CECE, DISRESPECTFULLY | ✓

38: CONTAGIOUS ACHE

            Without a word, he pulls me into the toilet where he blasts the cold tap and slips my hands under the water. I don't catch my sigh of relief. It fogs in front of me.

Nicolás positions me so that the water beats my wrists and cascades gently to the burns. Once he's confident that I'll keep them there myself, he digs out his phone to set a timer for twenty minutes.

He's holding a knife. A bone. Then it's his phone again.

'D'you wanna go to hospital?'

I roll my eyes. In the mirror, my eyes glow in black holes. 'I'm fine.'

'Are you okay everywhere else?'

I hum. It fails to convince him. 'Yes.'

Nicolás keeps watching me like he's contemplating asking me to strip so he can check the rest of my body but eventually takes my word for it.

My hoodie is wet, the hem darker than the rest of it. The water climbs up the fabric and I look down to check that it's not caught under the tap but it's not even touching the basin.

Eyebrows scrunched, I lift my gaze and I flinch. It's blood. And it's everywhere. Like I've bathed in it.

(–REDREDREDREDRED–)

It's not mine. Somehow I know it's not mine.

You did it wrong, Beewolf explains. I told you everyone will die if you do it wrong. Now everyone is dead and it's your fault.

'Look,' Nicolás says.

I am looking. What the fuck does he think I'm doing?

Beewolf takes flight and I watch it land on his shoulder.

This is not Nicolás. It's someone else. It's not Nicolás. He's already dead. They've killed him. It's your fault.

'I know the locks make you feel safe—and I want you to feel safe here, but... it makes me–' the quiver in his voice comes from the spine '–really scared.'

'I'm fine.'

'Cece...'

Unable to finish, Nicolás leaves his lips parted and Beewolf crawls into his mouth. He don't seem to feel owt as he fetches a packet of paracetamol and antiseptic cream.

His left eye twitches. It bulges. Until it bursts out of the socket, hangs from the optic nerve, and Beewolf crawls out.

It's not real.

I focus on my breathing, focus on the cool water running over my hands. That is real. Focus on that. That is real. Beewolf is not real. The blood is not real.

But my reflection starts to crawl out of the mirror.

I stumble over my own feet as I bolt back to my room. 'It's only been seven minutes,' Nicolás calls after me.

I ignore him, upturning my bag over my bed until I shake a notebook out. I throw it open, grab a pen. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real, I recite as I scratch the image onto the page.

Nicolás hurries after me, another set of crawled hands and feet behind him.

The evil. It's not dead. It's going to get back in.

I'm gonna vomit my heart out. I beg myself not to look, just focus on the drawing, but I can't help it.

My reflection crawls in from the daylight hall behind him, limbs twisted in directions they shouldn't. It has too many bones, too many joints.