Writer in the Dark

Prologue

23 Winter, Year 7

There isn't much for you to hold on to anymore. There are no marionette strings tied around your fingers to help you remember to come home every night. My forehead is pressed against your scarred, overheating chest, and I feel your fingers knead for purchase at my buzzed scalp, searching for anything to grasp besides the mere beginnings of regrowth. I know it is all you have left in the darkness of our bedroom. Our flickering fireplace cannot cut through the pitch black rolling over our bed like tar. I am not sorry I took one of your supports from you, though. You have better things to reach for, like the moon or the cooled cup of tea on the bedside table. Its scent fills the air around us still, reminding me far too much of you. You hang in the air around me, constantly in my lungs and my bloodstream. Even when you are cold, I shall never be rid of you.

Your eerie quiet cuts through the rest, pure against the ambiance of the farm surrounding us. I know you are tick, tick, ticking inside. If I should listen closely enough, I would likely hear the jagged, staccato beat of your heart as it pumped foreign blood throughout your blessed, unholy body. I may still have time to stop an attack on your already fragile sanity. Though I am certain my withered anatomy will no longer distract you so easily from the intrusive memories clouding your brain, there are other things I can try. My trembling hands run downward to find the dip-like scars on your thighs under the sheet. "Go to sleep, my love. You're safe in my arms." When you don't respond, I whisper, "I promise." My voice is rusted nails on the wounded rot of my throat. I taste blood. It's jagged on my tongue, like our first kiss in lightning strike speed.

Before I'm finished speaking to you, you wail my name in a voice so damaged, it hardly rises above a whisper though I know you're doing your best to scream. Begging me for salvation. Pleading with me for assistance. Sobbing in a way that tells me your throat has been worn raw, too. We are blood. We are pieces of flesh hacked up by punctured, flooded lungs.

"Just one candle, Elliott, please."

My breath comes in raw through my mouth, ripping down my throat. I can't bear the scent of you now, so sweet, like honeyed tea. I'd give in too easily if it reached my head. Your words careen around the space in my cranium, and it takes me a moment to remember what I should say in response. "No. I'm here for you." Forming words in your presence was difficult enough when you grinned; your sobbing makes it ever more impossible as it runs through me like the earth's tremors, a quake unknown to all but us. The world is so quiet around us, having no idea what muted chaos takes place in the bed of a farmer and his uncertain spouse. Anyone else could have heard the way your breath stuttered more with each passing second. No one else would have understood the reason behind it, though.

This is the horror of our love. This is what has become of us, two hearts ripped in half then stitched together. You are scarred; I am sunken. Anyone with sense would undoubtedly have left you by now, or would have left me. The problem is, our senses so inextricably belong to each other--my touch is yours, my taste, my sight, my scent, my sounds. They are yours, and yours are mine. We are one creature; our synapses are permanently intertwined. My madness is yours. Your madness is mine.

"God, please, I'm begging you," you choke out, gripping me to your muscular body once more. I go stiff in your embrace, hardly knowing the what depth of absolute terror you must have reached to pray to your most insistent demon for mercy. "Elliott." I can barely hear your heart-rending cry, even in the dead silence, and the damage to your voice makes my heart clench in pain. Your voice had been my favorite part of you, our private conversations being what would hold me together when your sudden, warm appearance would crack my frozen heart.

My hand finds yours behind my head as the darkness rips your voice away once more. "Go to sleep, Lucifer. Tomorrow will be kinder." I pull your hand down and kiss at it gingerly. The once-silken sheets of our bed chafe at my dry, taut skin, but I feel no pain. My blood, black in the dim light, smears on your palm, like a sacrificial slice meant to summon something stronger than us both. I lick my lips, and sure enough, they are bleeding. It would not do to kiss you any more. You have seen enough blood in your life. My forehead returns to press against your torso, seeking the warmth you provide.

You do not sleep, not in body or in mind, but you do fall quiet. I can just barely detect the gentle rise and fall of your chest against my forehead. Your heart beats. You live on, another second, then another, until they blend into the grey, downy light of dawn. Your eyes remain wide open, trained on me. I know this despite not being able to see it. I've been yours for a long time now, longer than years can measure; I know the weight of your gaze. I know you.

I know that you constantly leave doors open behind you to allow light into every room you enter and exit. I know that you love our children as much as your earlier few, and that what broke you wasn't really what lurked in the mines. I know you never meant to abandon us, or endanger yourself. I know you love me like the clouds love the sun. I know you think you're not enough, and I know that you're right sometimes.

I know you. I know you. I know you. And oh, I do love you.