āThen why are we going to an opera Derek. Weāre suffering,ā Finally. But she says we.
Sheās selfish and she says we. Sheās a narcissist and she includes him, a cancerous part of her own personality that has been impossible to treat and she just has to live with it. Heās an invisible deformity that no one else has access to- and she perishes but thinks it how much heās ruined her.
They tell her in therapies and self-help seminarās that sheās half absorbed and convinced herself donāt work, that sheās not ruined. But sheās insane. And she knows it.
Sheās ruined and laughing about it in the end. Killing people, laughing, fucking, burning people alive. Insane and without a seatbelt going 200 on a backroad. Spinning out, screaming, losing control of herself.
A crash would have ended them. Part of them wanted that. And the car was a good metaphor.
She has nothing left in her to forgive a slight. The spaces between her ribs are empty and thick with her own self-destruction and how isolated they were inside their own bodies.
But she shuts her mouth, she clams up and puts her hands on her knees and decides not to suffer with him or for him, but to fill her skin with the person sheās become. Get angry at him. She listens to the rain and lets it in. Breathes through her nose in a way that would free her chest.
āMy daughterās name was Carmen,ā she finally says.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā It was a metaphor. There was the outside, gray and endless. Then it was them confined in what could have been their coffin. They could have died then and there and it would have been as lonely as one person out in the middle of a crossroads. Desperately lurching on some god forsaken trodden path of dirt. He didnāt find it in himself to care anymore.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā He couldnāt. What difference would it make if he was dead now? Free of everything? None at all. Carla and he were lost. Spare parts hanging by tendon and he could feel the indignation the fear the rage wafting from her as it were. Sometimes he wonders what it would have been like if he dropped it all and ran off with her. If they could have been truly happy together - if he could have loved her as Carla. Not Ada Wong.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā There are too many what ifs and there is no way to go back. Even now her voice sounds like itās muffled against his ears. Like theyāre filled with cotton and those eyes of his squint against the road. He was blind for the last five minutes.Ā āI know.āĀ
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Fingers clenched and he looked haggard. The fight seemed to have left him in that instance. Her daughter, Carmen.Ā āWhy did you choose that name?ā