Serpentine Desires

The prey

I didn't know why I started cooking.

The motions felt foreign and detached like someone else was controlling my hands. My mind was foggy, but as I sliced the vegetables, stirred the pot, and rounded myself in the dull work—it was something. Anything.

It took my mind off things. At least that's what I thought.

The irony.

The only sound in the kitchen apart from the faint bubbling of the soup I didn't care about was my steady breathing. My hands were stable, and my thoughts were numb.

Three days.

I hadn't seen him in three days and four nights.

Too many hours. I stopped counting. I stopped caring.

The knife glided through the carrot. Like time was crawling. A breath in. A breath out. Life held no meaning.

The soup was pointless. This cooking was pointless. A distraction I didn't want. But this fucking silence? It was louder. It screamed. He wasn't here. And I couldn't feel it. Numbness. Cold. Hollow. Like a fucking void.

I wondered what it would be like to disappear. To sink into the floor. To melt into the darkness. To not exist. No sound. No feeling. No me.

Would anyone notice? Would he? Or would I just become another ghost in the walls, another silence in the room?

The spoon scraped the bottom of the pot. The noise grated and I flinched. My body remembered something I didn't want it to.

What was it to laugh? A laugh without warmth. A smile that cut. A man I let ruin me.

I set the spoon down and stared. At the soup. At my hands. At nothing.

I thought about the knife. Not in a way I should. The shine of it. The way it felt balanced in my grip. Sharp things have a purpose. I didn't.

The soup bubbled. Like it was alive. Unlike me. I let it burn. What's one more thing ruined?

I gripped the counter and didn't care if my knuckles turned white. My chest tightened. It was hard to breathe.

I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silent hurt more.

You never drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there. And I was drowning to the bottom. Slowly. And it was too late when I realised that.

The air felt too copious. The silence was too loud. The soup was too alive.

The fucking noise wouldn't stop. Bubbling. Bubbling. Bubbling.

Stop it.

It didn't.

I screamed.

It ripped out of me like a thing caged too long. Raw, deep, animal. Before I knew it, I grabbed the pot and hurled it across the kitchen.

Metal met tile with a deafening clang. The soup splattered like blood, hot and scalding against my legs, and my feet. The pain registered somewhere far away. Distant. Meaningless. Nothing compared to my chest.

It didn't matter. None of it mattered.

I stayed there, my breaths stuttering out in jagged, uneven bursts that felt more like sobs. Or laughs. Maybe both.

See, how easy it was to destroy something.

Pulling at my hair like it would rip the chaos from my skull. The tears burned, but the laugh burned worse. Ugly. Hollow. Wrecked.