e p i l o g u e
It’s dark.
I’ve been dreaming it again, and my mouth tastes like gunpowder and blood, and there’s imaginary moisture on my fingers. I don’t know if I’ve been screaming as much as I feel like I have. It was different this time. Dexter was there. He was opening the box and telling me to come out, telling me that I was going to be okay, that mommy and daddy were gone gone gone, and I didn’t go because I was scared, but he could see so he grabbed me and pulled me out. I think I screamed after that but then I woke up.
It’s dark. I’m on the other end of the bed now, hugging the pillow. I sit up. There’s light under the curtains, the cool light of a new day, and I feel sick when I think of this day and what it’s going to bring, I feel sick. I can’t do this. I can’t do this over and over till I die. The same fucking sunrise and the same fucking everything and me, just being here through it all – I can’t do it.
I get up and walk to the door without looking at Dexter. Mikaela’s in the other bedroom, asleep. I take my morning meds and stare out of the kitchen window. I wonder if this is what I’m going to do the rest of my life. Wake up, take my morning meds, stare out of my kitchen window. Imagine doing this for sixty years. Imagine suffering through it all – for sixty years. Imagine living with the darkness for sixty years.
I put down my glass. The sound of plastic on granite is loud in our kitchen. I go to the bathroom and pee and brush my teeth. I feel like I’m about to cry, like there’s something bubbling behind my skin, and I think I want Dexter, so I go back to my bedroom and put the light on.
And he’s there.
He’s lying on his back, his arms by his sides, and there’s something on his chest. Papers. Papers scattered all over his chest. And there’s a file open by his hand, half-empty. A file with my name on it.
It hits me very suddenly. One second I’m standing there in the bedroom looking at Dexter buried under evidence of my insanity, and the next, I can barely see. There are black spots in the corners of my vision and I can’t breathe, or at least I think I can’t, and I feel hot and cold at the same time. What is this?
I walk to the bed. One, two, one, two. I pick up the papers and put them back in the file. I throw it out of the window. Dexter stirs. He rolls on his side and I think his eyes are opening but I don’t wait, I turn and I walk out of the room. I walk out of the house and I don’t take my keys with me. I don’t think I’ll need them anymore.
It’s cold outside. The road is a dark grey and there are smashed bottles outside Jack’s Mausoleum and I smell brine in the air. I walk. My legs hurt. But I walk faster. I’m out. I’m getting out.
I run.
It feels good.
I run and there’s wind in my hair. I run and scream and then I can see it in front of me, I can see the great grey abyss, reaching up to me like how it used to, like how it always does, and I run faster, and I think that this is how it should be. Jump into his arms like you’ve been waiting for it all your life. Let him destroy you. And I am.
There’s hot breath coming out through my nose, sand shifting under my feet. I run. It feels good.
I run right in.
The first one washes up by my waist, crashing down with the collective sigh of a million years. It drags me into it. All is quiet. He’s back and he sighs around me, pulling me into his arms, and I breathe. I breathe so loud I can hear it in my bones.
