Page 133 of Tendu: Dancing in the Castle

I frowned. The idea was confusing. I tried to focus on facts. “You don’t need that in your head. It definitely wouldn’t help you.”

“If there is even a small chance it could make things better, you must tell me.”

His insistence was strong. The conversation had the potential to bounce back and forth for a long time. So I just told him. All of it. From my collapse in the elevator, to the stone falling on Michelle. He tried to hold me several times during the monotone narration of events. I think he needed me to hold him. But that, I couldn’t do. I showed him the whore mark, the label, but then explained that Will had taken it as his own, and how that had helped.

“There’s one more thing,” I said, looking at the thoroughly destroyed man beside me, and not wanting to tell him. But without this knowledge, he would never really understand. The film in my head. What it was. And when it played. I stated it factually and quickly, trying to get it over as fast as possible.

He was so horrified that he didn’t really look like himself anymore. “You’re seeing this now?” he asked in a whisper.

I nodded. “The music’s getting faster. You’re going to have to go soon.”

“Malphia,” he said, and stopped, finally lost for words.

I studied the joint between the carpeted part of the room and the wooden floor by the barre, the thin metal divider, a tiny hole in the wood shaped like a keyhole, and the scratches made by shoes and feet.

“I loved you so fast,” he said. “From the first moment I saw you, there has been only you.”

I couldn’t cope with declarations of love. Or memories of it. I couldn’t cope with any more of this talk we were having. So, I just spoke the simplest of truths. “You have to stay away from me now, Aleks.”

Looking like I’d hit him with a sledgehammer, he started to speak again, but I curled up on the bed and covered my ears. He was gone when I unfurled.

My belly felt hollow. But I wasn’t actually hungry. I couldn’t even feel that anymore. My mother would be pleased. Her daughter would finally be properly thin. She could direct her bile toward my various new disfigurements instead.

Everything ached. Sleep wouldn’t come. Something odd and itchy was occurring. It was a bit like how I’d felt when Aleks had been ill, how I’d sensed that. But it wasn’t quite the same. This was a sort of swollen rage that needed to burst, something unfinished and wrong, and – against my better judgement – I had go to him.

He sat on his bed wearing an outdoorsy jacket that I’d never seen before, and he was in the process of lacing up what looked like walking boots.

I watched him. The film played.

“Is happen now? The thing?” he asked.

I nodded and asked my own question. “What are you doing?”

“I am going to kill her.”

“Oh.” I sat beside him on the bed, and we looked at one another. “No,” I said. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You would go to prison.”

“Does it matter?”

I didn’t feel anything, so what were the facts around this? “You’re not a killer. You shouldn’t become one.”

“She should suffer, feel pain and fear, and then die.”

“I don’t think she feels things like normal people.” Michelle and I had that in common. Pushing the thought aside, I became more forceful. “Promise you won’t do it. It won’t change anything. Whether she’s alive or dead makes no difference now. I want to sleep, and this is stopping me. Say you’re not going to do it.”

He sighed. “Okay.” There was a pause. “Malphia, I need… I just… I can’t...”

He leapt to his feet and switched to fast and loud Ukrainian. He then punched the wall several times, making little impact on it. His hand was bloody as he leant back against the door, still and silent after the storm.

The blood drew me across the room. I took his hand and inspected it, knowing how it was going to swell and bruise. It was much worse than that time he’d hit Gavin. Flecks of white plaster were embedded in the raw flesh, and that might lead to infection.

“I need to clean this and put a dressing on it,” I told him.

He let himself be led into the bathroom where I found the first-aid kit. “It might hurt,” I warned of the antiseptic fluid.

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