Page 3 of A Touch of Dark
A good monster could prey on that weakness and turn anxiety into trust. I used to excel at it.
Enough reminiscing.A forced exhale can’t ease the tension seizing my lungs as I unwind the ribbon and lift the lid.
Swaths of white tissue paper shield the objects inside. The first is a newspaper clipping.Local Girl Missingproclaims the headline. In the body of the article, the writer went straight to the point.Seven-year-old Leslie Matoda disappeared shortly after four p.m. on October 28th…
I stop reading. The article slips from my fingers and the wine bottle replaces it. Two hard pulls and the resulting dizziness almost erase the guilt searing a hole through my stomach. Almost. Squeezing my eyes shut can’t block out the memories, however.
Naked trees formed a silent audience as he placed the knife to her throat.
“Now remember,” he warned. “Simon says play…”
I gulp down more red liquid. Less clarity. Dizzy. Dizzier. It’s no use. Terror crawls up my throat like bile until my mouth opens and only noise comes out. High-pitched and broken.
Damn it.
I’mnotbreaking. I’m practicing. My therapist is a fan of therapeutic screaming. “Try it into your pillow,” she likes to suggest every other session. “I think you’ll benefit from a cathartic release, Juliana.”
Bullshit. Screaming couldn’t help me then and it doesn’t help me now. Not when smothered into my white duvet or muffled behind my hands. Crying doesn’t, either. Or shouting.
It’s only when I stumble into the bathroom and plow my fist into the mirror—sending glass shattering over the sink—that I finally feel something. Icy numbness followed by burning, stinging pain as drops of ruby-red moisture splatter my white color scheme.
But it’s not punishment enough.
I slam my bleeding, aching hands onto the counters so hard they throb. Bruise. I kick dents into the cabinet doors and rip the gray shower curtain from the rail. It’s still not enough.
It never is.
Neither is reentering my bedroom, yanking all the beautiful, expensive clothing from my closet, and tossing the pieces onto the floor. Or shoving my mattress from the frame. Breaking glass. Throwing objects. Smashing. Destroying. Obliterating.
I run out of steam near the foyer and only have enough energy left to topple the glass grandfather clock that guards the entrance to my suite. With a monstrous roar, it smashes to pieces, much like everything else in my life at the moment.
Happy birthday to me…
And many more.
Inever get drunk. What in college was a fun quirk now feels like a curse. Or perhaps a biological defect inherited from my birth father. The man couldn’t bother to remember my birthday, but he gave me a gift that keeps on giving: I can drink to my heart’s content without ever blacking out. It helps that my stash of wine makes for a delicious diversion while providing no reprieve from the horrors I desperately seek escape from.
As Daddy would call it,quite the conundrum.
If only I weren’t too much of a coward to move on to another vice. I’d give anything to finally utilize the prescription the new therapist wrote weeks ago, shoved inside my nightstand drawer. Maybe peace lurks within a different bottle? Bite-sized calm at a grand a pop?
As it stands now, I have nothing but five lamps in this room alone, turned to their highest settings, to combat the dark.
Thunderstorms worsen the onslaught of flashbacks. Like the storm I sense now, rumbling in the distance. The air is too still. Ebony clouds swirl along the horizon before the stillness breaks with a monstrous roar of thunder.
The taste of copper burned my tongue. I couldn’t spit it out. He was behind me, prowling over the underbrush like a living shadow, impossible to outrun.
Guttural and low, his voice chased me. “Come out, come out, Juliana...”
Wait. A girlish bit of laughter doesn’t belong in this memory. The images of the forest fade and I’m in my apartment again, gasping for air.
Despite this being a private, residential floor, the odd intruder isn’t too uncommon. Most people wonder what it’s like to live here in the Lariat Hotel, in the proverbial lap of luxury.
All they have to do is ask me and I’d tell them.
It’s a charming, gilded prison.
The voices, one male and the other a giggling woman, draw me from my fetal position. I leave bloody streaks as I cling to the wall for balance and look out through the peephole. Two intruders wander the hall, both wearing cheaply made party clothes. I have toilet paper worth more than this girl’s dress. Soft, bright pink, no expert tailoring in sight.
