Page 53 of Say You'll Stay
Squeezing my eyes shut, I let the dam burst in one cataclysmic deluge.
“The paranoia…the fear of being watched and followed…the lingerie disappearing piece by piece…” I have to pause, swallowing hard against the scalding bramble of tears clawing at the back of my throat as fresh mortification paints my cheeks in lurid stripes. “I think—no, I know—it’s all connected to June. And I don’t know what to do or how to make it stop.”
Louis goes rigid beside me, the reassuring warmth of his solid frame turning to chiseled marble as the harrowing truth reverberates between us in concussive waves. For one interminable heartbeat, all that exists in the universe is the strained rasp of my ruined voice managing the unfathomable: “Has June…has he truly become my tormentor?”
That single damning question unlocks the sluice holding back a virulent tide of long-suppressed emotions. A strangled noise rips free from Louis’s lips as his hands fall away from me as if my very presence is corrosive.
“No,” he rasps, anguish carving deep grooves in his striking features as he staggers back a step. “Oh god, please don’t let it be him doing this. Not June. Anyone but that twisted son of a bitch.”
He shakes his head rapidly, agitated hands raking through his overlong chestnut waves in mute denial of the reality slamming into us both with meteor force and irreparable intensity.
Hysteria bubbles up my throat in a frantic giggle edged with incipient madness, the sound seeming to come from someplace outside of my own shattering psyche. “I wish I knew for sure. But there are too many coincidences and red flags pointing back at the man I love—loved?—to keep burying my head in the sand,” I whisper, the soft timbre doing nothing to mask the seismic shift rocking my very foundations.
Louis looks as if he’s been sucker punched, the breath leaving him in a harsh wheeze. His normally whiskey-warm eyes are blown wide, entire countenance suffused with abject horror. “Cara…”
But I’m already shaking my head, plowing forward with the momentum of a scream ripping itself from the marrow of my bones. “I have to talk to him, Louis. Learn the truth, whatever the cost. It’s the only way I’ll breathe again.”
My voice drops to a caustic rasp as flayed confessions escalate into a crescendo neither of us can deny any longer. “What if my deepest fears prove true? What if denial has blinded me to being the ultimate fool? What if the love of my life is the nightmare entity engulfing me?”
Silence rings like a death knell in the wake of my keening outburst, the words hovering in the arid stillness between us with the potency of forbidden blasphemies given corporeal form. We stare at each other across an unseen chasm of gaping bewilderment and inchoate denial—two souls trapped in a cosmic scale Shakespearean tragedy where betrayal is merely the opening salvo in a downward spiral of pathos, anguish, and inevitable destruction.
I’m the first to fracture, spiderweb fissures renting the rictus facsimile of composure etched onto my face with all the depth of a hollow porcelain doll. Splinters of my fragmented self lacerate flesh and bone as I violently expel them in purging waves, making space for the roiling wasteland of misery and fear metastasizing within.
At some point, Louis’s arms enfold me, his body a steadying ballast amidst my undoing. I flail against him, fists pummeling his solid chest as raw, primal screams rent the air. Still he holds me fast, a silent comrade weathering the tempest and letting it spend itself against his ramparts.
After an eternity compressed into a single anguished breath, the maelstrom subsides into jagged, hiccuping breaths. I sag bonelessly into Louis’s embrace, words a luxury I no longer possess beyond wheezing gulps of air into constricted lungs.
Slowly, with infinite tenderness, Louis lowers us both until we’re kneeling amid the shrapnel of our fractured realities. I curl into his shelter, tethering my frayed consciousness to the steady thrum of his heartbeat as chaos screams in white static behind my eyelids. His strong fingers card through my disheveled hair, lips brushing my brow in an indelible benediction.
“I’m right here, bella,” he murmurs, the depth of his timbre resonating down to my marrow. “No matter how dark the storm gets, I’ll be your anchor. I swear it on my life.”
There will be more moments like this, I know with a fatalistic certainty that feels as old as the cosmos itself. More outpourings of devastation and terror, more incandescent rage and soul-scouring grief once we finally wrest the awful truth into immutable existence. More keening, more rending wails scraped raw from our very quintessence until we imagine we’ll never breathe without agony again.
But for this single crystalline moment frozen in amber, I allow my psyche to float untethered as Louis’s solidity moors me to shore once more. The torrent has receded for now, nothing but the detritus of our shared cataclysm strewn in its wake.
One way or another, the answers I fear more than oblivion will be exhumed. The sinister whispers and dark forebodings loosed upon my life will claw their way into the immolating light of revelation.
When that day comes, when the shroud obscuring the monster in our midst rends away to expose the full horror of its grotesquery…
I can only pray the unleashed inferno doesn’t immolate us all until nothing remains but smoldering ash and the poignant echoes of unrealized dreams.
After all, some truths are more perilous to confront than any mortal mind can truly prepare for once freed into harsh reality.
We tumble out of the theater in a rowdy pack, the stale stench of fake butter and overpriced snack fodder clinging to our clothes like a miasma. I’m still buzzing off an adrenaline high from the cinematic gore-fest, rattling off the most gloriously fucked up kill sequences with grisly glee.
“That wood chipper scene was epically vile!” Song crows, dragging his hands through his mop of hair like he’s trying to physically scrub the memory from his brain. “But also, like, insanely impressive from a technical perspective? Those practical effects were next-level seamless.”
Sonya scoffs at his transparent attempt to varnish his perving with an artsy critique. “Please, you were too busy drooling over the naked chick getting slashed in the shower to properly appreciate the nuances.”
Before Song can fire back with his typical dudebro protests about objectivity and enjoying cinema as a consummate art form, we’re interrupted by a familiar figure materializing out of the crowd.
Alex, looking like they’d rather be anywhere else, is trying to blend into the crowd. Keyword: trying.
“Alex!” I call out, waving them over with a forced grin. “Fancy seeing you here!”
They approach reluctantly, shoulders hunched and eyes darting around like a cornered animal. “Hey, Cara. Fancy that.” Their voice is strained, the usual easy charm notably absent.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” I state bluntly, crossing my arms. “Spill. What’s going on?”