Elio
Ihave been too lenient, too trusting, and too kind.
It was nearly laughable, this situation I found myself in: cuffed like a helpless starfish to a bed that wasn’t my own, to sheets that weren’t familiar, inside a room decorated with candles and dimmed lights.
Mostly naked, save for my briefs.
My wristwatch was on the bedside table, and my clothes had been folded carefully and placed on a dressing table on the far left. The room was big, and the bed was king-sized; the large window by the side of the balcony door showcased city lights—I wasn’t on the cruise; I was high up—a penthouse.
Unfamiliar.
I laughed.
It was low, it was carefree, and it was humorless, a sound lost to my ears because somehow, anger had eluded me. I was left stupefied, and my skin was crawling.
I had lost time.
There was what I could presume—a blank space in my existence, hours I could never get back, minutes of forced vulnerability, seconds where I had no control.
Stripped, cuffed,violatedin a way that made my hands curl into tight fists at a memory I did not like to remember.
If my father could see me now, he would be laughing. He would say,“I told you so. You only know yourself. You only trust yourself. No one else. Foolish boy.”
I was, indeed, foolish.
I laughed again, shaking my head and keeping my eyes trained on the ceiling.
There was nothing else that could surprise me at this point.
Don’t let your guard down, and you are blank, a plain piece of paper no one understands; ruthless, wicked, heartless to the point of damnation, setting yourself up for a life spent alone with your unsteady mind, drowning in self-pity and trauma, growing without a conscience and prepping for an eternity spent in the pits of hell.
Let your guard down, and then you’re careless, weak, and incapable. Opening doors for people to walk all over you, you lose respect; you lose yourself; you become vulnerable and trusting; you allow your heart to lead your being to its preferred destination.
You let your mind take the back seat in the moving car that is your life, and you let your heart sit next to you on the passenger’s side. You smile at her; you embrace the feeling that came with her; you welcome it with open arms, lost in the beauty of her eyes, the effect of her care, the spell in her words, and the warmth of her body—so lost in her that you forget you’re driving, until you run headfirst into a tree.
I always alternated between “raising my guard” and “letting it down,” but I’d never considered the gray area in between.
Why…
Why was I holding on to a humanity no one recognized… a humanity that had been challenged multiple times, one that had been pushed and tested?
What would he do if I did this? Would he shoot me? Would he skin me alive? What exactly made him wicked? If he was wicked and only killed with a gun, then everyone else who kills with a gun is wicked. What is he truly capable of? Let’s test him, let’s defy him, let’s poke him to get a reaction, let’s—
Then I show them. I shut them up. I cease their chanting and their poking; I have every right to because I warned them.
I hated myself the most when I couldn’t understand myself because then I knew I was capable of anything and everything. All wrongs would be the perfect rights in my head.
This is me now. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t tell what I want to do. I am terrified of what I would do.
I was outside my body, watching the unrecognizable stranger on this bed. Wary and longing to take back control.
I knew it would be irrational to jump right to conclusions. I knew I should give Zahra the benefit of the doubt and wait to hear what she had to say.
But for the first time in months, my mind was working faster than my heart—and I let it.
I let it because I had missed this. I let it because the urge to hurt was intense—it was so strong that it made my skin thrum. It made my head heavy; violent lucid images plagued my mind, and I needed to release this numbness.
If my woman didn’t plan to kill me, her first mistake would be letting me out of these cuffs, seeing as every sliver of the sane person she could goof around with was gone.
