’t start talking about your dad like he’s a role model.”
He shrugged, dragging the edge of his heel along the concrete. “We’re all monsters in here. Some of us just get caught.”
He didn’t look at me when he said it, which made it worse.
The words burrowed into my skin, into the scar tissue I’d so carefully formed over the last decade.
I wanted to refute it, to claw the accusation out of the air and shove it down his throat, but I knew he wasn’t wrong. Not really. I’d learned early how to bite, how to make the bad thing happen first, so at least you could say you saw it coming.
I pressed my knees to my chest, bony under the thin fabric. “I never wanted to hurt anyone,” I said, voice low. “I just didn’t want to be the one getting slaughtered.” My tongue was thick, words sticky as glue. “You made it so easy to hate you, Caiden. Maybe that was your plan all along.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” he said. “We’re just ghosts. Ghosts don’t get to pick their enemies.”
A wind rattled the basement window, cold coming in through the cracks. I shivered.
Caiden raked his nails down the divider, making a sound like a dying animal. “You cold?”
“Freezing.” I wrapped my arms around myself, but it was useless; I was too thin for insulation, just a rack of bones and spite wrapped in a soiled T-shirt.
He looked me over. “You look like you’re already decomposing.” The way he said it, I almost smiled.
“Good,” I said. “I hope it speeds things up.”
He pressed his cheek to the glass. “You’d haunt this place just to piss me off, wouldn’t you?”
“If it’s the last thing I do.”
I tried to keep my voice steady, but there was a tremor in it that matched the one in my hands. I could feel the panic, deep and poisonous, worming its way through my marrow.
