"Pretty girls like you get lost in these woods all the time, Alexa."
On the night of Sebastián's annual Beginning of Summer Bash, amiable and adventurous Melody Tryniski went missing. What might have appeared as a juvenile escapade - a casual incide...
Christopher Shaw's house October 19, 2018 1:03 p.m.
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CHRISTOPHER IS NOT BENT over the windowsill when I walk inside his room.
The disappearance of his image in front of it unravels something within me, freeing me for just a moment from my never-ending anger and giving way to an unknown worry. It's weird, not seeing him perched on it with a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. In times of stress, when the world seems to have something against him, Christopher chooses to smoke near the window and gaze at the outside world.
It's his safe haven.
I halt when I see him lying on the bed and take quiet steps back, hiding behind the bureau I used as an obstacle on that night to escape --- escape from Christopher, which sounds absurd now.
His body is motionless on the bed, a pale figure dotted with blues and purples and blacks and reds that resembles a store mannequin. No, perhaps he resembles more a living corpse. The only indication of his vitality comes in the constant inflating and deflating of his scratched chest; a movement that's in rhythm with his calm breaths.
His eyes are wide and red as he looks up at the ceiling, the puffiness that surrounds them preventing him from blinking properly. Maybe it's a combination between the puffiness and the bruising that's painfully coming down. All I know is that he's barely blinking. The thought burns in my own eyes, as if I'm the one who is letting the day's hot air inside. I blink several times, my world becoming dark and returning to Christopher's image, over and over again.
Perhaps he's not here at all. I know what being stuck in your own mind looks like. I've seen it on countless of my father's patients, but also in myself.
He's probably replaying what happened on that night and at the diner, looking for what he did wrong and fantasizing about what he could've done right. Maybe he's back to his traumatizing childhood, seeing how his father beats the shit out of his mother and witnessing what W.S. was doing to Becky Rivers. In these memories, he probably imagines his nine-year-old self standing up to his father and changing him for the better with the power of his love.
Then realizes that it's all complete and utter bullshit. Love is not worth a damn thing when it comes to confronting evil in its vilest form. There's no way to change a sick mind, just like there's no way to change the past. The past is the past, the present quickly transforms into the past, and the future is all that's there. Even then, it all becomes the past and we're left with constant regret and guilt and past happiness that transforms to sadness whenever it comes to mind.
Fuck, I'm doing it myself right now. I turn my focus back to Christopher, who is still motionless on the bed.
A cigarette is stuck between his forefinger and middle finger, some smoke curling as it floats on top of its butt. The cigarette's butt is so long that it disintegrates in the air, some of its residue falling on the bed and forming dark gray dust. His left hand rests on his scratched chest, while he takes the cigarette to his lips with his right one. Smoke comes out from his open mouth until it billows all around him, a gray cloud that hides him for a moment until it reaches my lungs. The cough that threatens to come out gets stuck in my throat. Christopher doesn't seem to notice, which is odd.
