Page 68 of My Lovely Tragedy
I’m too hot. My skin is burning, singeing hairs. My blood simmers, igniting my veins as my gut coils with the need to vomit. Sweat, pungent and thick, beads along my hairline before it trickles down my temples and drops onto the couch where it soaks into the fabric.
I swallow the pool of saliva filling the back of my throat, nearly choking on it as it slides down. My own whistling breaths permeate the air, overtaking the sound of Tobias’s calm and controlled ones. Each one comes faster than the rest, and even with the rapid intake, it’s getting harder to feel the relief from oxygen in my bloodstream.
I bring my hands to my chest to press them against my heart, to feel the throb against my skin, but the dragging tug of metal is all I feel. All I smell is rust—bitter and sharp.
Tears fall from my eyes unbidden, heavy and thick as they roll down my cheeks, mingling with sweat.
I want to go back to how it was—before the chains. When it was my choice to be here. To be with him. To just exist together with someone that knows me, thatseesme, and didn’t turn the other way in disgust.
But he ripped that away. The safety. My autonomy. Leaving me with nothing.
My nails dig into my skin, pressing over the mostly healed wounds from my outburst the other day. The last time I touched Tobias.
The last time I talked to him. Heard his voice. Heard my own outside the confines of my own mind.
I can’t fucking do it anymore.
I can’t stand the nothingness. It’s too much, and it’s not enough, and I fuckinghate himfor it. For turning me into this… this sobbing, hideous mess of a person. At least before, I had some semblance of control. I knew when the waves were coming, when to duck and push through, when it was time to let myself drown.
I knew when I wanted to die and how I wanted to do it because I could fuckingfeelit all.
Now… there’snothing.Nothing but Tobias.
My feet find the floor, the wood shockingly cold. I wince slightly before pushing myself up, hands tightly gripping the chains to keep them from sliding across the floor. My eyes flicker toward Tobias, still blissfully unaware even as the sound of my rapacious heartbeat fills the night air—now tinged with my anxiety. Turning it rancid and pungent as it filters back into me.
I pad across the floor and into the kitchen, feeling my way around in the near darkness. A single light illuminates from the hall, near the bathroom door, giving me just enough to find the knife block on the opposite counter.
I pull a large chef’s knife from its slot, wincing as a quiet hiss rings in the air. My trembling fingers curl around the dark handle, causing the blade to jerk in my hold.
My feet, now slick with sweat, slip haphazardly as I turn around. My arm jerks out to steady myself on the edge of the counter, heart shooting into my throat. I inhale shakily, feeling the hitches of air like repeated punches in my gut.
Silver glints, catching my eye. As I stare into the steel, I can’t help wishing I could see my own face reflected back at me, to know how I look in this moment of decision, but perhaps I’m better off never seeing myself like this, lest I grow too comfortable with the blur of uncertainty.
Steeling my spine, I stride across the floor, my steps surer and steadier, chains wrapped around my right hand, keeping them afloat.
Once Tobias is directly in front of me, I stare down at him. Eyes raking over his handsome face and hating him all the more for it.
I drop down to my knees, putting him above me, but as I angle the knife and press the blade to his throat—against the sharp bulge in his neck—Ifeelagain.
My breath hitches in a small squeak as I press a little harder, eyes straining in the darkness for the first signs I’ve broken skin.
And then, my eyes catch on his journal, still open, words on display. And in that moment, my fifty seconds of surety dissipate, leaving me bereft and helpless. The tremble returns to my arm, and as the sleek handle slips between my fingers, I fear I’ll drop it entirely.
My lovely corvus.
The tip of the blade catches on Tobias’s collarbone, a sharp bite into the hollow before I vaguely drag it back across his skin, to its rightful place.Corvus…
The blade rolls as Tobias swallows, causing a shift and a quick, shallow slice. A small bead wells against the edge, staining the lustrous silver. Dropping my chains, I drag the leather-bound journal closer, peering down at the words etched across the cream-colored page in a fancy scrawl.
A crow with wings made of wax and obsidian. Destined for his downfall, but his beauty makes the descent worth it.
And it doesn’t stop there. The page is filled with things about…oh, fuck.My breath hitches as a lead weight sinks in my gut, comfortable instead of damning.About me…
I can’t make out some of the sentences in the dark because his handwriting shifts between elegant and almost a chicken scratch that decreases in size. And each note is sprawled haphazardly across the page. There is no rhyme or reason. Jots of adjectives and soft sentences of description. Idioms and contradictions. Elegant and… andbeautifulpoems.
Of me.
Some of what’s written are things I never thought anyone noticed about me. Like how I pick relentlessly at the skin around my fingernails to the point of bleeding—and then I keep going. How I gnaw at the skin just inside my mouth. I never brush my hair because I don’t care to, leaving it in constant disarray. I chew loudly, with my mouth open sometimes because every single day growing up, I was always yelled at for it.
