The Edge of the World

Chapter Seventeen

The world around them spun out of control. One minute they were in reality, other times they felt as if they were stuck in a dream state, until they wondered which was which. Sometimes the countless voices screamed in their ears until they were compelled to cover them, smothering the incessant shrieks. Holding their breaths, they often lay in bed, squeezing their eyes closed against the shadows, which were always looming, constantly watching, while demanding they face the truth.

Yet they fought the impending memories, uncertain what repercussions remembering would bring them. Would it lead to more torment? Or set them free?

Neither were ready to take the chances offered to them, blocking the recollections of previous lives always threatening to spill into their consciousness.

He knew what had happened on the train. He'd fucked her, stolen her virginity by wooing her with smiles, stares, and intimate brushes of his knuckles along her thigh until the moment their lips touched. She'd been willing.

Pliant.

Wet.

The instant he'd slipped inside her, pulling her down as she'd straddled his hips, the man he once was realized there was no Heaven like the one her body offered.

But what happened after that, he didn't know. He sensed chaos, and he wanted no part of it. Icy darkness beyond the shadows whispered to him as he dreamed, reciting his name with an almost musical lilt.

"Come home, Ian. Come home to me."

He didn't know who was calling to him, but he did recognize it wasn't any part of Tatum.

It was another.

Eva?

Might he be so overwrought with guilt for allowing the distance between them to draw him further away from her, and towards Tatum, that he was dreaming of her? Or was it someone completely different trying to lure him from the cabin and into the night? He didn't know, and the voice sounded like a demand shouted into metal, making it undistinguishable. But his mind was so laden with everything else he couldn't be certain. How could he analyze shit when everything about the island screamed "mental breakdown?"

There was no beginning or end when it came to the days and nights. Everything was gloomy, walls of fog blocking the sun and warmth. Screams drowned the silence and silence drowned nature. Despair reached a point where it refused to be ignored until, finally, he lost hope in going home and the heaviness of that realization made something within him shatter. Patience fled alongside his optimism, leaving him choking in despondency.

Everything seemed pointless, he decided, closing his eyes, and letting lethargy overrule all else.

There was no tomorrow, and yesterday no longer seemed to matter.

#

Tatum spotted the changes in him after he grew more withdrawn, silent, and edgy. He no longer guarded them in the night against the architect of the wax dolls, deciding to sleep most of the time rather than participate in keeping them alive. She tried everything to bring him out of the dark place he'd found himself in, but everything she did only annoyed him. Tatum finally let him pull away rather than face his wrath, and after a long week of dealing with his scowling and insufferable silence, she covered her head with her blanket and lost herself in thought. During her lonely childhood, her mental musings kept her more occupied than anyone around her did.

Despite her troubled life, she succumbed to the knowledge that she'd never felt more alone than she did right then, and she considered why that was. Her father and grandfather had loathed her. Her mother had abandoned her, and her husband tried to kill her. If she really broke it down, she'd recognize that she'd always been her own best friend. Perhaps she forever would be and considering how close she'd believed she and Ian had become, she found herself disappointed that he would abandon her for his own depression. Even with feelings swelling inside her for Ian, she didn't want to believe in him. Why would she? After the disaster she'd been living, she didn't trust her own judgement any longer.