Who else could have known where I was?
Who else would care enough to show up, watch me, wait, and then hand me over like that?
Nobody just stumbles into something like that by accident.
The longer I sat there thinking about it, the more obvious it became that he’d planned it from the start. Every part of it. And once the thought settled in properly, it fit together in a way that made my stomach turn because of how much sense it suddenly made. He was there, I saw him, we looked at each other and then he was gone, and suddenly the police were there instead.
You connect those things, little Ghost. You have to, otherwise it doesn’t add up, otherwise it leaves space for something worse, something I didn’t want to name. I leaned forward, elbows digging into my knees, hands hanging loose between them, fingers flexing once before going still again. A strange thought slipped in. I felt like disappearing. Not dying or escaping, just disappearing from this earth and leave no trace behind. Like if I sat there long enough, if I stayed still enough, I might fade into the walls, into the floor, into something that didn’t need to be remembered. That felt easier than anything else, but it didn’t last. Because right under it, there was something easier, darker.
I don’t hate easily, little Ghost, never have.
Most things don’t reach that far, no, they pass through, leave something behind maybe, but not enough to stay. But when it happens, when something actually lands, it turns into something that wants to finish what had started. And thinking about him, about the way he stood there, watching me, not saying a word, not stepping in, that was enough. It settled deep in my core, dangerous in a way that didn’t need to be loud, because hate like that doesn’t scream or shout, it waits.
Zwierek built the blade himself and he didn’t get to just stand there horrified when it finally cut back. That’s the part he would never admit. He broke me apart piece by piece, taught me violence, fed me pain until it settled into the bones, and then one day turned around and asked why there was blood on his hands. Asked why there were teeth where there should’ve been obedience. But I was never made to be ridden into the ground for someone else’s comfort.
I would rather become something feared than spend my life bent into something harmless. A wolf survives. The other thing just waits to be used until there’s nothing left of it. So let him hate me for what I became. Let him choke on it. Because if he ever dropped to his knees and begged whatever god still listensfor mercy, he’d only be begging to escape something he created himself.
I exhaled slowly, eyes still fixed on the floor, tracking a crack in the concrete that didn’t lead anywhere, and underneath all of that, there was something older, something that had nothing to do with him. Or maybe everything, actually.
A kind of endurance I never asked for. A way of continuing, even when it should’ve stopped, even when it would’ve made more sense for it to stop. I’ve always been good at that. Outlasting what should break a person, dragging myself past points where something inside should’ve given up and just… didn’t. It’s not strength; it doesn’t feel like it. It feels more like being stuck in something that refuses to end, and then there’s the other part. The one I don’t talk about unless I have to, the thing that feels older than anything that’s ever happened to me.
Like whatever is wrong with me, I don’t think it started somewhere; it was already there. I didn’t become it, I just grew into it, like I was built around it from the beginning. Shaped by it, defined by it and everything else, everything that came after, just made it easier to see. I leaned back, let my head rest against the wall for a second, eyes closed.
You see what I’m doing, don’t you, little Ghost?
I’m making it simple, putting it on him. Because it fits, because it makes sense, and maybe that’s true, maybe he did it. Maybe he stood there, watched me tear open the ground and decided that was the moment I’d gone too far, even for him. Maybe this was what he wanted. But there’s something about it that didn’t sit right and I could feel it, just under everything else, like a splinter I hadn’t pulled out yet. I ignored it anyway, because at that moment, I needed him to be the one who did it.
The first time they tried questioning me, I heard the voices before I understood the words. Everything reached me warpedsomehow, like my brain kept losing parts of the conversation before it could fully put it together. Certain things stood out where the rest drifted in and out around me. I sat there staring past them, my body in the room long before the rest of me managed to catch up. My name was in there. A question maybe. Another one right after.
I didn’t answer, but not because I chose not to, more because there was nothing there to answerwith.My mouth stayed shut, my jaw locked in a way I didn’t remember deciding. The longer I sat there, the further everything slipped. I had done this before, as a kid, disappeared like that. Curled so far into myself that the rest of the world stopped feeling real. Back then, it had been controlled.
A place I went to on purpose when things got too loud, too much. I chose it, built it, stayed there until I was ready to come back. This? This wasn’t that.
This felt like falling through something that didn’t have a bottom. They tried again later. Questions came faster this time, firmer. Someone leaning in, trying to get a reaction out of me, trying to pull me back up to the surface like I was something they could drag out if they just pushed hard enough. I felt it, that pressure but nothing happened. My body stayed where it was, but my head was somewhere else. It wasn’t quiet inside, that’s the fucked part, because you’d think it would be, right?
You’d think shutting down like that would mean silence, but it was crowded. Too many thoughts tearing through my head at once, all of them half-formed and impossible to pin down, but still violent enough to leave damage behind anyway. Violence, the grave, his face in the trees, my hands on his throat, the sound of the coffin breaking, over and over but never in order. And underneath all of it, something that didn’t care about anything, about any of it.
Something that only cared about one thing– finish it.
Because if there’s only one thing I know about myself, I don’t step into something halfway. I don’t start something unless I intend to take it all the way through. Not a fight, a war. And I don’t lose those, not even to myself.
That thought was the only one that sat there, steady, while everything else fractured around it until something else followed, a need. Connection, even just the idea of it. And it hit me harder than anything else had in that moment, because what the fuck could I even offer someone?
What is there to give when all I’ve ever had in me is silence?
The kind that eats everything before it gets out, the kind that makes people lean in at first, then pull away when they realize there’s nothing there for them. Maybe that’s why letting anyone close has always felt wrong in a way I could never fully explain. It’s never just the fear of what someone can do to you once they know where to cut. It’s the fear of being seen clearly for a second and watching the look in their eyes change afterward. Watching someone realize there’s something underneath you that doesn’t heal correctly. Something angry. Something grieving so deeply it eventually stopped knowing the difference between love and ruin.
I think people mistake rage for cruelty too often.
Most rage is grief that lost its place to go. Grief left trapped inside the body long enough that it starts rotting into something else. And maybe that’s the cruelest part of me. My body still expects abandonment everywhere I go, still waits for people to leave the second they touch the worst parts of me, while something deeper inside me keeps loving with an intensity that borders on self-destruction. So maybe that’s the real question underneath all of it. Not whether I’m lovable when I’m easy. But whether there is still something in me worth loving once the agony is visible too?
I fucking felt it, that split, the one I’d been ignoring.
Because there were two versions of me sitting there. The one who had done it, every part of it. The grave, the violence, the murders, the lack of hesitation, the way something in melikedit. Then another part, the part watching it all unfold. Sickened by it. Aware enough to know what I’d done, aware enough to see it clearly and they didn’t fit together.
So which one was real?
And if both of them were me, did one get to forgive the other?
