My body looked different now, full of battle scars, slimmer but no healthier, weary. One day, Rafael wouldn’t be visible on my skin at all, and would be a long distant memory. Every place he’d hurt, all the damage he’d caused, would be gone. He would be gone. From my body, from my mind, from the world. Him and everything he’d ever touched.
I hissed as I stepped into the steaming shower, the hot water making my tender skin sting even more. But Theo had insisted I get up and about today. It was too easy to sleep. To make him remain in bed with me and wallow in the warmth.
“I’ll make breakfast!” Theo yelled from the cracked-open door, a smugness in his tone for finally getting me up. We’d cleaned ourselves up, wiped the blood from the other’s skin, but that was a day ago. Since then I’d made him stay with me, sleep with me and burrow himself inside of me. Nothing frantic, nothing as wild or urgent as before, but so, so needed.
It would be so easy to settle into this domesticity. Forget the world and our problems and just live in the middle of the woods with him, my safety blanket. We could bake, learn to keep chickens and grow crops. Need nothing but each other. I frowned, even just thinking that I knew the burning desire for revenge wouldn’t be muted with time only. But the monsters were so very far away now, why invite them back in?
My skin crawled as I scrubbed it, rubbing harder and harder with the soapy washcloth. My body swarmed with the urge to make them all hurt, to make every single one of them feel what I felt. Suffer how I did. Even just a fraction of the pain would do.
How can Theo want me like this? This zombie version of the sister he used to have? Broken, damaged, sinking and sinking.
The wounds on my arms reopened as I worked on them, the soap stinging sharp, red and angry. It focused me, the pain, reminded me. This cushy life with Theo couldn’t last. It just couldn’t. It was almost a mourning.
Yes, here was lovely. This cabin, the seclusion and quiet, it was perfect with him. But I would always itch, bugs would always crawl under my skin until it was done. Until they were all dead…
And soon they would be.
This bubble was fake, so fragile, if I didn’t fix the world outside of it soon, it would leak in, ruin what I had, what we had.
They all had to die.
Theo forcing me out of bed, out of our bubble, had reawakened that aching need.
I just hoped he still wanted me after.
When I wandered into the kitchen a while later, Theo was humming to music coming from a small speaker, stirring something in a steaming pot on the stove. The sweetness of honey drifted over, and my mouth watered. His eyes caught mine when he noticed me, and he winked. Seeming so settled. I wanted to pick his brain, to steal a little of that confidence. Even in just his boxers, he looked confident, powerful.
After I’d scrubbed my skin raw in the shower, I’d sat at the end of our bed for as long as I could get away with, repainting myself to the sane woman he was expecting. He’d fucked the insanity out of me already, after all.
“What are you making?” I asked, sidling up next to him, sighing when he tucked me under his arm, kissing the top of my head while he still stirred the pot of what looked like porridge. His touch was magic, so bloody soothing. Maybe beside him, I could keep it all squashed? Lie to the world, myself, him. I’m fine.
“Porridge,” he confirmed, the mixture bubbling with wet plops. “There were oats. Old oats and powdered milk, so it’ll be shit. But still, food.”
“Yum,” I said, kissing his chin. “I’m starving.” We hadn’t eaten at all yesterday in our bedtime stupor, and my stomach was rumbling. It was a comfortable rumble though, one I knew would be satiated. Unlike before, when I starved, unsure when any food would come my way. And when it did, it was a bastard bringing it to me. I understood that now. I shook the thought out of my head and pressed my forehead against Theo’s bare chest, soaking in his comfort.
He kissed my head again and sighed. “I love you,” he murmured. “The food won’t be that bad.”
I snorted against his skin, staying as close to him as I could while the oats bubbled away. That shower was long enough. I hated being apart from him for even mere minutes. And I barely stopped touching him as we gathered bowls and spoons, and dished up our breakfast. He was my ground, my sturdy base.
We ate in comfortable silence, our feet tangled together under the table. But that something still crawled under my skin, that urge still ached in my bones. My eyes kept dropping to the marks on Theo’s chest, the healing slices, the crusted blood where he hadn’t scoured it away well enough.
As he shoveled in his food, the wounds moved with his skin, flexing, stretching and flaking. I wanted to lick them, reopen them, swim in his blood and the essence of his life. Bask in it.
I think a devil was growing deep in the pit of me. Something insidious and cruel. I wanted the pleasure of him against me, inside me, and I wanted to make those other men bleed, to die, not to relish and celebrate. It was messed up.
“You good?” Theo asked, and my eyes flickered up to his, shaking me out of my reverie.
“Yeah,” I responded, blinking. “Yeah.”
Theo’s phone buzzed when we were halfway through a movie after eating our bland sludge, undecided on how to spend the rest of our day. There was a desire to be useful, productive, but nothing here to actually even bloody do. We pottered about, cleaned up a bit and washed our clothes, the bedding, the floors. We made out on the sofa, and we walked the grounds around the cabin, mapping out the tree line and where the cameras were.
Theo insisted I still needed to heal, that I had to ignore that frantic energy inside me that demanded action and bide my time instead. So we sat. We watched rom-coms and sci-fis and whatever else took our fancy. And snuggled up with the man I loved, this inappropriate love I couldn’t be bothered to fight against, my organs still raged for vengeance. Eating at me, burrowing a tunnel toward my skin, towards my sanity.
But I breathed like nothing was wrong. I laughed like I wasn’t burning up inside.
“Hello, mate,” Theo said down the phone, his voice quiet, warm for who could only be Christian. Theo didn’t move, held me tight as he spoke, the movie still playing but ignored by the both of us. I kept my eyes on the flickering images and listened to him. His thumb rubbed on my arm, trying to ground me like he knew I’d tensed up.
For a long while, Theo just listened, occasionally making noises of assent or gentle surprise. A heaviness coated the air nonetheless, like something was brewing.
