Glass [ENG]

18. Sulfur

Black.

This color with its deadness devoured everything, with its smell forcing me to cough several times. Gray smudges stretched across the wallpapers, reaching the ceiling. Burned-out holes defaced every wall, and all the damage could not be counted with just one glance. The cold coming out of the tilted window, unpleasantly pierced my whole body.

And then it hit me. Then I fully understood what I saw.

Without a second thought, I moved forward, walking at a brisk pace toward the table in the living room. I passed the charred walls, and the burnt pieces of their wallpaper rose up from the ground at the speed of my steps. The tightness in my stomach was leaving me restless.

And when I finally reached my destination, I felt my heart stopping.

Instead of dozens of pages of notes collected over a long period of time, I found a mountain of black scraps.

"No."

With a short breath, I began to search the pile, looking for at least a piece of legible writing. Even one line. One word that would distract me from my darkest thought. Darker than the destroyed walls all around.

The tips of my fingers sticking out from behind the gloves were covered with gray after a while. They were running through the ash and dirt in a panic. My legs were completely unstable, but I fought them and every reflex in my body. I fell into a trance from which I was only awakened by a voice next to me.

"Stop it."

And when its owner's hand grabbed my forearm, I finally broke off, numbed by an intoxicating awareness. It fell on me quickly and painfully. Suddenly.

They know everything. About my every move. Every alternative.

And what I've done so far has become nothing.

I tore away from Kendrick's embrace, taking a few steps back. Still stone stiff, I stared at the table, covering the lower part of my face with my hand, as if to avoid the smell. As if I was trying to find a way to make the sight less painful.

However, the stench and ash surrounding me did not disappear under my gaze. They were just getting stronger.

And I had absolutely nothing to help me get out of it.

"Tell me what this is about."

I shifted my anxious gaze to Kendrick, who didn't seem the calmest at the moment. He was looking at me expectantly, his arms crossed on his chest, as if to shield himself from something. Or to detach.

"You can't keep us safe if we don't know what you're protecting us from."

The amber color of his eyes contrasted painfully with the blackness around us. The thirst for knowledge, confusion, and annoyance seeped through his pupils, aiming straight at me. I could see his patience was wearing thin.

Pinned against the wall, I took a shuddering breath, feeling the instability of my body even more. I crouched down, taking my bag off my back, and after a longer than usual moment, I took my phone out of it.

Looking at the device, I had all the bad calls and messages in front of my eyes, I felt a tightness in my stomach. A lump in my throat, suddenly cutting me off from my voice. I displayed the right conversation, and it shone on the screen, blatantly burning my eyes. I couldn't stop the letters from flashing before my eyes.

My head was filled with a thousand doubts, but when I stood up and looked up at the calmer guy, I felt most of them disappear irrevocably. All it took was one look. It was more than our reality.

In all this chaos of incomprehensible thoughts and feelings, I recognized one of them. And it was that one feeling that pushed my hand with the device toward Kendrick.

Slowly taking it away from me, he did not cast a glance at it for a long moment, looking instead at me searchingly. It wasn't until a few seconds later that he started reading the messages. I've seen him read it more than once. His face did not say much, but honey eyes clearly did not understand the meaning of most of the words read.

And despite my strong desire to look away, or lie, I didn't do any of those things. I couldn't. I felt like I shouldn't have. Not in this case. That's why I just waited. For anything.

And a moment later, Kendrick asked the first question. With his eyes still stuck in the small display. In a voice full of confusion and slight incomprehension.

"Whose number is this?"

I looked at the screen myself, feeling the bitterness spill over my words.

"Estera's."

He looked away from the screen, sending me a confused look, and when I looked at him myself, I added as calmly as I could:

"My cousin's."

And I saw one piece of the puzzle in his head go together with another. His eyes finally flashed with understanding. But only a trace.

So, I decided to put it all together for him. With a stone on my chest and a lump in my throat.

"The note you found in my bathroom was from her, too. We've never been on good terms. Mutual hatred." I shrugged, trying not to look away. "When I left to start over... Estera did not accept it and made destroying me and my life her goal."

I went to the table to grab some of the black scraps and slowly pour them out of my hand. They dropped in different directions, falling in waves on the wooden surface.

"Literally." Again, I turned to the guy, who listened in silence and gave me a focused look. "And it would have been understandable if it hadn't been for what she wrote at the very end of the pink card. That she was going to come here. To the club. Where Britt works and all of  y o u  spend your time practically every day."

My voice was clear, even though the image before my eyes blurred once more, then less. Suddenly my body was quiet, although my soul wanted to do everything and nothing.

"That's why you weren't at work," Kendrick said calmly.

I nodded slowly, trying to continue. I put my hand on the table, practically not feeling my hands.

"I started making plans for any other job in this town, so as not to risk the meeting, but... After you came, after we talked, I realized what I'd done." I closed my mouth for a moment, not quite believing in this whole situation. And then I just threw it out. "I cut myself off from you to avoid any risk. I didn't think about the other risks I put on you while doing so. The risks I left you with. That's why I wanted to do the last thing that... would've cut you off my problems."

I looked around the burned-out apartment, concluding:

"Apparently it worked."

Another hard moment passed when I dared to look at him, and he was staring pensively at the practically black table. He still had my phone in his hand. Subconsciously, he was turning it around. And I just waited.

His pupils finally landed on mine. His gaze was intense and focused.

"Did you mess the tires of her car?"

I nodded, adding:

"I stabbed the tires of a couple of cars from her city."

He looked at me in a little shock and stopped turning the phone. And then he put together the pieces he got.

"You threatened her not to come to the club."

I didn't answer because we both knew he was right. Therefore, he summed up, more quietly and clearly:

"You brought her on yourself."

And I think that was the worst truth of all. I looked somewhere to the side, so that the tear on my left cheek was in the shade. I hated how much consciousness could hurt me. I hated the surreal flow of my life and the memories that burned my skin. Which I had in my head at my own request.

"I was supposed to get rid of them..."

Barely a second passed, and he asked me another question.

"Them?"

I looked at the honey-eyed confusion with a fog in front of my eyes and a blank, emotionless smile. I pointed at the whole apartment with a swing of my arm.

"You think that hatred came out of thin air?"

He didn't answer. He stood for a moment in unreadable emotion. He lowered his gaze, watching the ashes, tapping the phone lightly on his other hand. When he had arranged everything in his head, which seemed to me eternity, he spoke up.

"I think you can't stay here." Without sparing me another look, he put the phone on the table. His voice was strangely flat. "Take everything that matters. I'll close the windows and put something over that sign on the door. Yvette's gonna take you to her place for the night." Passing me by, he went to the windows. His eyes were everywhere but on me.

And ignoring the sting in my chest that came right after that, without a word of protest, I just did what he said. Because I knew I didn't have a better option.

I knew Kendrick hadn't taken everything in yet.

And it wasn't even half the story.