What did being human mean to something that had never actually been allowed to feel it?
That had never known what it was like to exist without violence sitting right under the surface, waiting for the smallest excuse to come out?
The thought made my stomach turn. I had spent my entire life inside something I didn’t understand and now, suddenly, I understood too much. Every choice, every moment, every time I had crossed a line and never once looked back, I could see it all. And I was still in there, still watching it happen, that was the worst part. Not the things I had done, not even the fact that there had never been anyone else there to blame, it was that I was fully aware of it now.
Fully awake inside something that had already happened, already been done, already been set in motion long before I ever stopped to question it. I wasn’t just the one who did it, I was the one who had to sit with it, watch it, live in it and I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t carry it. Not the memories, not the way everything had folded in on me until there was nothing left to separate me from any of it. It didn’t sit somewhere I could process, didn’t stay in my head where it belonged, it spread, filled everything, pressed against my ribs, my throat, behind my eyes until there was no space left to exist in without it touching me. I didn’t want to be in it.
I didn’t want to be inme.
That was the part that hit hardest, this overwhelming, suffocating need to get out of my own skin, like it had turned into something too tight, something I couldn’t breathe inside anymore. I stood up and walked toward the sink.
The broken mirror caught the light in pieces. I crouched, fingers closing around one of the larger shards, feeling the edge bite into my skin just enough to register, just enough to remind me it was real, that this was real, that I was still there. That was the problem. I straightened again, turned, walked back to the bed like I had all the time in the world, like nothing was wrong, likemy head wasn’t tearing itself apart from the inside. Sat down, elbows on my knees for a second, just sitting there, holding it. Then I moved.
I pressed the glass to my wrist and dragged, hard and deep. The pain tore through me so violently my vision twitched with it. For one sick second, everything else vanished. There was only that brutal fucking feeling carving its way straight through my body. The warmth followed immediately after, spilling, running, thick and real, I watched it.
A thought slipped through, almost calm compared to everything else that had been tearing through me before.
If anything deserved to claim me, it would be death.
The glass shifted in my hand, and I dragged it again, further, longer, feeling it open more, feeling the resistance give away under pressure until there was nothing left to push against. My breath steadied as I switched hands and did the same on the other arm. No second thought, just repetition. Like I was finishing something I’d already started long before this moment. Blood ran down both arms, onto my hands, onto the floor, warm and constant. And for the first time since everything had cracked open, there was no noise in my head.
I let myself fall back onto the bed, not thinking or caring about where my arms landed or how the blood smeared across the thin mattress beneath me. I just let gravity take over because holding myself upright suddenly felt like work I didn’t have the strength for anymore. And for a moment, I just lay there staring up at the ceiling, watching that faint flicker in the light like it was the only thing still moving in a world that had finally gone quiet.
The warmth left first, slipping away from my hand and arms, pulling inward like my body was trying to conserve something it was already losing. I could feel it in the way my fingers stopped responding the same way, the way they felt heavier, duller, like they belonged to something further away than my own body.My head felt light, too light, like it wasn’t anchored properly anymore.
I couldn’t tell if it was the blood or everything that had just happened, if it was physical or if my mind had finally given up trying to keep itself together, but the difference didn’t matter because the result was the same. Everything started to drift, just slightly at first, like the corners of the room weren't holding as firmly as it had before. I just let it happen. Because for the first time in what felt like my entire life, there was no pressure inside my chest demanding something from me, no noise clawing its way up my throat, no constant tension waiting to snap, just this heavy, sinking stillness.
I kept my quiet, because I knew if I opened it, if I let anything out, it wouldn’t stop. It would tear through me in a way I wouldn’t be able to control, and I didn’t have anything left in me to survive that kind of release, so I stayed silent. I let everything stay trapped behind my teeth where it couldn’t reach anything outside of me. It felt safer that way, even now, even like this. Something in me went back. That part of me that had never been held, never been answered, never been taught that it was allowed to need anything from anyone else. It hadn’t gone anywhere, it had just grown up with me. Twisted into something that didn’t even know how to reach out anymore, something that had learned early that asking didn’t lead to anything but disappointment. So it stopped asking, and I stopped with it.
Another thought slipped in, almost detached from everything else, like it didn’t belong to the same chaos that had been tearing through me earlier. If there was a place waiting for me after all of this, it wouldn’t be punishment, it would be… fitting. A place built for something like me, not at the bottom, something worse. Something that sat above everything else and watched, because that’s what I had been, wasn’t it? The one who did it, the one who allowed it.
The ceiling blurred. There was something else too, underneath all of it, something almost peaceful in the worst possible way. Because when everything leaves you, when people, meaning, anything that ever tried to hold you in place disappear, there’s nothing left to lose. That kind of emptiness, it doesn’t hurt the way it should. It frees you in a way that feels wrong, in a way that feels like the end of something that was never going to fix itself.
My body started to feel colder, not just my hand now, but everywhere. A slow, creeping cold that settled into my skin and stayed there. My breathing changed, shallower, like my body was deciding it didn’t need as much anymore. My eyes drifted closed for a second, opened again. Everything was softer then, further away. The cold deepened, my thoughts thinned, slipped, and then… Everything started to go quiet again.
The Exsanguination
Chapter 47
I should have died.
I remember the blood, the way everything in me slowed down enough that I almost slipped out of it, almost let go, but I didn’t. And the part that stayed, that part that refused to go with the rest, that part is yours now.
I see everything, little Ghost.
That’s the curse no one tells you about. Not just what people show, not just what they say, but what leaks through anyway, what they try to bury, what they pretend isn’t there. And you… you don’t hide it as well as you think you do, not from me, not anymore.
If the truth unsettles you, then don’t look away, because I won’t stop at unsettling. I will drag it out of you, piece by piece, until you feel it the way I do, undeniable, too close to ignore. You didn’t end up here by accident, little Ghost. You followed me, through everything. Through the blood, the silence, the fractures, the parts that should have made you close this and walk away, but you didn’t. That does something to me. I don’t handle things like this well. Anything that feels like this – connection, closeness, whatever you want to call it – I’ve always broken it before it could become real, before it could take something from me I couldn’t get back. It’s easier that way, safer. But you… you stayed and now I can’t unsee you. I can’t step back. I can’t pretend you’re just a reader sitting on the other side of a page, because you’re not, not anymore, not after everything you’ve taken in, everything you’ve let sit inside you.
Do you feel that?
That tension under your skin, that awareness that this isn’t distant anymore, that something in you is responding whetheryou want it to or not, that’s where I am. Not in front of you or beside you, inside. And I don’t want to be careful with it, not with you. Because here’s the part I haven’t said yet, the part I’ve been holding back even from myself. I don’t want distance.
I wantpossession.
I want to get under your skin the way you got under mine.
I want to stay there.
