Famished - Meghan O'Flynn (learn to read books TXT) 📗

No.

Dizziness tried to pull me to the floor. He was just sleeping. Tired. Everything would be better in the morning if only he could take this much-needed rest.

I should get him a blanket, I thought suddenly.

But the deep, black pool on the pristine marble was a river I could never go back across. A river that separated who I was now from the semblance of sanity I had so briefly enjoyed. The glass in my knees no longer hurt, and I longed for the pain. For now, anything felt like pleasure compared to this aching, pulsing dread that had settled into my stomach like a tumor.

Luminescent moonlight bathed the room, a room where I had been happy and in love just hours before.

Happy, because of him.

My scream echoed off the walls as if searching for someone else to hear, to understand that this was a loss so deep I could never truly recover. He had saved me in every possible way. He had proven to me that I was strong, and I had used that strength to cut him down with brutal finality.

I felt it then, a visceral snapping, a break in the rope that had held me to myself, that had bound me to a world where pain meant you were alive, if only you could put up with it. Dizziness pulled. I pushed back.

I inched forward on knees and forearms. Still-warm blood seeped into my pants, glazed my arms, my hands, my legs, until I felt like I was wrapped in a blanket of gore, coating myself in the essence of what he used to be.

I pulled myself onto him and laid my head on his bloody chest. His body felt warm against my cheek, but not warm enough. And he was still. So still. My heart seized. I gripped his shirt with quivering fingers, listening for any murmur within the recesses of his rib cage.

There was only silence.

Voices began as a tingle in the back of my mind and grew to such a violent swell that I feared they might erupt from my fractured brain and alert passersby to this horrible thing that I had done.

Run, Hannah. Run. Save yourself.

There is nothing to live for.

And suddenly, he was there, too, a voice from the past resounding through the blackness in my soul.

You’re worthless to anyone but me.

Let me show you how good it feels to make me happy.

I was five years old again, his arm around my shoulder.

Do you love me, Hannah?

Yes, Daddy.

Moonlight glinted off something in the coagulating pool near my knee.

The scalpel. I picked it up. In a way, it had ended him, but just as surely, it had ended me, or what I once had been.

I couldn’t let everyone know he had done these things. They wouldn’t—couldn’t—understand.

He had saved me. I had to find some way to save him, even a small part of him, in death.

There was resistance, a rip like paper tearing, as I brought the scalpel across his belly. His insides were warm, so warm, blood and gore and pieces of him oozing around my fingers as if they were still alive. I got hold of something and pulled. A worm, a tube. I was holding his—

Jesus.

I skittered backward, feet slipping, stomach convulsing. I was halfway to the couch before I realized I was still gripping his intestines.

“I love you,” I whispered, half expecting him to answer.

I tried to stand, but my limbs were heavy like I was dragging myself through cement. I’d never make it upstairs.

Help me, Dominic. I inched through the living room. In the mudroom, I wrenched the doorknob and fell onto the back porch, the frigid air biting at my face and arms. I dragged myself across the porch, panting and choking on tears. The bathroom door came into focus. Almost there.

But someone was watching. Someone who knew what I’d done.

I swallowed bile and peered into the blackness. “Hello?”

No response. But I felt the unseen eyes burning into me like hot pokers. Whoever was there was waiting, biding their time to attack.

Move. Now.

I lurched into the bathroom, slammed the door, and clawed the knob, blindly fumbling for the lock. My fingers were weak, but it clicked. I stumbled into the shower and collapsed against the wall, listening, waiting for the watcher to break down the door and take me.

There was nothing except my ragged breath wheezing in my ears. My oozing skin crackled and stung and throbbed. I braced myself against the wall and stripped off my clothes. Blood seeped from my mangled arm, but slower now. I turned on the water and whimpered, biting my lip as my skin shrieked from a thousand fissures. The basin went red.

I choked back a sob and turned under the spray as the cascade of water took some of the smaller shards, pushed others deeper. The basin turned pink. The wall of the shower wavered.

I turned off the water and peered out from the stall. All was quiet. The towel I wrapped around my breasts would be useless against groping fingers or a blade, but it might at least help stop the worst of the bleeding.

I unlocked the door and scanned the porch.

Nothing. But something. My heart surged.

Whether I ran, tripped, or floated, I wasn’t sure, but suddenly my feet were on marble again. I heaved the deadbolt into place.

Don’t look. Out the back windows, tree limbs twisted in the wind, and I focused on them, let them guide me forward, past the glass, past the blood, to the stairs and up. I left the stained towel on the floor and dressed my deeper wounds with the bathroom first aid kit and a roll of gauze. Some other cuts were still bleeding but they were small, hopefully, small enough to stop on their own.

Don’t think. Just move.

Jeans and a sweater. Underwear. Shoes. Q-tips. The hazy room twisted as I sucked in a breath.

I watched the trees through the windows on the way back downstairs and retrieved the book from the library. It vibrated against my skin as I picked my way into the living room—or maybe I was shaking. I dropped the book on the couch and flipped to the last page. If only it were all a dream, Alice.

I picked up the Q-tip.

Don’t look. It’s paint. It’s just paint.

When I was done, I laid the book and the makeshift pen on the ashes, stoking the embers with a nearby poker until a flame licked the leather cover, the orange and red caressing the pages, as sensual as his hands had been on my body. Greasy black smoke rose and disappeared into the dark void of the chimney.

I will not fail you.

I stood straighter, pulled by the strings of an invisible puppeteer.

You’re stronger than you think.

Everything will be okay.

As the last of the leather curled and crumbled into ash, I retrieved my purse from the kitchen, pulled the duffel over my good arm, and unlocked the back door.