The voice that tears up my throat is not my own, but a hundred others wrestling free with the force of shattered glass. It’s anger, fear, sorrow. It’s all my heartache and hurt honed into sharp bits that cut.
The Irilak crouch, cower,hide—squeals of fear ripping free, some condensing into puddles of black, others stretching to blend with the trunks of lanky trees.
Silence follows, stark and so hollow it feels as if my heart is the only one beating in the world. The Irilak’s collective attention scrawls across my face. My arm.
My outstretched hand.
Looking down, my guts drop.
Splits web across my skin, barely containing the black, bulging matter that singes the edges of my frayed flesh like a silent threat to release.
To slash and saw andslay.
Again, I look at the Irilak, each one jolting away from my sweeping gaze.
I almost spilled myself. Almost killed them all.
A sick feeling takes root inside my chest …
“I— I didn’t mean to.”
They twitch in unison, like they’re dodging the blow of my words.
I step forward; they flinch again.
Icy shame douses me from head to toe, and I scrunch my hand into a trembling ball.
They’re …scaredof me.
These predators that suckle the wet life from anything that steps into their domain—thatfeedon fear—are afraid of this thing beneath my flesh.
Ofme.
“I’m sorry,” I plead, my heart lodged so high in my throat it’s hard to speak past. “I didn’t mean it.”
Any of it.
I grip the tether of darkness flowing through my veins, feeling it singe my soul as it thrashes against me like a fish on a line, finally giving in to my firm and persistent tug. I reel it in, in long, deep drags, until it’s a slithering knot coiled within the chasm beneath my ribs.
The splits in my skin knit together, leaving scratchy lines all over, but I don’t stop reeling. Don’t stop apologizing.
Don’t cry.
My internal fingers tangle with the thorny vines of loose emotion that tore up my throat, pulling them back inside one sawing drag at a time. “I’m so sorry,” I rasp, unwrapping them from around my ribs and rotting heart, leaving a trail of ravaged flesh I know will never heal.
I gather all the hurt and the sorrow and the pain into a single barbed ball, then pluck little beads of luster from the branches of my veins—squishing them flat. Smoothing them. Wielding them into a crystal shell around the knot of prickly pain.
I don’t want to hurt anymore.
Tofeel.
I want nothing—blissful, emptynothing that doesn’t coax me to think about the horrible thing I did. Because this isn’t a nightmare at all.
It’s real.
Fissures crackle across the surface of the dome, so I add another layer. Another.
Another.
