Forbidden Passions

27|| Guilt

Sebastian Ferguson

I lay in the tub filled with cold water, the back of my head resting on the cold edge as I stared blankly at the ceiling.

Lightning flashed, a flicker of lights following right before thunder roared.

I neither blinked nor flinched, my eyes fixed distantly at the ceiling.

I took a deep breath straight from the gut, my lips softly parting as I released a shaky breath. My eyes fluttered closed, everything slowly fading away to the background.

Somewhere between the nothingness of numbness from fighting to shut everything out and the overwhelming outpour of feeling every shitty feeling at once, my body, mind and soul floated, one weak blow from falling into the deep bottomless end.

Even with closed eyes, I could still see the second flash of lightning, nearly feeling the electrifying sensation course through my veins.

Deep inside, I knew I felt a rising urge to just give in and let nature take me out. In this weather, soaking in the tub was the last thing I should've been doing, yet I was anyway and getting comfortable.

I'd been battling such feelings for days, guilt and depression gnawing at me so terribly I'd reached a point where I felt numb.

I hated myself even more for feeling the way I was. I wasn't the victim and playing one was nothing but cruel and selfish of me. I could neither take the easy way out nor act like I was suffering more than everyone else was.

I just wasn't used to feeling this empty yet overwhelmed, but then again, no one was used to being strangled or flogged like an animal. No one was used to having a gun pointed at them and living through hell every single day just because I was avoiding the shitty feelings annihilating my entire existence.

I took another deep breath, this time failing to fully release it as the memories flooded my mind.

I couldn't even whisper it to myself, the highest level of disrespect towards an innocent woman in a position as unscrupulous as mine and fighting to hold herself together through a dead marriage to a man coping with the sudden disappearance of a lover.

The brightest red flag and flashing lights I was drowning in the deeper end in Delilah's void wallows just had to be the wickedest side I never knew I had seeded inside me.

It stabbed blades in my chest figuring out I was trying to cope in the most perverse way possible only after doing damage so bad everything, including my future as an honourable man, was at stake.

No matter how many times I tried to trace my steps and pinpoint the moment I'd turned into this—this thing I'd become, I couldn't reduce it all to one single moment when the wicked transition had happened.

I'd tried every angle on my first night as a potential monster, blaming every single person I could. Denial had sunk its claws so deeply into my flesh that I didn't want to admit the obvious until I just couldn't keep on avoiding the inevitable.