Good.
I left it like that and wrapped the towel around my waist as I walked back through the hallway. The floor colder now, grounding in a way nothing else had been. The bedroom was the same as I’d left it. I sat on the edge of the bed for a second, then let myself fall back, staring up at the ceiling. The silence filled everything once again. Wrapped itself around my ribs, settled in my throat, sat behind my eyes. I turned my head, staring at nothing again. And for a moment, I thought about it. Not in detail, just the idea of it. The simplicity of it.
Ending.
My chest rose slowly. Maybe not today, I thought. The words barely made sense, even in my own head and my lips felt dry again already.“But soon.”I muttered to myself. It filled the quiet of the room, didn’t fade, just sat there. Waiting. Because there was something else first, something unfinished, something I couldn’t walk away from yet. I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly.
“... I have something I need to do first.”And that was the only thing other than death that felt certain.
The Armageddon
Chapter 36
I couldn’t sleep.
I closed my eyes, yeah, lay there still, breathing slow enough that anyone watching would’ve thought I’d drifted off, but my head wouldn’t shut the fuck up. It just kept going. Looping. Pulling threads I didn’t even know were still there and yanking them until everything inside me felt frayed.
By the time the light started bleeding through the curtains, I already knew. There was nothing left to figure out, no decision left hanging.
I was done.
No shaking hands, no last-minute bargaining with something bigger than me, just a point where continuing feels unnecessary. I stared at the ceiling for a long time before I sat up, elbows resting on my knees, hands hanging loose between them. My fingers still felt damp from the night before, skin tight, like something had been washed off me that wasn’t supposed to come back, and it didn’t.
You’re listening, right, little Ghost?
And don’t you dare give me that look. This isn’t the part where you try to save me, this is the part where you understand me. Because I thought about it properly this time. Not just the act, not just the end of it, but everything around it. What would happen if I didn’t. If I stayed, if I tried.
My father.
The word still felt strange sitting in my head, like something that didn’t belong to me. I rolled it around anyway, testing it, seeing if it would settle. I could go back. Knock on that door again. Let him look at me like I was something he’d been missing his entirelife. Let him build something out of what little was left of me and call it a second chance. I could let him try. But then what?
What happens when he starts asking questions I can’t answer without breaking something?
What happens when he looks at me and finally sees it? Not the version of me he lost, but the version of me that came back. The parts that don’t sit right. The things I’ve done. The way my head works when it’s quiet, the way it doesn’t stop even when it should. You think he could hold that? You think he’d still look at me the same?
I didn’t.
And even if he did, if he somehow managed to swallow it, to accept it, to keep me anyway, Zwierek wouldn’t. That’s the part that doesn’t bend. I could see it so clearly it almost made me laugh. Me, standing in that house again, pretending I could have something normal, pretending I could keep it separate. And then Zwierek showing up.
Fucking inevitable.
He wouldn’t even have to do anything. Just being there would be enough. Enough to turn everything sour. Enough to make it all unsafe. Enough to remind me exactly what I am and where I belong. And my father, no. I wouldn’t do that to him. I wouldn’t drag him into something he never asked for just because I was too selfish to let go. You see the problem, don’t you? There isn’t a version of this where it works. Not one. So what’s left?
Zwierek, of course. It always circles back to him. I leaned back again, pressing my head into the wall behind me, eyes drifting shut for a second before opening again. The room felt smaller that day. Like it was closing in slowly and no one else could see it. I let my thoughts go there, and didn't stop them this time.
What would I have been without him?
Not better, let’s not try to twist it into something prettier, but different. I tried to picture it. A version of me that never met him, that never got pulled into all of this.
Would I have stayed quiet?
Stayed small?
Another kid that slipped through the cracks and learned how to exist without ever really being seen?
Maybe.
Maybe I would’ve disappeared in a different way. Less noticeable. Or maybe I would’ve found something else. Someone else. I don’t know. That’s the thing. I don’t fucking know. Because every path I try to imagine bends back to him eventually, like he was always going to be there no matter what direction I took. Like he wasn’t something that happened to me. Like he was something that was always waiting. That thought sat wrong. So wrong.
