Page 9 of Sage Haven
Another monster erased.
I exhaled slowly.
Rinse. Repeat.
3
SAGE
Ihad tried sohard to leave Sanele behind. I thought if I drove fast enough, far enough, I could outrun it and outpace its suffocating grip, but I was wrong.
No matter how many miles I put between myself and that place, it followed.
It was there.Always there.
I tried to lie at first and tell myself I’d made it out. That I was actually free. That the ghosts of Sanele had been left behind in the smoke and shadows where they belonged. I fed myself that lie like it was oxygen, clinging to it because if I let go… I didn’t know what would be left.
But lies, no matter how tightly you hold them, start to rot from the inside out.
And soon enough, I felt it creeping back.
Settling into my bones with the cold inevitability of winter.
It wasn’t loud or sudden.
It was quiet and slow, like it was being patient. Like smoke slipping beneath a doorframe, curling through the air until it fills the whole house.
Sanele’s shadows weren’t something you could leave behind.
They clung to you, seeping into your clothes, yourskin, your breath.
They didn’t scream. They whispered.
Always there. Always waiting.
People like to talk about trauma like it’s the worst part of the story, like the actual wound is the ending.
But they’re wrong.
The trauma itself, no matter how brutal, how violent, how gut-wrenching. isn’t the hardest part.
It’s what comes after.
The echoes that never stop when you beg them to.
The broken pieces scattered across the floor of your life, sharp and waiting for you to try and pick them up.
And you do. Youalwaysdo.
Because there’s no one else to clean up the mess.
You gather them with trembling hands, knowing they won’t fit the way they used to. Knowing they’ll cut you as you try to rebuild.
And you tell yourself you’re fine, that you can handle it.
But then you realize you’ve still been bleeding the whole time.
And the weight of that realization doesn’t ease.
