Silent Creatures
I’m baaaaaack. Angst and some graphic imagery.
Narcissus gazed at his own reflection until he was no more.
If I look at you for long enough will I forget everything else?
You fainted on a rainy Thursday night, when everyone else was gone and I was scrubbing the floors. You insisted on prepping the walk in for tomorrow. I knew it was too much, but I wanted your company. I wanted your silence next to mine.
You fell like death and my blood ran cold.
I found you in the walk in, head lolled back and blood on the floor. You always closed yourself up, arms folded and legs tight. Now, you were outstretched, arms wide as if waiting for an angel’s embrace. I gathered you in my arms, lifted you like I used to carry my mother. But you were not drunk. And you were not crying. I wished you were.
I wished you were angry at me, I wished you would never speak to me again.
But you needed to wake up.
I had you laid out on the counter before I could even think rationally. I was a breaker, and you were always the healer. I couldn’t stitch you up, just as much as you could never take my place. Would you be cruel enough to scream? To rip, to tear? Was I brave enough to mend? To be gentle and low?
We only ever touched when we were in agony.
In our arguments, you would push me and I would grab your wrist. I would try to soothe and you would snap, snarl at me like an alley cat. When you cut your wrist, I bandaged it. When I nearly broke my thumb, you wrapped it for me. Your touch is reminiscent of my weakness, my rage, my pitiful wants.
What would you think of mine? Ignorant and arrogant. Cradling your head, but still straightening your chefs whites. Feeling for the damage, but wiping away a smear of blood from your neck. I whispered kind things, gentle things, selfish things.
Come back to me, Syd.
Stay with me.
You’ll be fine.
You need to open your eyes, I need you to open your eyes.
Dammit Sydney I need to do this with you.
It can’t be done without you.
Don’t leave me alone.
I was alone with the smell of your perfume and the scent of your blood. Your body, like something from Snow White in her glass coffin. But I wasn’t your Prince Charming, and my kiss would not be gentle. Desperate, bloody, wretched.
I never called 911, I never thought about hospitals.
Claire would be there. She wouldn’t ask any questions, she wouldn’t accuse me of anything. Because I would already be guilty. A crime committed, with how tightly I held your hand, pressing it to my cheek. How I whispered things that you never knew in your ear. How I cradled your head, how I treated your body like the most fragile thing.
Claire would know. Maybe that’s why I can’t love her. She knows me too well for any of my lies to work. She’s suspected since I kissed her, with the kiss of a kind man, a gentle man. I was made, with sharp knives and sterile kitchens and screaming chefs, to want. To want so savagely that it consumes me.
So the world would never know how you looked when you opened your eyes.
Your brown eyes were so dark, there was a barely detectable ring of blue around your iris. Your eyes were sleepy, your eyelashes still trapped together, a thick fringe. I could see every detail of your face, the tiniest deep brown freckles on your cheeks.
Your mouth hung open. And I realized that I was still holding you, still so very near you, so close that my eyes were inches from yours, my nose nearly touching your skin. But not quite. That lack, that space between us saved me from total insanity. Narcissus reaches for the water, feels the coolness rippling from it, yet doesn’t touch.
I am afraid, Sydney, that I will drown.
You cleaned the cut and I scrubbed the walk in. You had a shirt to change into, but I was left covered in blood. Red handed. You looked me in the eyes but I avoided your gaze.
“Thank you…for helping me.”
“I didn’t-“
“I don’t want you to tell the others.” She cut me off, “Okay?” I finally looked at her. Her eyes darted away, her hands fidgeting. I slowly nodded.
“Okay.”
“And Carmen?”
I flinched.
“I heard you.”
