Page 42 of Lessons In Grey
“Why couldn’t you just stay away?” I whispered, my throat closing.
He groaned, stretching, and I could feel his bed move underneath me as if I were there with him. As if our souls had connected across space and time. We were no longer just bodies, we were ethereal. We were beyond this plane of existence.
“We are inevitable, baby,” he confessed on a sultry growl, “and one day I’ll fuck you until you accept it.”
My breath caught, my heart thudding against my bones. “That was brash.”
“It’s 2:26am, Snowflake, we can say anything we want and claim that our sleep-addled brains kept us from filtering out our darkest thoughts.”
Is that what this was? A portal into the neverland of truth? Anything could go. There were no laws here. No anything.
If there were no laws, did that mean there were no consequences?
If there were no consequences, did that mean I could say whatever I wanted and not ever have to deal with it?
I swallowed past the thickness in my throat, feeling the hot tears sear across my skin like white-hot steel, burning through flesh and bone. “I am just…so tired,” I whispered. “Everything hurts and I am just…I’m tired.”
He was quiet for so long, I thought he might have fallen back asleep, which wouldn’t have been the worst thing, not in a long shot. “I never told you the story behind Sirius,” he finally said, his voice as quiet as the ghosts in my head were when he spoke to me. “I was working for my father. Some low-level gunrunners were going around flaunting their money. It was November, freezing out, the middle of the night. I was following them down this alley, still soaked in ice, trashed, a real slum of a place.”
I watched as the words etched themselves into the cabinets across from me, growing and shrinking, flowing as if the world was suddenly subtitled.
“It ended in a gun fight. I took a few bullets before I got them down. I was still learning then. Good, but nowhere near great. I made a call to our cleaners, and while I was picking up my casings, I heard a little weak meow coming from a trashcan.”
My tiles had shifted into clouds, stained red.
“I was never an animal person,” he went on, oblivious to the level of insanity I was drifting towards. “We traveled so often, there was no point in growing attached, but the sound was so broken, so small, I couldn’t just leave her. So, I walked up to the trashcan, looked in, and found this black grocery sack moving around, half-buried in old Thai food. I opened it up, and this little tuff of a feral garbage cat poked its head out and immediately hissed at me. Her golden eyes were wild, just pure and untamed wildness. She was terrified, shivering, and so small. This…frail little thing.
“I looked up and down the alley, although I knew that if someone had thrown her away in a sack, they weren’t planning on coming back, so I pulled her out and wrapped her in my jacket, gave me some deep lacerations, that thing. Had to get stitches and shots. In fact, I still have a scar from her.”
A soft meow sounded all around us, and I half-wondered if maybe I had a cat.
Did I have a cat?
No, dad never wanted animals. They were too messy, too much work, too everything.
“She’s proud,” he explained softly. “I never meant to keep her, but I nursed her all night, warmed her up, gave her a bed. I couldn’t take her to some pound. They all claim to find good homes, but we all know that cats struggle to find a family.”
I swallowed, sniffing, staring at the white cabinets just in front of me, a picture of a black cat dancing across it like an old cartoon from the 60’s. “I’m not some kitten,” I told him, my voice thick with tears. “You can’t just do those things and hope I get better.”
I didn’t have a fucking cat, why was there a picture of one dancing on my cabinets? Wait, no…no, it was sleeping now. Good, that was…that was good. It needed rest.
“No, you need something different.” He was quiet a moment, and the next time he spoke, his voice held worry to it. “I know you hate it, but I need you to talk, baby. No expectations, no pressure, just talk to me.”
That word,‘baby’, it floated across my skin, grazing down my spine and across my stomach before drifting into me through my bellybutton. I could feel it warming my insides, caressing my lungs.Baby. God, I hoped he said it again just so I could feel it slither around my chest.
I blinked slowly, my body falling endlessly into the tiles. “I’m tired.” I should sleep. All of the pills had already taken effect, the bleeding wasn’t really slowing. Actually, I couldn’t tell. The blood seemed to be going up now. Raining up. Pooling above me, awarmth settling around me as if I were suddenly wrapped in a blanket of feathers. It felt good. A simmering, soft warmth. Like a hug but everywhere.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had been held. Fuck, I’d give anything to just…feelthat. To feel anything but…but this.
“I know, Emily, but I want you to explain that to me, your exhaustion. Put it into words.”
I swallowed, my tongue dry, my lips cracking. “I’m too tired to talk.”
“Emily,” he spoke, a sort of sternness to his tone that I couldn’t ignore, “tell me what’s going on in your head.”
My eyes fell shut and I wracked my mind for words, any words, just…just anything at all. “I’m a reflection of an erupting volcano filled with glass dust. I’ve been spewing and spewing and now there is just nothing left to spew. The reflection is shattering, and the volcano is ready to rest, but the shards fucking hurt.”
Rags was quiet for a few seconds, and part of me wondered if he had drifted back to sleep. “Tell me about something you love.”