Please, he says and she winces because somehow that single word feels the same as being flayed.
Of course she wanted to tell him, she needed to tell him. She could feel the secret burrowing in her stomach, the weight of it like a rock except for the way it slithered and thrashed and tore her up inside. This secret sat like rotting poison, spreading death and decay through the marrow of her bones. But to tell him, to give this secret words would be to give it shape, to breathe life into it so it could go nest in his thoughts and turn his blood to sludge in his veins.
But it’s too much, please, and she can feel her resolve coming undone, please, and his chin feels like fire under her skin where it lays across her back.
She crumbles against him with her head tucked to his neck and the row of horns pressed uncomfortably close to the dark skin of his shoulder. “I don’t feel like me anymore, I don’t even know who I am.” But that was a lie, and she could feel the heat of it flushing in her face. She knew exactly who she had become, knew the demons in her heart and the darkness in her mind. It was just easier to pretend she didn’t.
Her mouth opens and her chest expands but no words come out. It seemed an impossible thing to explain- hands and feet and bodies that stood on only two legs. A dream that wasn’t a dream because the blue was still here and still real and he could see it too.
‘But I wish that you would.’
She pulls away from him and her eyes flash to his face, and in that moment they are every bit of her mother’s green and fire and ferocity. Don’t ever forget you wished for this, they say as they drown in the black and blue of her haunted face.
“Imagine waking up to find yourself in a dream, an impossible place, where nothing makes sense and you know things you shouldn’t, but it’s the realest thing you’ve ever experienced.” She’s incoherent in her dismay, frantic, but with wild eyes she continues anyway. “Imagine you’ve been tortured. And then imagine waking up in another not-dream to find the ones who tortured you the first time.” She pauses again to look away from him, the fever-pitch of her shame an almost unbearable heat beneath her skin. “I did, dad. And I killed them, I killed them both. And I can’t even tell you I’m sorry because I’d do it again. I’d do it every time.”
MALIS
makai x oksana