Page 89 of His

Kat

At the end of the driveway, I caught the motion sensor. The iron gate rattled open in front of me. I stared out at the curving road.

I didn’t want to leave.

So ridiculous. Insane. But there was something at the back of my mind, something that was nagging at me. I didn’t know what it was.

The sound of a car engine came to my ears as though from a distance. I could hear it coming around a lower bend in the road. All I had to do was run out into the middle of the road, wave my arms. I was free. I could go home.

What was it he had said that troubled me so much?

The car’s engine grew louder, and I closed my eyes, my hands at my temples. Thinking back. He wanted to let me go. Surely he knew that I was going to go to the police. He hadn’t even asked me not to tell anyone.

Bored.

The car came around the bend, but I was already running back up toward the house, the troubled feeling in my mind coalescing into something as clear and bright as words on a page. I knew what he meant.

Bored—that was the reason I’d tried to commit suicide. That was what I’d told him.

I ran up the porch and banged on the door, the feeling of dread growing inside of me.

“Gav!” I shouted. “Gav! Let me in!”

The door knob rattled in my hand, but the deadbolt was secure.

“Gav!”

No response.

I went to the window, banging on the pane. I tried to look in, but the glare of the sun reflected off of the glass, and I could see nothing inside. I raised my hand to break the windowpane, and then hesitated. But only for a second.

What is he going to do, kill me?

Gav

The darkness descended, but this time it was not the darkness of my shadow. Shadows need light to exist, and where I was going there was nothing, nothing at all.

Around my neck I felt a strange tug and tension cutting off my blood. My heart pounded loud, drowning out everything. My body kicked once, then again, and I only sensed the body kicking, could not feel it myself. I was already drifting away into the darkness.

This was a dark like fog, so thick it slid over my skin. A soft, enveloping darkness. A peaceful void that I fell into knowingly, longing to lose myself. It was the same thing you sink into halfway on your way to sleep - an ether, thick and palpable. The murmuring fog cradled me, turning me in its arms.

My breath stopped. My lungs were empty. I was empty, blissfully empty. The sound of my heartbeat faded, slowed to a dull murmur. The shadow of a heartbeat.

The sound of the fog - lord, how can I describe it? Pick up a shell and hold it to your ear. It’s not the ocean you hear, but rather a reverberation of static noise. That was the sound of the fog, a low roar coming from nowhere and filling everything. It was a dull roar, a noise that tickled at my senses without letting me hear anything else. The sound came through my body and filled me, too, a peaceful static.

The noose tightened on my neck, but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. I was weightless now, floating away into the dark fog, leaving my shadow and all shadows behind.

Kat

I broke through the window, stepping carefully inside so I wouldn’t cut myself.

“Gav!” I cried.

I checked the living room, the kitchen. He wasn’t there. I heard a noise from upstairs. The bedroom. I stumbled up the steps and raced down the hallway.

“Gav!”

I banged open the door and saw the rope, the chair, and his body, his beautiful body, hanging limp in the middle of the air. Like he was floating.

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