✓ DYING MOURNINGS, original

ten : letter

┌─────━┿──┿━─────┐

𝐓𝐄𝐍 : 𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑

└─────━┿──┿━─────┘

 I didn't read the letter until the following night. I know, I know, I should've read it the moment Beatrice left but I'd insisted on crying myself to sleep instead. I spent the night curled in a ball in my empty bed, clutching a pillow as if that would comfort me more than a person ever could.

When I woke, I ate breakfast in silence and went to school. I worked on my Biology project, finished up a French paper, read some pages in one of my English books, and then headed to training. It felt like an awful Groundhog Day. I was repeating the same things over and over again, just in slightly different sequences but they all ended the same.

Me, in this stupid cabin, alone.

I loved the cabin, I really did. It was cute and quaint and perfect but it was made for two people. It was made to be cozied up in bed or in front of the fire or even outside grilling. It was made for love, the way it was constructed. The couch in front of the warmed fireplace was made for two people to be intertwined together, the two rocking chairs on the back porch were made for two people drinking beers and laughing, the bed in the master bedroom was big enough that two people wouldn't be suffocated by another but everyone knows they're both in the center all tangled up. The cabin was made for two people and I was just one person desperately trying to fill the void of someone who was not coming home.

I think that's why I finally decided to read the letter. I needed closure and I needed answers. I needed some type of understanding because I would never get it in person.

I sat down in front of the closet and pulled the box free. The old leather was cold against my hands as I unlatched the unlocked old thing and opened it. I rifled through the photographs carefully before pulling the envelope address to me out. It was a shock to see his handwriting, to see his beautiful penmanship and I wondered how many years it took for him to perfect it like this. Was he centuries old? Or only decades?

Running my finger in between the sealed flap of the envelope, I tore it gently. It felt like a ritual. It only needed a dimmed room and candles to feel even more poetic and ritualistic, more witchy. I was on my knees before an invisible god, ready to read and devour his secrets and soul.

Pulling the thin paper free, I recognized it as some of his letterhead from his office not at the church but here at the cabin. It was fragile, like the words would vanish in thin air. I unfolded it slowly, allowing myself to dip into the suspense of seeing the first words and even when I did glance upon them, I didn't expect for it to take my breath away.

Blaire.

My name was written small in a thin penned scrawl. It made me want to be sick. This was too intimate, this was like reading someone's diary but I couldn't stop. I'd started, ever so small, but I couldn't stop. This was Crow and even the paper smelled of him.

I killed your father.

A rush of heat flushed my face and I felt sickness all over again. I'd known it'd been true but reading it, seeing it written down, made it feel like a police confession. This was a truth I never wanted to admit because it made what I felt feel like something cruel. Like I was a traitor to my family for the way I'd been feeling, the way I'd been wanting to feel. I wanted him to be better than the rumors I'd heard, better than the photographs of dead people and missing persons posters and devil summonings.