Page 60 of Teach Me How To Fly

Sylvian and the same head of the deer that was in the living room of the cabin, and the last picture was the one that made my mind connect everything.

It was a picture with Maksen and Sylvian, and he was holding him with his right hand that was covered by a tattoo with a bird caught in flames. The same tattoo the man in Maksen’s nightmares had.

“H—He is the man from my nightmares,” he said as he took the album out of my hands and analyzed him closely.

“Maksen, you have to…”

But he didn’t let me continue, because he ripped the entire album and threw it on the ground. The speed with which he left the basement shocked me, I hadn’t realized until I was left alone.

I inhaled deeply as I started jumping up the stairs in order to catch Maksen from behind, but the moment I came out of the basement, there was no trace of him.

I knew what he was going through, because I was there yesterday, and I knew he needed to process it alone.

Before I opened the door to enter the house, I heard a loud howl of pain coming from inside of it.

I hurried to enter as the fear gripped me even harder between its indestructible chains. The moment I moved my feet to the source of the howls, my heart stopped beating as I saw Maksen cutting himself with one of the rusty knives I saw earlier in the drawer.

“Maksen! Fuck!” I yelled, rushing to him before he would’ve put the knife deeper into his leg.

But the moment I put my hand on his, I felt how he pushed the knife even deeper into his flesh, and the tears burst out from my face. I could feel his pain and I tried so hard to pull it out that he burst out crying when I managed to do it and dropped the knife on the floor.

The blood was running down his leg, and it formed a pool of blood around his shoe. I was agitated, and scared.

I didn’t know whether to wrap my hands around his leg to stop the bleeding or to call for help. Each of the alternatives would’ve been better than me just gazing helplessly at him.

He had dried tears on his face, his jaw was so clenched it almost made me think that he was going to break his teeth, and his face wasn’t drowned in pain as I was expecting, but it was covered by a darkness I couldn’t explain.

I took off my hoodie and leaned down, putting it around his wounded leg tight enough so the blood would stop flowing. I knew I was just in my bra now, but fuck it. I didn’t care about that because all I wanted was for him to be okay.

I looked at him, and I noticed that he was avoiding my eyes. I didn’t care that he didn't want to look at me. He had to.

“Maksen. Look. At. Me.”

Each word that came out of my mouth became an order he had to obey, yet he didn’t.

I needed to do something more. I took a step towards him and put my hands on each side of his face, making him look at me, and the moment he accepted it, the glistening of numbness mirroring in his irises sent shivers down my spine.

“That’s why you trembled when I accidentally touched your leg?”

He didn’t say anything, but he stood still in the same place, looking at me and not giving me any sign of the emotion that he was feeling at that moment.

“Are you cutting yourself every time something happens?” I whispered, this time with more caution than ever.

This time he startled and put his hand on mine, letting his head rest on my palm.

He closed his eyes, and I was slowly disappearing into the void just to look for him and bring him back. A round, colorless tear rolled down his cheek, and I caught it with a brush of my finger.

“Maksen, please, talk to me,” I whispered close to his face, trying to ignore the fact that I stepped into his blood by getting closer to him.

“He did it. He was the man from my nightmares,” he replied slowly, as if he had an enormous weight put on his chest.

“I—I know, and I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

“You should be sorry that we both had to go through that. Neither of us deserved any of the things that happened.”

He opened his eyes and the moment he put his hands on my face, I knew he was going to kiss me, so I lifted my chin and the next moment, all I knew was how salty his tears were.

He pressed his lips on mine, and I felt how much he needed to feel me in that moment. But I woke up to reality when I felt my jeans getting wet when I pressed my body onto his as his blood was still running.

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