His hands on my body.
Sliding down my neck and across my chest.
His palm on my breast then my stomach.
His fingers trail over my sides and my hips before I feel them along the top of my jeans, and no matter how hard I cry, no matter how loud I scream… I feel himinsideme.
“No!” I pull myself over the edge of the island, knocking my backpack on the floor as I land next to it on my back with a thud.
Everything is spinning now, spiraling out of control.
The ghosts are so much louder, and my head lolls toward them as I silently beg them to take me away.
But instead of the dimming light or the cold, black void, I seehim.I see his eyes staring back at me, shining in malice, glimmering in rage-filled glee.
You will see me.
See me.
I reach out to touch his face, to find it in the cloaked darkness I can never escape. I’m ready to accept my fate and allow him and the demons to take me away, but my hand goes through his eyes and land on something small and round.
A pill.
Tearing my gaze from his, I look to my right and see that there are pills everywhere, my prescriptions we just picked up spread all over the kitchen floor, and I know this is what the ghosts were saying.
The spirits want me to join them, and this is how.
Rolling to my side, I begin scooping up the dozens of pills off the wooden planks. Mood stabilizers and antidepressants, opiates and benzodiazepines. All life changing, life saving, but not tonight. There are at least ten prescriptions dumped out and within my reach, and I know exactly what I need to do.
Handful after handful, I eat my way to freedom, swallowing the circles and ovals dry, forcing them down my throat even when I gag.
My muscles work hard against the coating, but they do what they’re supposed to and within seconds, I’ve taken everything that was within my reach.
I start to go numb as I flop to my back, my breaths quick and shallow as I stare up at the ceiling while my pulse slows like abroken metronome. My vision blurs around the edges, growing dimmer by the second as I realize…
His voice, his touch, his eyes, they’re all gone.
A faint smile pulls at my lips as my lids grow heavy, as my body grows cold and I think,I won't be seeing him ever again.
I will see him, nevermore.
1
LEONOR
PRESENT DAY
My brows furrow and my eyes pinch tight at the low buzzing of the phone on the table next to me. It’s a rhythmic reminder, a constant humming in my head that despite my many attempts, I am in fact, still here. Alive and breathing.Existing.I have failed to disappear, and no one is going to let me be forgotten, not completely. Andthatis fucking annoying.
So is the fact that my phone has been ringing nonstop for almost two hours now. Two hours and eleven seconds based on my count, with no end in sight.
I know this because I don’t sleep anymore, not in the traditional sense, and the slightest noise will have me jolting upright faster than the speed of light.
On a good night, I may drift into a sleep-like state for an hour or two before my fear rips me from a faux slumber and the weight of my reality returns, taking its rightful place sitting heavily on my chest. A fucking elephant that won’t leave me alone.
And today, like most days, that reality comes crashing down on me in the form of repeated phone calls from the only person left to make the effort to contact me.
Without even looking I know who’s been calling, and I know exactly why they’ve been blowing my ass up, too.
