Page 126 of His Eternal Claim

THE REQUIEM | Past

Idon’t know how many days it has been. Or weeks.

Time doesn’t live here anymore. Sometimes the sky outside the high windows is a blinding, painful white, and sometimes it drops into a suffocating black. People drift in and out of the room like shadows wrapped around me.

Some man in spectacles comes to press cold metal against my wrist, checking my vitals. Whispering that I’m losing contact with reality. Some woman comes with food, her face a blur of meaningless features. I don’t recognize her. I don’t care to.

All I recall, the only constant in this shifting, warped world, is my husband. The monster who controls the shadows.

The voices always start before I open my eyes. I hear it all before dawn. Again. Again. Again.

They say I should kill myself. They remind me all the time that my husband is the murderer. I want my Mama. But this monster has taken her away from me. I see her daily, though. She’s sitting in the corner of the room. She calls me her Stina. She sings lullabies to me, and I smile at her.

I think I am forgetting her face.

Her eyes are always dark; there’s a hollow where her irises are supposed to be, but I’ve managed to come to terms with reality.

This is my reality.

Not Zagreus, or the child he said I was carrying.

These shadows, my Mama sitting on the couch and Crystella hanging off the fan. I smile and wave at her.

Is it fun up there?

Crystella doesn’t answer, her blue lips stretched into a frozen grin as she sways gently. She just points down at my stomach.

They all point to my stomach.

It’s growing inside me. The parasite is slowly eating me from the inside out, making me weaker with every breath I take. It’s a parasite born of the monster, designed to tie me to this blood-stained house forever. And the bitter white pills the man with spectacles forces down my throat? They aren’t helping. They make my Mother disappear. Every time I take them, her comforting, singing shadow fades into the wall, leaving me alone with him.

I need to make it stop. I need to get it out.

My hands clench over my stomach, my fingernails digging deeply through the fabric of my nightgown, scratching at my skin. If I can just squeeze hard enough, if I can press deep enough into the flesh, I can rid myself of the parasite. I can make the blood flow. I can bring Mama back permanently.

I push my thumbs down. A breathless gasp escapes my lips as pain flares across my abdomen.

“Selene! Stop!”

Before I can finish what I’m doing, a pair of hands violently yank my wrists away from my body. The impact jars my bones, and I am slammed back against the mattress.

My monster hovers over me, his towering frame blocking out the light from the window. His broad chest heaving as he uses his weight to pin my arms over my head.

“Let me go!” I shriek, thrashing wildly beneath him. “Get off of me! Let me do it! I need to get it out!”

“Look at me, dammit!” he roars, his rough hands sliding up from my wrists to clamp onto my jaw, pinching my cheeks so tightly it bruises. He forces my head up, tilting my face back until I have no choice but to look directly into his eyes. “Look at me, Selene! Focus on my eyes!” I gasp, staring up into the stormy grey depths.

For a fraction of a second, the haze in my mind sways. The violent crashing of the waves slows down, and I recognize him. I see the raw exhaustion, the terrifying desperation bleeding through his rigid demeanor. A phantom memory of the man I used to know surfaces.

But then, a cold breath hits the back of my neck.

I look past his broad shoulder. Right behind him, Mama is standing by the closet, her red hands pointing accusingly at his back. Beside her, Crystella drops from the ceiling, landing soundlessly on her feet, her hollow eye sockets staring right through my soul.

“He is a monster, Stina. He will kill you just as he killed us.”

“No!” I scream as I bring my knees up, slamming them hard into his torso, and use the momentum to push his chest away from mine. He stumbles back, momentarily caught off guard by my desperation.

I don’t waste a single second. I scramble off the opposite side of the bed and sprint toward the doors, throwing them open and hurling myself out into the corridor.