"she was the type of person who'd explain how she was going to stab you in the front before she actually shoved the knife in... and you'd let her.
she'd probably even pass the knife to you so you can shove it in your own chest...and you would."
tom...
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t o m l a n d e d haphazardly in the living room of the apartment, catching himself on the arm of the green couch. He wrenched his hand away from it as if burned, sure that Evelyn would feel his reluctance in some way through her favorite bit of furniture.
He shook his head, feeling stupid, and went to sit down, but Evelyn had left out her yarn, as if she was just pausing in whatever she was creating, sure she would pick it up after this mess he dragged them both into had blown over. He spun away from the sofa to sit at the kitchen table, but Evelyn's favorite mug sat on top of it, a chipped navy thing with golden astrology charts on it. It was still half full with cold tea as if she had been too nervous to drink it.
The apartment felt all of a sudden suffocating, and Tom rushed to the window to throw it open. He pushed through the tangle of curtains, trying desperately to find fresh air, and accidentally ripped down one of the stringed ornaments that Evelyn had made months ago. It lay limp in his hand, deformed and ugly. He felt the need to shred it. To throw it through the window and watch it be trampled by the oblivious wizards and witches below. He needed to break something, to watch something be so utterly destroyed.
His attention fell on the sheer curtains that still wrapped around his body. He fisted them and yanked them from their hangings, but the soft whisper of them falling to the ground was unsatisfying. Tom turned to inspect the room and then stalked back over to the table, where the mug sat. He picked it up and threw it across the room at the wall. It shattered into a myriad of pieces.
The owls in their cages went wild as they frantically tried to escape the deafening noise. Evelyn's cat hissed and darted out of the room. The animals were no longer his concern; he had no need for them now that she was gone.
This thought drove Tom to a manic rampage. He ravaged the apartment until all he could do was sit in the middle of the mess he had made. In the middle of the books, he had flung from the shelves. On top of the paintings from the walls that he had shredded. The glass shards of the jars that had contained tea and potion ingredients. It wasn't until then that he could breathe again. He looked around the mess he had made, and then he gripped his wrist to examine the ring that had melted into his skin slowly. It still burned, but the pain was nothing compared to the emptiness he felt.
"It was the only way!" He screamed into the silent house. Nobody was there to agree with him.
Tom must have dozed off sometime during the night, for it was almost dawn when he awoke with a horrible stinging sensation in his forearm. He ignored it in his grogginess, sure it was from where he had slept on top of his mess on the apartment floor. As he stood from the ground, he thought of the first night they had come to this new home, where he and Evelyn had lain side by side on the barren wood floor and she had told him of their new beginning. If only she had known.
Set on ignoring whatever memories of Evelyn would arise, Tom moved from where he stood. He didn't bother trying to step over all the perfectly curated decorations now in varying states of destruction. Instead, he tried to relish in the crunch under his boots as he made his way to the kitchen. If she were gone now, he might as well move on.
