Page 5 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
But I am not going to let that happen.
I pull away and struggle to stand, Ediye hauling me up by my elbow and leading me to the bed. I feel scraped out, like a pumpkin at Halloween. I’m not sure if I’m the grotesque husk or the mess that’s left behind to rot.
“Please.Pleaselet me give you some of my blood,” Ediye begs, dampening her smelly rag in the stainless-steel sink and returning to the bed to wipe the sweat from my forehead.
No.
“I know you can stop. I trust you.”
You shouldn’t. I don’t trust myself, Ediye. And there’s no point anyway. It’s only prolonging the inevitable.
Ediye lets out a slow, heavy breath. Deep down, she knows I’m right. We’ve had versions of this argument twenty-nine times now, and every time we’ve come to this same conclusion. She trusts me. I don’t. I won’t drink. We are doomed.
Only now, I’m prepared to do something about it.
Not that I say that, though. I don’t think I need to anyway. Ediye looks worried, more worried than usual. I give her a half-smile, keeping it as lighthearted as I can manage. She totally sees through it.
“What?” Ediye says, suspicion weighing her voice down by several notes.
Nothing, I sign.
“That’s not yournothingface.”
Sing it for me and this can be my nothing face.
“Noooooooo.”
Look at my hideous fingers,I sign with a pout, turning my nail-less nubs toward her and twinkling them like jazz hands.Sing it for my sad little fingers.
Ediye grimaces, glancing at my hands before training her eyes to mine. “They are pretty awful.”
Sad little pinky,I sign before waving one of my little fingers in her face.You won’t really deny naked pinky, will you? He’s missing his hat. Only your song will cheer him up.
“Ughfine,” she says, rolling her eyes. A hint of a smile casts a fleeting light across her lips. “But I’m only doing it for naked pinky.”
I beam at Ediye and lie down with my head in her lap. She strokes my hair from my face and smiles down at me, but there’s so much sadness there. Her eyes are glassy. I think she understands. These are our final days, our last hours. There’s nothing left to hope for now, other than to spend our last moments together.
“When I was young, I never needed anyone, and making love was just for fun. Those days are gone...”
I close my eyes. I fall asleep, exhausted, broken. And this time I dream of nothing at all.
I hear hushed voices and I drag my eyes open. My head is clutched in Ediye’s lap. Her arms draw me close, like she might shelter me in their shadow.
“I will need to take samples,” an unfamiliar man says. It’s a human. The smell of him makes my throat raw with fire. He’s older, judging by the timbre of his voice. The accent is familiar. Swiss, I think. He sounds nervous and out of place.Aren’t we all.
“We will provide what you need,” a guard says.
I peer through the shelter of Ediye’s arms and look toward the door. The guards flank a small man who must be in his sixties. He pushes silver-rimmed glasses up his nose as he regards me with a look of both pity and disgust, thinly veiled beneath a mask of fear and medical professionalism. He runs a hand over the shining surface of his bald head and then turns to one of the guards.
“Take me to the lab,” the man says, and the guard nods. A scientist then. How fun.
The three leave down the hall, and my heart collapses in stuttering beats beneath my bones.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ediye whispers, releasing her grip on my head so she can watch for my reply.
More experiments, I guess, I sign. I don’t think we’ll have to wait long to find out.
We sit for a while in silence, listening for any sounds down the corridor of boots or keys or voices. I watch Ediye as she keeps her eyes on the bars of our cage. The obsidian necklace tied across her skin has started to rub it raw with its magic. Blisters carve an angry line around the glowing beads. But Ediye has never once complained.
