Fear

31

Three weeks.

That's how long he left me.

No Acts. No calls to his office. No punishments. No visits.

Just silence.

At first, I thought it was a test.
Then I thought it was punishment.
By the end of the second week, I realised it was neither.

It was absence, and that was worse.

He was still here, somewhere. But hiding.

And I didn't know if I missed him or the familiarity and the pain that came with him. I didn't even know which part of me was doing the missing. The girl he took? Or the version of me he'd made?

Every day I half-expected a knock. A voice through the door. Even a message slipped under it — something cruel, terrifying, and distinctly his. But there was nothing. Not even his footsteps in the corridor. The air felt thinner without them.

I spent hours sitting on the edge of the table, staring at the wall like it held answers. I traced the cracks in the paint with my eyes until they became lines on a map I didn't know how to read.

When I laid down and tried to sleep, my mind wouldn't allow it. It kept playing the same scenes on loop. The blood. Dylan's eyes. The feel of the pistol in my hand, the weight of it. The coldness of the metal.

And the kiss.

God, the kiss...

I replayed it too many times. His hands on my face. His breath against mine. The way his whole body shook.

He hadn't just kissed me. He'd unravelled in that kiss. Like something inside him imploded the second our mouths touched. Like the mask had completely broken and he didn't know how to fix it anymore.

And then he ran. Like he was scared of what he'd done. Like he was scared of me.

It should've made things simpler.
But nothing about him ever did.

Sometimes I hated myself for thinking about it. For remembering the tremble in his fingers, the heat in his breath, the look in his eyes like he was starving. I pressed my fingertips to my lips like they still held the shape of his.

Sometimes I cried. I didn't know why. Other times, my stomach turned so violently I thought I might throw up.

And I did vomit a few times. Once, after eating, I regurgitated it all back up into the sink in my room — undigested slop mixed with bile. I stared at it after, feeling nothing.

I felt empty, physically and emotionally.

-

On the tenth day, James came into my room for a session. He knocked three times, quietly, and walked in tentatively like he thought I might lunge at him.

I didn't speak. He didn't either, just waited.

Eventually, he said:
"How are you feeling, Emily?"

I shrugged. I didn't know. Part of me wanted to say "numb," but even that wasn't enough to sum it up.

He nodded like he expected that.
"You've been through a lot recently."

I nodded slowly, staring at the floor, my vision unfocused. The shapes of his shoes blurred and reformed.

"Understandable," he said softly, writing something on his clipboard. "Do you want to talk today?"

I didn't answer.

We didn't get far. I wasn't ready to talk about what happened, or what came before it, or what came after.