What kind of coward would I be if I left him in the clutches of the child-eating witch?
Could I really stand by and watch a little soul like him be destroyed?
No, I wasn’t capable of it.
He and I would have to face the monster together.
Then, my eyes shot open.
The vision evaporated into nothingness, and with a fierce movement, I shoved Selene away from me.
“Don’t touch me!” I threw out a hand to keep her from approaching me again. She staggered back in fright, a shocked look on her face. She had done nothing to provoke my fury; it was my own brain that had put that distorted reality in front of my eyes. None of it was her fault. “Don’t touch me again, for fuck’s sake…” I murmured in a low voice.
I felt fuzzy-headed, and I leaned back on the kitchen counter bonelessly.
Babygirl tried to move closer to me, and I shot her a forbidding look to keep her away.
I could still feel her lips on my skin and her hands on my body.
What did she want from me?
To seduce me? To stagger me? To make me forget who I was?
“I am not afraid of you or of anyone who lives inside you.” Selene, stubborn as always, took one step forward and then another, eating up the distance between us. “When you were here last time, when you marked yourself with the pen, you told me about the Boy…” she began, and I was immediately uncomfortable. I hated words, especially when they were used like weapons against me. “You told me that he let himself be raped, that he couldn’t stop the person from committing such an atrocity.” The more she talked, the more I retreated, pulling back into my shell, a place where I felt safe and protected, and there was no need to expose myself.
“Enough,” I snapped, afraid.
There was an unknowable struggle going on inside of me.
“I told you that it wasn’t his fault, Neil. That it wasn’tyourfault. And when I said we were both stained, do you remember that? I’d never judge you, Neil. You don’t have to be afraid of me. You aren’t the monster; whoever did that to you was the real mon—”
I covered my ears, making her words sound far away, and I sank backdown on the kitchen stool in a daze. My body was weak; my legs could no longer bear the weight I had been carrying for so long.
“Enough,” I whispered weakly, but Selene advanced on me and reached out to hold my wrists in her little hands. Now I was the one looking up from below as she insinuated herself between my knees to get even closer to me.
“Stop hiding. I…I figured it out. I’ve known about what happened to you for a while,” she admitted tragically, leaving me shocked.
My world was crumbling around me; it felt like I was on stage in front of a crowd, naked.
The curtain had opened without warning, and I was not prepared.
I had no script to study, no lines memorized, and no scene to perform. The crowd just stared at me—at the cluster of scars on my left arm, at the rash around my genitals, and at my shattered heart, which I had tried to piece back together in any way that I could, just to keep on surviving.
I felt exposed, too exposed.
What was I supposed to say to her now?
I stared into the middle distance, incapable of speech, and Selene stroked first my face and then my hair.
“I know what happened to you, and I still accept you. There is no one in this world who is better for me than you. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. I admire your strength so much; not everyone survives such intense trauma,” she murmured in that tooth-achingly sweet way of hers, and I surrendered, resting my head between her breasts. Something ruptured inside me, and my walls began to crumble, little by little, until the urge to share some small part of me grew too strong to be denied.
She deserved that much.
After everything I’d put her through, she deserved to know me at least a little bit.
Then, she put her arms around me, and it seemed that I could feel her heart beating all over me.
Was she ready to know the truth?
