Page 31 of Light As A Feather
Possessiveness crawls like a beetle over my skin, hungrily devouring the flesh like I’m a decaying animal. I want to scrub it from me. But the feeling intensifies until it’s all I’m aware of, not Hawthorne’s roaming hands or the sturdy weight of his body against mine.
I can’t see Ivan, but his presence is undeniable, like smoke inhaled too fully, expanding in your chest until you can’t help but choke on it. The potency of his jealousy, his entitlement, it’s overwhelming. It fills me to the brim, until I’m drowning in it.
My head pounds from the lack of oxygen, thoughts emptying as he overrides the essence of me. A blitz of panic seizes me as I grasp at the trailing wisps of myself, but then I’m cast into complete darkness, the bleak matter of his influence.
There I lose all trace of time and place, it’s just his voice calling to me, directing me where he wants my mind to be. I’m nothing but a floating puppet on a string as he drags me back into the harrowing pits of carefully tucked away memories.
I’m in Thorne’s bed, but it’s not the rich fabrics and high-thread-count sheets he has now; it’s the navy sheets and the simple black and white plaid comforter of his teenage self. For several too-slow seconds, the remembrance settles into place like dripping wax. I, too, am melting, stuck here in the thick sludge of my own mind.
I watch in horror, frozen in the burning chill of my own fear, as soot-like shadows gather in the corner of the room. The features of the man swathed in black shadow sharpen as he looms closer, the sliver of moonlight cutting across confident lips and greedy eyes. I know them well.
Tonight is different, though. He holds out a hand expectantly. Consider it, consider him. He scares me, and yet,he calls to me. The weight of his request—more demand than question—bears down upon me as his eyes hold me. There’s something about this that doesn’t feel like a choice as I take it. There’s a ripple in time as my feet hit the floor.
“Solaneen,” a voice calls. Not his. Someone distant. Someone I suddenly want to run to, but I can’t.
“Solaneen.” This time, my name is a snap to attention. A command that can’t be ignored. I follow the man out of the bedroom that has become my safe haven. As I’m stepping out of the door, I cast one last glance at the boy who sleeps peacefully in the warm spot beside where I just was. He doesn’t wake as I disappear into the night.
Down the stairs we go. His presence is domineering yet somehow weightless, not a single stair creaking while I attempt quiet steps that sound to my ears like a beating drum deep and foreboding. But I don’t turn back. Somehow, I know that it’s too late for that.
Down, down, down, and then we’re in the pitch black. I see his eyes, though. Now a definitive blue and his teeth gleam white. The shadows around him soften just slightly. He’s still more entity than man, but there’s more to him, something I can latch onto.
He holds the door open, ushering me outside and down the back porch. The wind easily cuts through the thin shirt and shorts I’ve borrowed. Again, I want to turn back, but I can’t. He’s drawn me out; he’s pulling me further along the path he’s set for me. Deep into the trees we go.
We walk and walk, until suddenly, it’s like I slam into a wall. There’s nothing tangible, no fence or structure of brick, but it’s distinct. A definitive marker that something is different here. It’s harsh and abrupt, the coppery anger of it on my tongue. I step back from it, shaken out of my trance-like compliance, and I retreat.
But then he’s there, his influence like a rope bound around my wrist that tugs at me. When I stop resisting, his pull calms. Not gentle but sated. The connection of his presence starts at my wrists and slowly works its way up over my arm, across my shoulders, down my spine.
The gentleness of it is something like a whisper of ‘you’re beautiful.’ The cool caress of it is a resounding, ‘you’re perfect.’ It runs down my legs, then back up again. And soon, I’m so wrapped up in it that I’m lying on the ground. My back arches against the leaves as my fingers slip between my legs. Writhing there in the dirt, I have the fleeting thoughts that this is wrong, that this is strange, even for me.
Those weak objections are drowned out by the pounding pulse of desire that washes over me from above. It’s all around me, it’s in my head. It races ahead of my own heartbeat. It’s the pulse in my fingers telling me to keep going. Coaxing and desperate.
And then it’s gone. Then I’m just a girl alone in the woods in the middle of the night without so much as a jacket or a cell phone. A dirty girl, covered in grime, with sticks tangled in my hair.
I know the memory well. That was the first night that I lost time, but it wasn’t the last.
The familiar sound of breaking glass disrupts the daze I’ve been trapped in. Shattering porcelain mimicking the destruction of the respite I thought I might have found.
I should have known better.
“Sol, come back to me.” The plea comes from some distance, but it latches onto me, becomes as urgent as taking my next breath.
Jolting from the couch, I nearly smack into Hawthorne, who’s still on top of me. His hands are planted firmly on my shoulders, his face tense with concern.
“What happened?” The words are out before I can think better of them. I know what happened. I’m no stranger to losing control of time and space, no stranger to slipping into that dark place where our memories live, where he holds my mind and body prisoner.
A cabinet bangs open, the jarring sound causing me to recoil in well-trained fear. From here, I can see bowls and mugs flying and crashing against the wall.
Despite the firm grip on my shoulders, my hold on reality starts to slip again as I become dysregulated. Only one soul would be cruel enough to leverage this trigger. I’m being punished.
It’s effective.
With each piercing splinter of glass, my train of thought fractures until it’s just microscopic pieces I can’t pick up fast enough. With my breath coming faster and my pulse thrashing against my skin, I’m trapped inside the overstimulating cage of flesh and bone. The girl within me rattles and shakes, all sense of safety ripped from between my fingers.
Dysregulation is a bitch. I can see it happen in slow motion, forced to watch everything slip away without being able to stop it.
Each time I crawl an inch toward putting myself back together, another ear-splitting sound sends me spiraling back within murky recesses of my mind where I wait for it to stop.
When it does, when the quiet drifts over me like the lap of summer waves on my toes, I settle back into my body inch by inch until I’m aware of every place that Hawthorne and I touch. Like an apparition, he becomes more solid, more real by the second. When I reach out and confirm the reality of him, that he’s not just a figment of my imagination I’ve conjured up to keep myself from completely falling apart, I launch myself athim, burying myself deep within his hold. I hide there until I stop shaking, and he lets me.
