The Castle of Gold [Bk 2]

ch.40 Taste my words

I woke up out of breath. The sweat moistened my body and my clothes cling to my skin, making me feel that much more claustrophobic.

I threw off the covers and ran to the bathroom.

Then I turned the shower knob and leaned my head against the tiled walls as I let the water wash away the invisible dirt from my fingers and the gasoline-like tears from my eyes.

Guilt seemed to choke my body in the form of a film of sweat. I rubbed my neck and back and chest, trying to remove this skin-like guilt, but it was permanently stuck it me. It was a part of me that would either kill me or live to see me kill myself.

I finally gave up and got out of the shower and got ready for another day of busing tables and staring at the soulless T.V. screen.

***

Danny was going to ask me if I was “ok,” but he thought it best just to leave me alone for a while. And I was glad. A minute after he left for work, I grabbed the acceptance letter and a lighter, and headed out the door. 

I hid the letter carefully in my jacket, making sure it didn’t crumble pre-maturely. Then I walked slowly and carefully to Monarch Park.

My legs moved in a clunky, robotic-like movement and my breathing was too calm to indicate that I was alive.

Once I got to the park, I held the letter out over Liam’s grave and stared at it as if it were one of the pieces in some tribal ritual. I didn’t even know what I was planning on doing, but it was supposed to relieve me of some seemingly permanent guilt. The guilt scratched the inside of my throat like a Dentist’s scalpel scraping off plaque from your teeth.

I read my name out from the acceptance letter: Angela Guiliana Lorenzo.”

Then I knelt down and read out Liam’s name from his grave: “Liam James Payne.”

I started to dig just below where a bouquet of yellow Daisies were.

Then I took the acceptance letter, kissed it slowly and started to rip it to shreds. With every tear, I felt one less scratch in my throat. So I kept tearing and shredding, faster and faster until there was a sprinkle of white confetti over Liam’s grave.

I pulled out the lighter and lit the scraps on fire.

“I’m sorry Liam” I whispered in a passion-less voice.  Then I pulled out the lighter and watched a crimson fire engulf the scraps.

I just sat there a moment, staring at the scraps as flames rose higher and then sunk low and pulled in as much oxygen into its’ greedy throat as it could.

It was almost beautiful the way the fire was taking the pure virginal paper and blackening her heart. The way the crimson dripped like blood from a fresh wound. The way the paper was suffering and I was just sitting there and staring at it, not helping, but watching. Just watching.

My lips quivered. It wasn’t until I tasted a salt-sweet tear that I realized that I was crying.

I let the tears fall down my face, allowing it to cleanse and purify me from my sins.

I took a tear drop on my finger and dropped it over the fire. A tiny baby flame drizzled out like the tiny seed that was once in my stomach.

Then I became curious. I tiled my head to the side and saw that the flames were really dancing, dancing just the way Harry had taught me to dance here at Monarch Park. I had just stood on his feet and he had guided my inexperienced and fragile body with his hard and lean one.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had reached a hand out to the flames. I wanted to burn the skin that was still so heavily wrapped in guilt. I wanted to melt it off so that I could just sit there in raw flesh.