THE SIGNAL (2014) dir. William Eubank

After what felt like months of no sleep, Leandro was able to figure out the riddle that haunted his sleep. Or so he thought as he took his children hand in hand towards the very tree that signed their sentence. They hadn’t lingered long, he didn’t want to be there in the first place and most definitely wouldn’t have if the riddle hadn’t ended up sending him there. It had been two days since and the very night the dreams seemed to have ceased. Lea wasn’t being too hopeful just yet, he needed a bit more time to be sure of it, but for the moment he was comfortable putting Lupe and Diego back into their beds.

Once he learned of the nightmares his own children endured, he felt it safer to sleep in one room. Lupita refused to let him in on her nightmares, but he had noticed the redness on her arms not too unlike that of Diego’s. With them in his bed it was easier for Leandro to wake them if the need arose. He hadn’t been able to sleep for a couple of nights now, doing his best to get to Diego before he screamed. Thankfully that all seemed to stop when they visited the tree so he felt a little better about tucking them each into their beds.

“Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo. Santificado sea tu nombre…” they began their nightly prayer, all kneeled on the bottom bunk while resting their elbows over the bed. Hands pressed in prayer as they leaned forward and bowed their heads. “...no nos dejes caer en malas tentaciones. Mas líbranos del mal, Amen, Amen, Amen.” Using the frame of the bed for support, Lea raised from the ground and placed a kiss on both his children’s heads before tucking them into their respective bunks. 

That night the Contreras slept soundlessly, so much so that the following morning they all decided to sleep in. Leandro less so, as he rose to make his children pancakes for breakfast with some ingredients he was able to source from the diner. He’d been mixing the batter when he heard the loud thump coming from the church entrance. “Valentina?” Leandro called out, in case she needed a hand with something large and heavy, but he heard no reply. 

Furrowing his brows, Lea set the bowl aside and wiped his hands on a nearby towel before walking onto the sanctuary. It took only a matter of seconds for him to find the source, her body hidden behind one of the pews almost completely out of sight. “Are you alright?!” Leandro called out, dropping the towel in his hand as he rushed over to her convulsing frame. Not wasting a moment longer, he reached for her shoulders putting some distance between her and the pews to prevent any further injuries.

“Meryl? Stay with me, okay?” He spoke softly, doing his best to remain as calm and collected as the moment allowed, “I’m going to turn you slightly so that you don’t choke.” Lea felt it necessary to inform her of his actions, just in case Meryl was mentally present and scared. He followed the little information he knew on handling seizures, and sat beside her on the ground while holding her at an angle. “It’s going to be alright. You’re going to be okay.”

𝗜𝗧'𝗦  𝗔𝗦  𝗜𝗙  𝗦𝗛𝗘'𝗦  𝗗𝗥𝗢𝗪𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚  𝗜𝗡  𝗛𝗘𝗥  𝗢𝗪𝗡  𝗕𝗢𝗗𝗬.  It  was  a  wretched  thing,  a  marionette  tangled  in  unseen  strings,  twisting,  snapping,  thrashing  as  though  some  ancient,  merciless  force  had  its  fingers  dug  into  the  sinew  of  her  being.  Every  muscle  wrenched  taut,  every  nerve  crackling  with  static,   her  limbs  striking  against  the  cold  wood  of  the  church  floor  in  a  grotesque  rhythm,  a  dance  of  possession  and  suffering.  She  could  feel  her  own  mind  splitting  at  the  seams,  thought  UNRAVELING  into  raw  sensation — light  and  shadow  smearing  together,  sound  dissolving  into  a  thick,  drowning  hum.  She  is  trapped  inside  the  agony,  locked  beneath  her  own  skin,  a  prisoner  rattling  the  bars  of  a  burning  cage.

And  through  the  flickering  ruin  of  her  sight,  Cheryl  stands.

Her  sister  is  still  as  a  corpse,  an  unblinking  specter  haloed  in  fractured  light,  watching  from  the  periphery  with  something  that  might  have  been  pity  or  might  have  been  hunger.  Her  image  is  distorted,  stretched  thin  like  an  ECHO  of  something  that  had  long  since  died  but  refused  to  decay.  Her  lips  moved — shaping  words  Meryl  could  not  hear,  syllables  lost  beneath  the  riptide  of  her  own  agony.  The  convulsions  tore  through  her  like  an  exorcism  gone  wrong,  but  Cheryl  did  not  reach  for  her,  did  not  try  to  soothe  or  mend.   She  only  watched.

Leandro  was  different.

The  priest’s  hands  are  firm,  grounding,  tethering  her  to  what  remains  of  reality.  There  is  something  unbearably  gentle  in  the  way  he  tries  to  steady  her,  in  the  way  he  murmured  reassurances  she  could  barely  register  through  the  shattering  of  her  consciousness.  His  voice  was  a  current,  flowing  beneath  the  surface  of  her  pain,  a  WARMTH  in  the  ruin  of  her  cold-wracked  body.  He  shifted  her  carefully,  positioning  her  at  an  angle,  cradling  her  as  if  she  was  something  fragile,  as  if  she  was  not  a  thing  already  breaking.  His  kindness  is  a  contrast  so  sharp to what she's used to  it  almost  hurt  worse  than  the  seizure  itself.

She  wanted  to  respond.  To  nod,  to  move,  to  acknowledge  him — but  she  is  nothing  more  than  a  PUPPET  of  suffering,  and  even  gratitude  is  beyond  her  reach.

Time  became  something  cruel  and  infinite.  The  agony  did  not  pass — it  bled,  it  spread,  it  consumed.  The  church  warps  around  her,  the  candlelight  bleeding  into  the  shadows,  the  faces  of  saints  in  stained  glass  twisting  into  something  unfamiliar,  something  VORACIOUS.  She  felt  herself  slip  into  the  place  between  worlds,  the  threshold  where  breath  meets  silence,  where  flesh  meets  ghost.  Cheryl  was  still waiting  there.  Always  waiting.  Her  presence  seared  into  the  fabric  of  existence  itself.

And  then,  it  stopped.

Not  in  an  instant,  not  cleanly,  but  in  a  slow,  wretched  unraveling.  The  tremors  dull  into  shudders,  the  vice  of  her  own  body’s  betrayal  loosening  by  agonizing  degrees.  She  feels  hollowed  out,  a  HUSK  left  in  the  wake  of  something  repugnant.  Sweat  clung  to  her  like  a  second  skin,  soaking  through  her  clothes,  turning  ice-cold  against  the  frigid  air  that  seeped  through  the  cracks  of  the  church.  She  was  trembling — whether  from  exhaustion  or  the  brutal  chill  that  had  sunk  into  her  bones,  she  couldn’t  tell.  The  bruises  forming  beneath  her  flesh  pulsed  in  time  with  her  ragged  breath,  proof  that  she  was  still  here,  still  real,  though  she  barely  felt  it.

Leandro  was  still  speaking.  His  voice  wove  through  the  fog  of  her  senses,  a  steady  rhythm  she  could  anchor  herself  to,  but  the  words  SWAM  together,  slipping  through  her  grasp  like  smoke.  She  stares  past  him,  beyond  the  veil  of  the  living,  her  eyes  finding  Cheryl  once  more.

Her  sister  had  NOT  moved. Still  standing.  Still  watching. Still  there.

The  words  of  the  riddle  oscillating  at  the  edge  of  her  mind,  curling  through  the  cracks  of  her  scattered  thoughts.  I  grow  until  the  day  I  die.  You’ve  seen  me  once,  if  you  don’t  see  me  now  you  won’t  survive. And  somewhere  in  the  abyss  of  her  exhaustion,  she  understood: a  tree. Roots  gripping  deep,  branches  reaching  for  a  sky  it  will  never  touch.  A  thing  both  living  and  dying  at  once,  a  body  turned  to  ash  if  burned,  to  rot  if  cut,  to  RUIN  if  forgotten.   A  thing  she  would  have  to  see  again  if  she  wanted  to  live. The  answer  had  been  there  all  along.

Meryl  exhaled.  A  sharp,  shuddering  breath.  The  first  she  had  taken  in  what  felt  like  an  eternity.  Her  hand  shoots  out,  bony  and  trembling,  locking  around  his  wrist  with  a  STRENGTH  that  shouldn't  have  left  in  her.  Wild-eyed,  sweat-drenched,  her  breath  torn  from  her  in  ragged,  frantic  gasps,  she  screams.  Not  a  wail  of  pain  nor  panic,  but  a  sound  almost crude  with  revelation,  guttural  and  unrelenting,  the  words  tearing  themselves  from  the  depths  of  her  throat  as  though  they  had  been  locked  there  for  centuries:

❛ HELP ME, PLEASE! ❜

Her  voice  cracked,  the  heaviness  of  the  enigma  crashing  through  the  stagnant  air  like  a  death  knell,  like  a  prophecy  RIPPED  from  the  lips  of  the  forsaken.  The  church  walls  seemed  to  tremble  with  the  force  of  it,  the  candlelight  flickering  as  if  recoiling  from  her,  from  the  thing  that  had  been  birthed  in  that  moment  of  horror.  And  then,  as  quickly  as  it  had  come,  the  fire  within  her  guttered  out,  her  grip  loosening,  her  body  collapsing  back  into  itself,  empty,  spent,  trembling  against  the  wooden  floor. When  her  eyes finally  lift again,  the  world  exhales — and  her  sister  is  nothing  but  an  absence,  a  whisper  unraveled,  a  shadow  devoured  by  the  dark.

To Shaw, sunlight was not always a welcomed thing. The promise of a new day was just as much a confirmation of the horrors that came in the night. There would be no more dark to soften the wreckage, by which the town could attempt to obscure the destruction that had been left in the wake of Their arrival. The imminent glare of sunlight and the world moving despite had dragged it all into focus. The sun, and the life it had been meant to promise, contorted into a mocking thing that would cast light unto death with neither mercy nor care. 

Just the same, a clinic could be an institution for healing as it was merely a holding room for death. Shaw would never take for granted the days—even weeks—when quietude would befall it, intrusions made manifest only in treatable wounds and bodies. Suffering then that could be contained. At times something even like warmth could befall its halls: indulgences from a spark of a match struck in the worn strip of its box, the slow burn and bloom of a cigarette, the tarnished ashtray to the side of the window. Flickers of images of a company favored, of smoke and breathy sighs curled against their throat. Shaw would have liked more of those colored fragments that could be held against the gray of the clinic’s walls but it was not quite a place for growing, only a pastiche of it. Of restitching wounds and reorganizing bones back into place, mending, not letting bodies sink down into themselves. 

And if day broke, if the doctor couldn’t quite save them—

Shaw preferred not to live in those moments. When loss finally came. The immediate aftermath of it, and the aftermaths still to come. Grief could only ever be described as a runoff, something that the town had held in abundance. There was never a seasonality to death, no clouds by which its presence would be heralded. Nothing so mundane as a seasonal disease or an outbreak would number their days. The creatures had made that decision for them. Had made the decision, in all the time the doctor had been here, fifteen years ago, five years ago, a year ago. The night before. 

“I’m not here to ask you to let her go. Or to forget her.” Shaw met Meryl’s eyes then. Did not falter. Let themselves be undeterred by her rising anger and the merging of their shadows in the changing light.  “I wouldn’t insult you like that.” 

The doctor stood there, now. Taking it all in. Bore witness to the contortion of her words and laughter so cutting that it had inflicted its own wound. A knife twisted against itself. Shaw stood still, folded their arms. Not quite to protect themselves from the harm weaned from the other’s grief but merely to contain themselves. Later, the doctor would ask what could be done to help salve Meryl’s despair. For now, Shaw would let this moment linger, when the loss had begun to sink through. To gather the slightest remains of life left and to let it dissolve into her being. After today, after the burial—this town would not afford Meryl the luxury of grieving. 

“I do understand.” A quiet offering, then, but that was that. Knew better than to locate themselves against the sentiments of another. Here grief was almost a rite of passage if not something that had arrived, a prelude of whatever there was still to come. “But this is your grief, not mine. That anger will hollow you out.” 

Their mask of indifference would not easily waver. Not when Shaw had had much practice. Time had passed, and would pass again, and while they might attach some mileposts to mark memories worth remembering and perhaps even relieving, it was impossible not to be desensitized to it. How it had been a while since they held people with a different eye. More tender, perhaps. Gentler. More befitting the bedside manner doctors of their past had told them to emulate. But this town took, indiscriminately and without grace. Time blurred. People, too. It was not only impossible to unsmudge the lines; it was also painful. 

“Right now, time is all I can give.” They paused, letting the words settle in the air between them, “So are you going to take it?”

𝗧𝗛𝗘  𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗗𝗦  𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗖𝗞  𝗛𝗘𝗥  𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗘𝗥  𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗡  𝗦𝗛𝗘  𝗪𝗔𝗦  𝗪𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗚  𝗧𝗢  𝗔𝗗𝗠𝗜𝗧.  It's  not  a  blade  but  something  worse,  something  deeper — words  that  don't  cut  clean,  but instead  fester  beneath  the  skin  like  an  infection  that  no  knife  could  excise.  She  thought she had  built  herself  from  fire,  from  steel,  from  the  brittle  edges  of  barely  held-together  rage,  and  yet  here  Shaw  stood,  not  backing  away,  not  offering  FALSE  comfort,  but  holding  up  a  mirror  to  the  rawness  of  it  all.  Meryl  felt  her  fury  begin  to  collapse  in  on  itself,  curling  inward  like  something  withering,  something  caving  beneath  its  own  unbearable  weight,  its  own  inevitability.

She  had  been  trying  to  outrun  it,  trying  to  shroud  her  grief  in  anger  because  it  was  the  only  shape  she  had  ever  known  that  did  not  render  her  weak.  Anger  was  structure,  it  was  walls  and  barriers,  it  was  teeth  bared  in  defiance  of  the  world she had faced before this place.  But  now — now  the  walls  were  crumbling,  the  mortar  turned  to  dust,  and  the  foundations  cracking  beneath  the  ponderousness  of  something  too  vast,  too  CONSUMING.  She  could  feel  the  truth  of  it  pressing  in,  suffocating,  filling  the  vacuous  spaces  inside  her  like  a  rising  tide,  like  hands  tightening  around  her  throat.  There's  nowhere  to  run  now.  No  refuge,  no  escape.  Only  the  unbearable  light  of  day  spilling  like  blood  across  the  cold,  lifeless  world  she  had  tottered  into.  Meryl  stumbled  backward,   as  if  Shaw’s  presence  alone  had  struck  her  physically,  as  if  the  sheer  force  of  reality  had  finally  knocked  the  breath  from  her  lungs.  The  room  felt  smaller,  the  walls  closing  in,  stretching  long  shadows  that  curled  like  reaching  hands,  grasping,  pulling  her  under.  She  tries  to  summon  the  rage  again,  tries  to  call  forth  the  fire,  but  all  that  comes  is  exhaustion,  an  emptiness  so  vast  it  swallowed  thought  and  left  her  standing  on  the  precipice  of  nothingness.

Her  knees  buckle  before  she  even  realize  she  is  falling,  her  body  crumbling  beneath  the  sheer  weight  of  it.  She  hits  the  ground  hard,  but  she  barely  registers  it.  Her  hands,  shaking,  curled  against  the  floor,  fingers  twitching  as  though  searching  for  something,  ANYTHING,  to  hold  onto.  But  there  was  nothing.  There  was  no  hand  to  reach  for,  no  steady  presence  beside  her anymore, the only one she had always sanctioned and embraced in turn.  Cheryl  was  gone.   Gone  in  a  way  that  was  irreversible,  absolute.  Gone  in  a  way  that  no  amount  of  screaming,  no  amount  of  fury,  could  ever  change.  The  tears  came  then — not  in  heaving  sobs,  not  in  gasping  wails,  but  in  silent,  unrelenting  streams  that  burn  hot  trails  down  her  cheeks. 

It  was  an  unraveling,  a  shattering,  a  breaking  so  deep  she  thought  she  might  never  piece  herself  back  together.  The  world  outside  the  clinic  continued  on,  unbothered  by  her  devastation.  The  sun  would  still rise,  and  people  would  move,  and  life  would  continue  despite  the  gaping,  EMPTY  wound  that  had  torn  through  her.  The  birds  would  sing  their  wretched  songs,  and  the  wind  would  still  whisper  through  the  trees,  as  if  the  world  itself  had  not  just  caved  in  on  her.

She  lifted  her  head,  eyes  glassy  and  unseeing,  staring  through  Shaw  as  if  looking  past  them,   looking  at  something  ONLY  she  could  see.  The  silence  between  them  stretches  taut,  a  thread  that  might  snap  with  the  wrong  breath.  She  opens  her  mouth,  but  the  words  come  gradually,  dragging  from  the  depths  of  her  chest  like  something  buried  long  ago,  something  that  should  have  remained  untouched.

❛ I  don’t  know  what  to  do  now. ❜ Meryl  let  out  a  breath — ragged, uneven.  A  breath  that  held  no  answer,  only  capitulation.  The  fight  is  gone.  The  indignation  absent.  All  that  was  left  was  her,  kneeling  on  the  clinic  floor,  drowning  in  a  DOLOR  too  vast  to  name.  And time  is  the  only  thing  remaining.

Dayn paused, brows raised slightly in wait for the next piece of the puzzle to come out of her, hanging on the edge of the maybe until he realized there wasn't anything that was going to come after it. He couldn't have given a more apt description - just clone him, and there you have it, there was Joel.

He looked around, back to where he came from, shoving one cold hand in his pocket, the other's thumb pressing to his mouth as he nervously picked at the nail with his teeth, and wondering where the hell his brother could have possibly gone to. Was he really going to have to knock on every door of every woman he could think of here? That would take way too long. It took him a moment, to register the way her eyes raked over him - not in a way he would have liked and immediately on with a grin and a far looser body language, but one that was more studious. People like that always made him a little nervous, like they knew something about him that he himself didn't even know. What could she see in him? Did she know him?

"You'd think, yeah," he nodded, unconsciously aiming himself away from her, from her intense scrutiny, but keeping his tone light nonetheless. It was a balancing act he had grown to be something of an expert at over the years - of keeping true intentions buried underneath seemingly uncaring, unaffected demeanors. "Well, historically speaking, I'm the one who's a bit better at disappearing," he joked, rather dryly. "I got here first."

𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗬𝗟  𝗛𝗔𝗗  𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗡𝗧  𝗧𝗛𝗘  𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗧  𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗛  𝗪𝗔𝗟𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚  𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛  𝗔  𝗣𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗧𝗢𝗠.  Not  the  kind  that  rattled  chains  or  whispered  in  the  night ( well at least not all the time ),  but  the  kind  that  lived  inside  the  vacant  space  between  her  costae,  pressing  COLD  fingers  against  her  lungs  whenever  she  breathed  too  deep.  This place  had  taken  her  sister  the  first  night,  swallowed  her  whole  like  the  greedy,  aching  thing  it  was,  and  left  Meryl  standing  in  the  wreckage,  searching  the  faces  of  strangers  for  a  reflection  she  would  never  find  again.

And  now — this  young man  stands  before  her,  worrying  at  his  fingernail  with  his  teeth,  shifting  his  weight  like  a  skittish  animal,  speaking  of  his  twin  like  it  is  a  certainty.  Like  it  is  a  given  that  somewhere  in  this  town,  his  other  half  was  still  out  there,  still  breathing,  still  CONNECTED  to  him  in  ways  she  could  barely  stomach  thinking  about.

It  was  envy,  sharp  and  bright  as  a  cut-glass  edge,   that  bloomed  first  inside  her  chest.

She  shoves  it  down.  Stomps  it  out.

He  had  angled  himself  away  from  her,  like  her  gaze  was too heavy,  like  it  pressed  too  laboriously  against  his  skin,  and  for  once,  she  didn’t  relish  the  discomfort.  He  was  trying  to  keep  something  buried,  but  Meryl  had  spent  too  long  watching  men  PRETEND they  were  untouchable  not  to  see  through  it.  He  was  worried.  He  was  unraveling. She  knows  what  that  feels  like almost too intimately. His  joke  is  thrown  like  a  coin  into  dark  water — something  light,  something  casual,  meant  to  smooth  over  the  sharp  edges  of  the  conversation.  I  got  here  first.  A  truth  tucked  beneath  a  laugh.  A  confession  dressed  in  something  that probably held more weight.

Meryl  let  it  settle  between  them,  let  the  words  roll  over  her  before  deciding  she  isn’t  CRUEL  enough  to  let  them  go  unanswered.

❛ Can’t say I’ve run into your long-lost reflection anywhere around here, ❜  Though  her  tone  is  flat,  clipped,  there  is  something  steadier  beneath  it  now,  something  less  BARBED.

She  had  no  softness  to  offer,  but  she  had  understanding,  and  sometimes  that  was  better.

Her  arms  loosened,  just  slightly,  her  stance  no  longer  braced  like  she  was  expecting  something  sharp  to  come  from  him  next.  ❛ People  don’t  just  disappear  here. ❜  Her  voice  dipped,  almost  unconsciously,  into  something  darker.  A  bitter  edge  curling  at  the  corners  of  her  mouth.  Not  unless  this  place  takes  them. She  didn’t  say,   like  it  took  my  sister. Didn’t  need  to. Instead,  her  eyes  flick  past  him,  out  to  the  docks,  the  boats  bobbing  on  the  tide,  the  lazy  sprawl  of  the  town  beyond.  She  looks  even  though  she  knows  it  is  useless.  Even  though  she  has  spent  weeks  looking  for  someone  who will  never  surface again, their new resting place now six feet under.

Still,  she  didn’t  leave.  Didn’t  turn  away. ❛ Do you know at least know where  was  he  last? ❜  she  asked. It  is  something.  It  was  more  than  she  usually  gave. And  maybe  it  is  SELFISH,  this  small  act  of  kindness.  Maybe  it  is  just  a  way  to  claw  back  at  fate,  to  tip  the  scales,  to  spit  in  Arcadia’s  face  and  say:  You  can’t  have  this  one,  too.

Interview with the Vampire I Want You More Than Anything in the World

It was already bad enough when he was alone here, when it was his own skin he had to worry about. And while Dayn was overjoyed (in a completely selfish way) that Joel was here with him, to endure something similar to what he had to, something they could actually share in, it meant that he worried more. Before, it would be easy to think that in danger, or in any circumstance that necessitated strategy, a plan of action, he only had to think about himself. Now, with Joel, there were backup plans upon backup plans.

They were not getting separated again, if he could help it.

And he knew Joel thought the same about him. They both always had their own reasons for trying to protect the other, with anything. They were each the other's biggest weak points in their armor. It could have very well been a dangerous thing here, but it was non-negotiable.

It was also why he was a little frantic this afternoon, with the day growing longer and he hadn't seen his brother since this morning when they both woke up. Knowing him and the various conquests he had already acquired in his short time here, the obvious answer was with one of them. But he didn't know where to look, and they usually had an agreement that they would be back at a certain time - this was cutting it close. He liked the docks, and the water, Dayn thought - it was pretty enough to draw, and that was as telltale a sign as any to where the other Thompson could be. Though he turned up short, he still called out to a woman walking towards one of the boats, yelling a "Hey!" for attention, and a little wave as he strode over. "Hi, sorry-- have you seen a guy that looks exactly like me wandering around here today?" he asked. "Not like, creature or anything, we're just twins." *// @h4ngedmcn

𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗥  𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗖𝗘  𝗦𝗛𝗘  𝗙𝗜𝗥𝗦𝗧  𝗦𝗘𝗧  𝗙𝗢𝗢𝗧  𝗜𝗡  𝗔𝗥𝗖𝗔𝗗𝗜𝗔,  Meryl  had  been  raw  nerve  and  tightened  sinew,  strung  taut  like  a  wire  humming  in  the  wind.  This  place  has  teeth,  hidden  in  the  cracks  of  aged cobblestone  and  the  hush  of  lapping  waves,  in  the  slow-turning  heads  and  the  glint  of  watchful  eyes.  There  is  SOMETHING  about  it — something  slanted,  something  that  never  quite  sits  right.  A  town  of  whispers.  A  town  of  waiting.

And  it  had  already  taken  her  sister.

The  first  night.  The  first  damn  night.

It was almost as if Meryl  had  blinked,  and  she  was  gone.  Arcadia had  ripped  her  apart,  just  like  it  wanted  to  do  to  ANYONE  who  wasn’t  fast  enough,  sharp  enough,  wary  enough.  And  every  day  since,  Meryl  had  walked  its  streets  with  a  blade  hidden  at  her  hip  and  her  shoulders  squared  against  the  weight  of  its  silence,  hunting  for  a  ghost  she  refused  to  believe  was  dead. Arcadia  had  made  her  sharper,  quicker.  It  had  forced  her  to  be. So  when  the  voice  cut  through  the  heavy  afternoon  air — blaring,  sudden — her  whole  body  tenses  like  a  thread  pulling  tight  enough  to  snap.  Her  fingers  twitched  toward  the  hilt  at  her  hip  before  she  even  turned  her  head,  already  bracing  for  WHATEVER  mess  had  come  to  find  her.

A  man.   That  was  bad  enough.

An  unfamiliar  one,  moving  toward  her  with  the  loose,  easy  swagger  of  someone  who  had  never  once  been  told  to  watch  his  step.  Worse.

She  shifts,  weight  evening  out,  grounded  but  primed  to  move,  boots  pressing  into  the  damp  wood  of  the  dock.  Before this hell  she was  already  watchful,  hyper-aware,  listening  for  the  space  between  sounds,  always  tracking  the  shift  of  movement  in  her  periphery from the NIGHTMARE of her own childhood home.  And  now,  here,  she  studies  him  with  the  same  measured  attention  she  gave  anyone who stood too close. He  speaks,  and  she  lets  the  words  hit  her,  lets  them  settle  without  letting  them  in.  There  is  something  practiced  in  his  tone,  something  careless  in  the  way  he  occupies  space  like  it  belongs  to  him. 

Her  expression  doesn’t  change,  but  something  in  her  stiffens,  a  barely-there  flick  of  her  gaze  that  betrays  her  VIGILANCE.  She  exhaled  slow,  steady.  Measured.

❛ Maybe. ❜

That  was  all  he  got.  No  invitation.  No  explanation.

Then  more  words — too  many  words.

She  almost  scoffs,  but  the  instinct  is  BURIED  under  sharper  things.  Instead,  her  head  tilts  just  slightly,  the  closest  thing  she  allows  to  a  reaction.  Two  of  them,  then. Twins.

Her  eyes  flicked  over  him once more,  intense,  assessing.  Broad-shouldered  but  not  imposing,  something  restless  in  his  hands — like  they  were  used  to  holding  something  but  weren’t,  now.  A  blade?  A  gun?  A  habit?  It  put  her  on  edge.  Men  with  empty  hands  were  men  waiting  to  take  something. Her  gaze  flits  past  him,  scanning  the  shifting  tide  of  people,  the  sway  of  boats  moored  to  their  wooden  skeletons. Perhaps, this young man simply is just harmless but she doesn't know how to be anything else. 

She  finally  speaks,  words  edged  and  honed  as  the  pocket knife  she  carried.

❛ If  he  looks  exactly  like  you,   you’d  think  he’d  be  easier  to  find. ❜ Her  tone  is  dry,  unimpressed.  Not  a  joke.  Not  friendly.  Just  an  OBSERVATION  carved  out  of  impatience.  Her  mouth  presses  into  a  thin  line.  ❛ You  sure  he  didn’t  just  figure  out  how  to  disappear? ❜

Because  people  did  that  here. DIED.

Meryl  didn’t  move.  Didn’t  blink.

She  had  learned  to  listen  to  her  instincts,  and  her  instincts  ALWAYS told  her  that  everyone and everything needs watching, until otherwise earned.

In Arcadia, only death held permanence. 

It was days like these when Shaw realized how much they had taken the quiet of the clinic for granted. Certainly, there were days and nights mellower than others, when work came as a slow, but steady trickle. Stitching skin, resetting bones, dispensing what little they could offer. The roll call of familiar faces and the predictable reasons from which they had gotten hurt. It was the closest thing to routine to which the doctor could orient themselves, having collapsed now into a familiar pattern of hurt and healing. It was the disruptions to the routine that had unsettled them most, and Shaw made it a point not to settle into a single memory for too long and too intensely. They had become conscious of both external and internal stimuli that would provoke something in them beyond what was needed in their profession. A strong mind would always be the best defense against those creeping thoughts, unwelcome recollections, and regrets that had flashed in their mind more vividly than others. 

Yet, for as much as the mind could be resilient, the body could never hold that same discipline. It demanded attention. It demanded to remember. 

Shaw had insisted on seeing her. Seeing them both. They had not been an active participant when the catastrophe had struck—had been somewhere else, surrounded by fields of green, an attempt at something like living. It was incidents like these that reminded them that the clinic and its sparse attendants could only do so much without their guiding hand. Over the years, they had become its de facto leader, hough the criteria that needed to be met were already so narrow. Had held the position only by virtue of technicality, by the fact that they had not yet folded under the burden of its expectations. Shaw was among the few people who would not cave completely: their jaw always pressed taut, muscles wound, wrung, and held. Yet even the doctor would concede that on the worst days, what they did could no longer qualify as healing. They could offer advice, support, even affection, and care, or stitch a body back into shape and coax a heart to beat a little longer. But the monsters would only ever be an inevitability. All they could do at that point was for the bodies to be preserved as much as they could, to be redrawn back into their familiar contours and order. Yet they had lost count of how many times there had been a need for a closed casket all the same. 

There would be no cure to it. So many had fallen now. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. The graveyard with all its unmarked graves and stones had stretched to the point of innumerability. Shaw did not deign to count at all. 

Against the doorframe, Shaw held the thicker blanket in their hands. They stopped, still, and watched the other woman as she watched the other in the cot. Silently. Deliberately. Curiosity stirred despite themselves. They’d always wondered what it was like, to be of one and the same nature as another. To not have come into the world alone just as they had. They wondered whether it felt like an extension of oneself, a mirror, or something else entirely. 

What happens when that connection would be severed? They recalled that the first principle of recovery was through the empowerment of the survivor. Would it make a difference if the person who had fallen was your own face staring back? 

The sheet draped over the body was such a slip of a thing. Shaw would have to ask about it soon. More threads to be spooled into fabric, more cloth to be woven into something whole. 

Was it time, then, to announce their presence? Shaw had committed to stepping back but the ineptitude of the nurse provoked something like indignation, however displaced. The nurse was only doing their best. It was a strange role to play, this act of healing. It would not get any easier. Each experience of profound grief would be so different; the challenge was not to be swallowed by it and be infected with the resulting hopelessness. Shaw had trained themselves against it, to become this hardened thing, though their heart remained carelessly tender. 

It would be that same instinct, then, that provoked them to break their stillness. Cheryl’s hand had slipped from the thin sheet. The skin was now left bare, unguarded. Shaw pressed forward from the doorframe where their body had settled and towards the cot. At the very least, they thought, Meryl was spared an audience to her grief. The remaining beds in the clinic had been empty. 

With small, practiced movements, Shaw took the hand—not to hold, not to comfort, those points all moot now—and tucked it back beneath the fabric and then pressed the larger sheet into place. The body now firmly out of view. 

Turning on their heel, Shaw watched the other woman. It was the silence that they’d dreaded most. For all their attempts at making this easier, the words could never come correctly. There was nothing like death but death. Nothing like grief. Just grief. Their heart tipped sideways, but tears had not come readily anymore. 

“I could leave you alone.” But as they turned to face her, it was not coldness that blanketed their expression. Just—understanding. “If you needed more time to say goodbye.”  

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗟𝗗 𝗛𝗔𝗦 𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗗,  and  yet  the  sun  had  the  audacity  to  rise.

The  light,  weak  and  thin  through  the  cloth-covered  windows,  cut  across  the  cot  in  jagged  streaks.  It  did  not  warm,  did  not  heal,  only  ILLUMINATES.  A  cruel  and  artless  revelation.  It  slithers  over  the  contours  of  the  body  beneath  the  sheet — her  body,  their  body.  The  only  body  that  had  ever  mattered.  It  was  obscene,  this  mockery  of  morning,  the  way  the  world  still  DARED  to  turn,  as  though  it  had  not  just  carved  her  in  two  and  left  her  there,  dissected  and  alone.  The  air  remains stagnant,  thick  with  the  scent  of  stillness,  of  finality,  of  death  that  has  settled  into  the  walls  like  an  unholy  specter.  The  dust  in  the  air  caught  in  the  light  like  fragmented  ghosts,  whispering  in  a  language  only  grief  could  decipher.  It  is  an  intrusion,  this  daylight — slicing  through  the  sacred  darkness  of  mourning,  dragging  her  unwillingly  toward  a  future  she  could  not  fathom  surviving.

Cheryl.

The  name  was  a  prayer  she  can  not  speak.  It  festers  in  the  back  of  her  throat,  raw  and  swollen  with  unshed  screams,  curdling  like  spoiled  milk  upon  her  tongue.  To  say  it  aloud  would  be  to  call  forth  a  specter,  to  invite  the  truth  to  consume  her  whole.  Her  lips  part,  tremble,  but  no  sound  came.  As  if  the  mere  act  of  UTTERANCE  might  solidify  the  nightmare,  might  carve  it  into  the  nucleus  of  her  bones  with  a  permanence  she  could  never  undo.  Silence,  then.  Silence  is  the  only  mercy  she  could  afford  herself.  And  yet,  even  that  mercy  was  cruel,  a  suffocating  thing,  pressing  into  her  chest  with  the  weight  of  a  thousand  unspoken  words.  Her  ears  rang  with  phantom  echoes,  the  sound  of  Cheryl's  laughter  lost  in  the  spaces  between  heartbeats,  slipping  further  and  further  from  reach.

Meryl  has  been  still  for  so  long  she  might  as  well  have  been  petrified,  a  relic  of  grief,  something  carved  by  sorrow’s  cruelest  hands.  Her  arms  hang  at  her  sides,  fingers  trembling  in  minuscule,  broken  spasms,  the  phantom  of  Cheryl’s  touch  still  pressing  against  her  palm.  She  still had  not  blinked,  had  not  breathed,  had  not  moved  since  the  moment  they  had  taken  her  sister’s  hand  and  folded  it  beneath  the  shroud.  That  movement — so  small,  so  seemingly  insignificant — had  RIPPED  her  open  in  a  way  she  had  not  thought  possible.  It  is  finality  given  form.  A  wound  shaped  like  the  girl  she  had  been  before  this  moment,  before  this  morning,  before  she  had  been  severed from the other half of her soul  and  left  to  fester  in  her  own  skin.  Her  chest  heaves,  breath  stuttering,  but  it  is  not  truly  breath — it  is  survival's  cruel  imitation,  a  mockery  of  life  in  a  body  that  is  now  half-dead.

Shaw  spoke.

A  sound.  A  voice.  Something  from  outside  the  ruin  of  her  own  mind,  something  unwanted,  something  unwelcome.

Meryl  moves,  at  last,  with  the  slow,  deliberate  precision  of  a  blade  being  drawn  from  its  sheath.  Her  hands  flexed,  curled,  uncurled,  the  tremors  of  something  barely  restrained  quaking  through  her  bones.  Her  breath — no,  not  breath,  but  something  fractured  and  AGONIZING — raked  its  way  up  through  her  diaphragm,  scraping  against  her  throat  like  shards  of  glass.  Her  body  rebels  against  itself,  the  sheer  impossibility  of  subsistence  thrumming  through  every  nerve,  every  bone,  every  tendon  stretched  taut  to  the  breaking  point.  The  walls  feel  as  though  they  are  closing  in,  pressing  against  her,  trapping  her  in  this  grotesque  tableau  of  loss.

Their  words.  They  had  spoken  as  if  any  of  this  was  something  she  could  endure,  something  she  could  OUTLIVE.  As  if  she  would  not  rather  rip  her  own  heart  from  her  chest  than  let  time  drag  her  forward,  inch  by  torturous  inch,  away  from  the  only  person  she  had  ever  loved.

Meryl  turned  to  Shaw,  gradually,  wanton.   Her  eyes — hollowed  out,  burned-out  husks  where  something  like  life  had  once  flickered — fixed  upon  them  with  the  cold,  quiet  focus  of  a  woman  staring  down  the  executioner  who  had  already  swung  the  blade.

❛ Leave  me  alone? ❜

The  words  oozed  from  her  lips  like  oil,  thick  and  cloying,  slow  to  ignite  but  waiting  to  burn.  She  took  a  step  toward  them,  and  it  felt  as  though  the  very  air  in  the  room  recoiled,  the  weight  of  her  grief  pressing  outward  like  a  living  thing.  ❛ Leave  me  alone? ❜  Her  laughter  came  then,  sharp  and  brittle,  like  bones  SPLINTERING beneath  an  unrelenting  heel.  It  is  not  laughter  at  all,  not  really — more  a  sound  of  something  unhinged,  something  jagged  and  wounded,  something  that  should  not  exist.  ❛ What  a  luxury  that  must  be.  To  leave.  To  be  able  to  walk  away. ❜

Her  breath  hitches,  shudders,  catches  against  the  sharp  edges  of  her  ribs  before  escaping  in  something  close  to  a  sob,  something  she  would  not  allow  to  take  shape.  She  felt  it — felt  the  rage,  rising  like  bile,  thick  and  hot,  setting  FIRE  to  the  numbness  that  had  settled  like  frost  in  her  veins.  Anger  was  all  she  had  now.  Anger  was  the  only  thing  that  made  sense.  The  only  thing  that  did  not  crush  her  beneath  its  weight.  It  surges  through  her,  setting  her  blood  alight,  filling  the  empty  spaces  inside  her  with  something  violent,  something  alive.

❛ How  dare  you? ❜  she  whispers,  stepping  closer,  her  shadow  spilling  over  them  both  like  the  tide  dragging  something  unwilling  into  the  abyss.  ❛ How  dare  you  stand  there,  breathing,  speaking,  existing?  How  dare  you  tuck  her  away  like  she  is  something  that  can  be  put  aside?  Something  that  can  be  forgotten? ❜

Meryl’s  voice  cracked,  splintering  like  ice  underfoot,  and  she  welcomed  it.  She  wanted  to  break.  She  wanted  the  whole  world  to  split  apart  beneath  her,  to  FRACTURE  and  crumble  and  be  swallowed  whole  by  the  howling  void  that  had  taken  root  inside  her  chest.  She  wanted  to  make  Shaw  recognize,  to  carve  this  agony  into  their  skin  so  they  might  carry  even  a  sliver  of  it,  so  they  might  taste  what  it  was  to  drown  in  sorrow  with  no  hope  of  surfacing.

❛ You  don’t  get  to  stand  there  and  act  as  if  you  understand, ❜  she  hisses.  ❛ You  don’t  get  to  talk  to  me  like  I  will  ever,  ever  be  able  to  say  goodbye. ❜

Languorous months pass in wroth chimes,   constituting the brickwork of you.     Within the mortar,   there are grey gasps and pink-pasted eyes.     Reddened by your touch,   and then blackened by your heart.     It is there,   in your residual thump,   living swallowed seconds,   that he resides and wrests life from the beat of it.     Another punch through the gap between blood-pulses.     One,   singular:   that is what the afterlife makes you,   and all it permits atop the bridge to the living.     He was there when you waded through Russian ice   –   blue in its sky-reflection;   the mark yet unspilled   –   into tepid Arcadian soil.     When life shifted to the next,   he was there.     Alacrious   /   Awake.     And he was here,   after the month struck eight,   for the first reprise of your gelid endings.     White snow and whiter toes,   entrapped by bark-swollen earth and the stretching slant of moon-soaked grins.     Teeth without lips.     Partially flayed cheeks.     Harkening back to your military days:   the drills that dubbed you Zero,   and the wrongly bent elbows that soldered it into place.     Vagarious advents.     And she is here now.     The snow has returned,   days after meeting this woman.     This talcum-cress woman,   clinging to the serrated edge of her own undoing.     Loud as his shared womb.     All jugular,   and no will to rip with your own nails.     To sow atrocity into yourself.

Her court name was Meryl Silverburgh.     She said it days before,   in sight of an exit’s comfort,   like she must sever it from her throat.     Abrupt yet un-swallowed.     As if she couldn’t bear neither eye nor ear.     The word hurts,   then,   when spoken.     Like an improper pulse wedged within a composed heartbeat.     I see all you are,   for it is in me.     On television,   her voice couldn’t waver in its dense watch.     Eyes beyond her world,   yet of her tenor.     His eyes.     His stringent gaze that would,   one day,   look upon pixel made flesh.     And how wan it has become.     The room was sunless,   yet each curl glistened like a glassing eye.     Raw with the prospect of the rest of her life.     The scored body blasphemes in its proximity to humanity.     You bleed,   therefore you are.     YOUR RIB IN ANOTHER HEART.     This is a living twin’s mellifluous toll.     I breathe,   therefore you aren’t.     She might think it’s her own heart   –   for it drums,   invitingly,   near the grave   –   peeling love from wickered tendon.     Weary bones encased in evermore child-flesh,   mortified in place by father-hands.     They would be red,   like his father’s,   and overbearing,   unlike his father’s.     You know the truth of meat.     Of how marrow writes on its cloak of bone.     The skin of the eaten,   and the teeth of the eating.     You were born sliced.     You are the uneaten one.     And so,   you will eat.

Within that courtroom,   she loved needling word,   spoken and written,   to catch on spectator’s breath as it had embedded within her own throat.     Life-long relics from another’s sin.     A howl cast into newspaper’s wind until it finds her own typewriter,   word beyond lip and tooth.     How the televised want to make their image unpalatable to an adoring mass.     There would be a blank page,   and she would finally find herself.     Crimson silence settles in the aftermath   –   clenched jaw and pen-knife in hand   –   and in the written account of it.     There is finality to pen on paper.     The fact is no longer simple.     It is truth.     The precarity pronounces itself when your ears wed your eyes.     You heard,   once,   but can you bear to read?     To separate fact from its definition.     She could be a case study.     [   HER FATHER IS KILLED BY HER HAND.     HER UNREPENTING HAND.   ]     He knows the sculpt of her scene,   the god-sent paintbrush that carves hollows to her cheekbone.     The unlit corridors:   wood-slat floored,   gritty in its aged unclean;   bare of life yet full of breath.     Coyote-yowled night.     Settling grass after timed water jets.     The heartbeat in her wrist,   reaching to the tips of her nails,   brushing against the knife’s hilt.     Her drying taste buds.     His home   /   Your house.     This pay-off must define the rest of her life,   for this routine is outlined in blood.     How free can you be,   when you are defined by his lack?     Therein lies the rub:   the pervading truth.     YOU WILL NOT KNOW DEATH-LESS COMFORT,   AFTER THE MURDER BEGINS.

Albeit,   the first truth of many.     There is only one fact,   but there are many truths.     The firstborn took her,   feeling unfound in the elseworld,   to this half-death.     To a purgatory populated by those you loathe to remember,   and those you loathe to forget.     That is a truth of this place.     Everything numbs within it.     Your face,   and then your unwept face.     Your salt-water image,   and then your glass reflection.     Let sweat turn to bile.     Spit to blood.     Touch to taste.     Sight to swallow.     It brings stomach from below your heart,   to the eager soft tissue of your mouth.     There,   however,   it will not stop,   for it doesn’t stay where it is wanted.     The veins that connect tooth to eye,   unraveling you into flipped eyelids and exposed muscle.     By god’s will,   you won’t whiten in night-earth among your dead.     YOU WILL SEE RED.     YOU WILL BE RED.     The white of you is already buried.     Death has already seen your face,   and wants no more of it.     You do not make him hungry.     You sate.     You breathe.     She was a child that knew.     In an alcove hewn from an eyeless socket,   thumb-ground,   and an appleless throat.     Nick was a disgraced soldier,   home-sojourning,   but he was a child that knew.     Once.     An endless moment.     Your brother’s digested soul.     Still in the throes of its impending loss.

Your red hands   /   His clean face.     Plumes of gore unspooling from his cracked skull,   like a snake’s tongue,   forked at every sharp tip,   pulling out of its guts.     Your blaspheme rests in the hands.     You could touch the haemorrhaging puddle,   but not his paling skin.     You could hear his garbled blood-breath and the desperation that angles your gaze towards his.     A touch of red.     The sight of white.     [   HE DIED IN A LAMPLIT ALLEYWAY,   FLAILING FOR YOUR HANDS IN HIS.   ]     Without the horrified gasps overhead,   you would’ve cleaved guts from him.     A slab of a different ilk:   street-fogged and wriggling body.     A worm on soiled ground.     You are,   after all,   a butcher’s son.     You prepare meat in death,   and he was almost there.     He looked at you and knew your hands kill.     Your hands are hungry.     Tamed only by his warmth,   however much it leaks on the pavement.     This is the kind of truth that tangles man into myth.     Lungs into smoke.     Light into shadow.     YOUR BROTHER SILENTLY BEGGED FOR SOMEONE MORE THAN YOU.     FOR A WHITE TUNNEL OUTSIDE OF YOUR FACE.     For those more man than shape,   this would rend nightmare into reality.     You are the dream and the perennial.     You are the fallacy of the end.     Both the prefix and suffix,   without the noun.     Thick-skinned.     Cored.

It is this cataclysm of her delirium that blurs her pallid skin into the blizzard air tonight.     She remembers the before,   balking at what could become the after.     And that,   he wouldn’t abide.     Nothing begets nothing.     She speaks,   and so,   can’t be nothing.     For all of it to culminate to naught.     To a gasp in the woods.     To another ravaged flesh.     Because of a mere fact that fears truth.     Paused gait.     He is still,   side-long,   eyes narrowed to slits.     Slimmer target.     ‘   I know,   ’     he rumbles back.     I haven’t done anything to earn it.     His words crack fact   –   I   –   from truth   –   know   –   and discard the waste into the febrile ground shakes the night’s flake-work:   the snow that separates soil from skin,   mud from boot.     It reaches with those bark-sore fingers   –   feeding on itself once marrow dries to grain,   before its incensed hunger feels you upon its ivory blanket   –   to the source it yearns to absorb.     Welcome home,   Death;   let us feed upon you.     He doesn’t listen.     There,   stands a living twin turned woman.     And he,   a living twin turned man.     His shoulders are light,   but the world is upon hers.     She knows the barbiturates of killing,   riding its coattails into a wounding town.     Into him.     She raves and blisters.     You watch and wait.

Nothing he says will be enough.     Word will not coax mind from craze.     It is too soft.     A lifted,   stolid hand,   fingers splayed in surrender,   before his free one delves into his inner coat pocket.     He procures a handgun   –   for smaller prey,   a quieter shot in this weather   –   and holds it by the barrel.     Thrown at her feet,   his hands drop back to his sides,   bequeathing fate to her own hands.     Empty without him.     Full with what he can give.     There is already a deep gulch of what she should be.     You live for them,   it says,   for no one else can.     As the human you,   that walks without enfleshed reflection.     ‘   If you’re going to shoot me,   aim for the head.   ’     He throws these vestiges over his shoulder.     ‘   It’d be better for the both of us.   ’     The answer doesn’t matter.     He walks away from her,   showing his back like a patrolling dog.     Tireless in its trudge against harsh gale and prickling snow.     Galoshed by hackle and claw.     He reaches the door of a boarded building,   arms rough when parting ice from wood.     She will decide whether she will fend teeth or skin.     Them or him.     The monster you know,   or the monster you don’t.     The pig doesn’t squeal in the backroom of a meat shop.     It is already dead and bled.

𝗧𝗛𝗘  𝗚𝗨𝗡  𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗦  𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛  𝗔  𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗  𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗧  𝗦𝗣𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗦  𝗧𝗛𝗘  𝗡𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧'𝗦  𝗔𝗜𝗥,  a  rupture  in  the  earth’s  frozen  breast,  a  thing  not  meant  for  snow  but  bled  into  it  nonetheless.  It  does  not  clatter — it  settles.  As  if  it  has  always  belonged  there,  as  if  the  weight  of  it  was  destined  to  sink  into  frostbitten  essence,  an  unspoken  prophecy  that  she,  too,  must  make  a  choice.  A  test.  A  THRESHOLD.  Will  she  cross  it?  The  metal  lies  stark  against  the  frost,  dark  and  waiting,  the  bloodless  alternative  to  something  far  worse.  It  does  not  breathe,  does  not  leer,  does  not  grab  or  whisper  or  press  its  weight  into  the  tender  hollow  where  her  shoulder  meets  her  neck,  but  it  is  no  less  a  predator  than  the  hands  of  men.  Cold,  indifferent,  not  cruel  by  its  own  design,  but  cruel  in  the  way  all  weapons  are — because  they  are  only  as  kind  as  the  one  wielding  them.  And  yet,  in  the  shallow  hush  of  snowfall,  where  the  trees  whisper  to  one  another  in  the  wind,  where  the  distant  dark  is  watching,  waiting,  hungering,  the  gun  feels  like  something  else.  Something  more  than  steel  and  trigger  and  the  brutal  mechanics  of  death.  It  feels  like  a  demand.  A  riddle  to  be  solved  with  blood.  A  contract  written  in  the  thinnest  of  margins,  signed  with  her  breath  on  the  frozen  air.  The  kind  of  thing  that  cannot  be  refused,  only  delayed,  only  circled  like  carrion  waiting  for  the  dying  to  still  their  limbs.

Meryl  watches  it  as  if  it  will  shift  beneath  her  gaze,  as  if  it  might  roll  onto  its  other  side  and  show  her  a  face  she  recognizes,  a  thing  with  too  many  teeth,  a  grin  stretching  ear  to  ear,  something  slithering  in  the  corners  of  her  vision  that  wears  her  father’s  hands,   her  father’s  voice,  her  father’s  hunger.  She  is  not  afraid  of  it,  not  the  way  she  is  afraid  of  what  waits  inside  of  men,  but  she  is  afraid  of  the  moment  after.  The  second  between  breath  and  exhale,  between  lifting  the  gun  and  what  must  follow.  Because  she  knows — oh,  she  knows.   If  she  picks  it  up,  she  is  EXPECTED  to  use  it.  The  metal  is  not  made  for  holding,  not  for  cradling,  not  for  anything  but  the  act.  Her  father  had  never  needed  a  gun.  He  had  needed  only  her  silence,  her  stillness,  her  compliance.  And  yet — had  there  been  a  gun  between  them  once?  A  long,  long  time  ago,  when  she  was  not  yet  fully  grown,  when  she  was  still  soft,  before  the  calluses  had  formed  around  the  tendons  of  her  hands,  before  she  had  felt  the  first  real  heat  of  blood  against  her  skin?  If  there  had  been,  she  would've taken it. And  now,  as  it  lays  before  her,  as  this  stranger  with  a  name  that  does  not  yet  fit  him  walks  away  as  if  the  matter  is  settled,  as  if  he  knows  her,  as  if  he  understands  the  depths  of  her  enough  to  say  here,  this  is  yours  to  do  with  as  you  wish,  she  feels  something  even  uglier  take  root  inside  her  chest. It has not been forced into her hands. It has been placed before her like an altar, an offering, an expectation sharpened to a fine point. This is yours now. Do what you will. A kindness dressed as surrender. A performance of trust. A trick she refuses to play into.

Her  fingers  twitch.  Not  in  hesitation.  In  memory.

Because  it  is  not  the  first  time  she  has  stood  in  front  of  a  weapon  and  had  to  decide  if  she  was  going  to  pick  it  up.  It  is  not  the  first  time  a  man  has  given  her  a  choice  that  was  not  really  a  choice  at  all,  dressed  it  in  words  that  were  meant  to  sound  merciful  but  instead  felt  like  another  chain. The  difference  is  that  last  time,  it  had  not  been  spoken  aloud.  It  had  been  there  in  her  father’s  eyes,  in  the  gurgling  noise  that  had  slipped  from  his  throat  when  the  blade  went  in.  It  had  been  there  in  the  way  Cheryl  had  looked  at  her  afterward — grateful,  horrified,  broken.  It  had  been  there  in  the  silence  of  the  courtroom,   in  the  way  the  words  self-defense  had  rung  hollow  in  the  mouths  of  men  who  had  never  known  what  it  was  like  to  fight  for  their  own  body,  their  own  skin,  their  own  right  to  exist  without  being  devoured.

And  now  this  man,  this  stranger,  this  potential  threat,  this  thing  she  still  does  not  trust  not  to  turn  on  her  the  moment  her  back  is  turned,  is  offering  her  the  same  choice  wrapped  in  different  colors.  The  same  breathless,  waiting  silence.  The  SAME expectation.

Meryl  clenches  her  jaw  so  tight  her  teeth  ache,  breath  leaving  her  in  a  slow,  shaking  exhale.  The  wind  claws  at  her  cheeks,  stings  at  her  exposed  fingers,  tries  to  work  its  way  beneath  her  skin  and  settle  there  like  ice.  She  does  not  shiver.  Not  yet.  Not  while  the  rage  is  still  sitting  in  her  chest  like  a  smoldering  coal,  burning  so  HOT  it  makes  her  stomach  curl  in  on  itself.

She  will  not  touch  it.  She  will  not  give  him  the  satisfaction  of  thinking  that  he  is  right.  That  this  is  the  choice  she  would  make,  the  weight  she  would  take  into  her  hands  as  if  it  had  not  already  been  pressed  into  them  a  long,  long  time  ago,  before  she  had  learned  that  men  always  prefer  the  decisions  to  be  THEIRS.  He  walks  away  as  if  she  is  meant  to  follow.  As  if  this  moment  was  only  ever  meant  to  funnel  her  into  one  path,  one  inevitable  corridor  of  fate,  one  locked  door  that  opens  only  into  his  silhouette,  his  will,  his  expectations.  That  is  what  this  is,  isn’t  it?  The  act  of  walking  ahead  without  looking  back.  The  confidence  of  assumed  obedience.  Even  when  they  do  not  grab  you,  they  expect  you  to  be  held.  Even  when  they  do  not  pull,  they  expect  you  to  be  tethered.  He  is  moving,  and  she  is  meant  to  move  with  him.  That  is  what  he  believes.  But  belief  is  not  truth,  and  he  does  not  know  her.

❛ You’re lucky I don’t take you up on that. ❜ The words drop between them, BRITTLE as frostbitten glass, sharp as the memory of blood beneath her fingernails. All men are monsters. Some of them just haven't shed their skin yet.

The  gun  remains  in  the  snow,  untouched,  gleaming  dully  under  the  thin  blade  of  moonlight.  She  steps  over  it,  deliberate,  measured,  her  body  a  raw  wire  of  tension,  her  breath  leaving  in  sharp,  curling  bursts, like a woman stepping over the body of a thing already dead.  Not  because  she  is  rejecting  it.  Not  because  she  is  AFRAID  of  it.  But  because  she  does  not  need  it. She has done more with less.  If  he  turns,  if  he  pivots  wrong, she  will  unmake  him  with  nothing  but  her  own  body.  The  knife  of  her  voice,  the  razored  edge  of  her  bones,  the  muscle-memory  of  survival  writhing  beneath  her  skin  like  a  second  soul.  He  does  not  look  back,  and  she  does  not  allow  herself  to  count  her  steps  as  she  follows,  not  a  chase,  not  a  yielding,  but  a  hunt.  The  snow  consumes  the  sound  of  her  movement,  and  the  door  waits  ahead,  pried  open  like  a  wound,  dark  and  waiting.

The  doorway  is  a  black  mouth  yawning  wide,  a  gaping  cavity  in  the  fabric  of  the  world,  and  he  disappears  into  it  as  if  he  has  never  known  fear,   as  if  he  has  never  LEARNED  the  terror  of  stepping  first  into  the  dark.  She  does  not  follow  immediately.   The  wind  presses  against  her  back,  urging,  whispering,  and  her  breath  knots  itself  somewhere  beneath  her  ribs.  Something  is  watching.  Not  him.  Not  the  man.  Something  else.  The  woods  around  her  are  too  quiet.  The  sky  above  her  is  a  frozen  thing,  waiting,  listening.  And  her  father’s  voice — that  thing  that  wore  his  face  in  the  labyrinth,  that  thing  that  should  have  died  but  did  not,  that  thing  she  feels  in  her  breath  when  she  closes  her  eyes — is  curled  up  in  the  roots  of  her  spine,  purring,  waiting. The  threshold  is  a  vice,  something  tight  against  her  ribs,  something  pressing  her  down,  something  whispering:   If  you  step  inside,  you  will  never  step  back  out.  The  dark  does  not  let  go.  The  dark  does  not  forget.

She  shivers.

The  first  sign  of  collapse.

It  is  faint,  a  flicker  of  a  thing,  something  she  barely  registers  because  the  heat  of  her  own  anger  has  kept  it  at  bay.  But  the  fire  is  dying  now,   the  edges  of  her  awareness  growing  thin,  the  REALITY  of  now  creeping  in  where  fear  had  taken  root.  The  warmth  she  had  forced  into  herself,  the  rage  that  had  stitched  her  together,  is  leaving.  And  with  it,  the  walls  begin  to  close  in.

The  courtrooms,  the  holding  cells,  the psychiatrist's office, the  small  rooms  where  she  had  not  been  alone  but  felt  more  trapped  than  ever.  The  places  where  men  sat  across  from  her  with  hands  folded  over  paper-thin  judgments,   where  they  looked  at  her  and  saw  something  to  be  NAMED,  something  to  be  understood,  something  to  be  dissected  in  the  neat  and  clinical  language  of  crime  and  consequence. The  places  where  she  was  not  believed. The  places  where  she  was  forced  to  sit  across  from  people  who  thought  they  could  explain  her  own  life  to  her,  as  if  they  had  been  there,  as  if  they  had  seen  his  hands  on  her,  as  if  they  had  been  the  ones  holding  the  knife  instead  of  her.  It  wasn’t  self-defense,  Miss  Silverburgh.  It  was  premeditated.  As  if  she  had  planned  her  own  suffering.  As  if  she  had  spent  years  waiting  for  the  moment  where  she  could  take  back  what  had  been  stolen  from  her. And you know what? They were half right.

She  knows  this  feeling.  The  feeling  of  being  watched,  being  assessed,  being  turned  into  something  measurable,  digestible,  understandable.  She  knows  what  it  is  to  be  NAMED  before  she  can  name  herself.  And  she  knows  what  it  is  to  step  into  a  room  and  lose  the  right  to  leave.

And  now  here,  now  THIS,  a  closed  door,  a  space  she  cannot  see  the  ends  of,  a  man  inside  who  she  cannot  trust  to  not  be  another  lesson  she  will  have  to  carve  into  her  skin  just  to  survive.

The  cold  WINS.

Her  body  moves  before  she  tells  it  to.  A  step  forward,  then  another,  then  she  is  inside,  and  the  wind  is  gone,  and  the  night  is  shut  out,  and  the  sound  of  her  breathing  is  deafening.

She  will  have to close the door.

Her  hands  tremble as she does so,  and  she  hates  it.  She  locks it behind them before clenches  her hands  into  fists  at  her  sides,  locking  her  jaw  tight,  forcing  herself  still.  But  she  cannot  stop  the  shiver.  It  rakes  down  her  spine,  crawls  into  the  marrow  of  her  bones,  makes  her  feel  small.

She  is  NOT  small.

She  keeps  her  distance.  Does  not  move  further  in.  Her  back  stays  to  the  doorway,  her  body  rigid  with  something  FERAL,  something  twisted  and  waiting,  something  that  knows  that  if  she  steps  even  a  single  inch  further,  she  will  not  be  able  to  run  fast  enough  if  she  needs  to.

Nick  is  ahead  of  her  still,  a  shape  in  the  dark,  something  she  can  barely  make  out.  He  is  waiting.  Not  in  the  obvious  way.  Not  in  the  way  men  do  when  they  are  trying  to  seem  patient,  to  seem  like  they  have  nothing  to  fear.  He  waits  like  something  that  has  already  made  peace  with  the  inevitable.   Like  something  that  has  accepted  the  outcome  before  it  arrives.  If  you’re  going  to  shoot  me,  aim  for  the  head.  Those  had  been  his  words.  And  yet,  here  he  stands.  Here  he  waits.  Here  he  remains  unburied,  still  breathing.

Meryl  exhales,  slow  and  sharp,  like  the  release  of  something  DANGEROUS.  Her  breath  fogs  in  the  cold,  curling  in  the  air  between  them,  filling  the  space  she  refuses  to  let  him  claim.

And  then she  speaks.

Her  voice  is  not  soft.  It  is  not  kind.  It  is  not  GRATEFUL.  It  is  the  jagged,  rusted  thing  inside  of  her,  the  thing  she  has  sharpened  against  the  bones  of  those  who  thought  they  could  touch  her  and  survive  it. ❛  I  let  the  gun  sink  into  the  snow.   ❜ A  pause. Her  shoulders  roll,  the  last  remnants  of  cold  shaking  through  her  bones,  and  her  mouth  curls  into  something  that  is  not  quite  a  smile,  just something  thin  and  bitter  and  bloodless. ❛   It's better  for  the  both  of  us.   ❜

Joints - Holly Miranda

now that suki has seen, they cannot easily look away. meryl is beautiful up close; its the most inappropriate realization that suki has ever had, possibly. it lies next to the realization that she would have liked to drive an axe or a knife into her father when she was younger, and it stays there - sticking her right in the throat - as her eyes trek the expanse of meryl’s face in the diner.

it feels inappropriate to notice, something sickly like desire slides down the expanse of her spine but they shake it off because now is not the time to wax poetic about a girl whose grieving. (still, if suki were to wax poetic about someone, they thought that the most likey candidate would be this woman in front of them. and not because of her sorrow or her grief, but because she looked at suki as if she really saw them, every little piece left to unpack waiting at her feet. suki found themselves breathless not for the reaction or the piercing gaze dissecting them, but because they had found themselves a new altar to worship.)

they found themselves in the steadiness of her gaze, waiting there, and yearned to be touched. not for the sake of touch, but for the life affirmation of it. suki wasn’t sure they existed on this plane anymore, but wherever meryl was, wherever meryl could be, that’s where suki wanted to be; talking about ice cream and helping in whatever way they could. it is the strangest thing to look at someone and think these things upon the first meeting of eyes, but suki is used to stranger things; like creatures who look like her dead father and the faintest shadows following her around in the cabin. suki is used to bordering up all the windows in her mind, keeping people out, but she thinks that maybe someone who doesn’t bite back - much, at least - when suki makes an attempt to apologize for their luck, maybe someone who keeps talking about ice cream with them, is worthy enough to see all the secrets left inside. 

“i think i remember the first time i ever had cherry vanilla.” 

the words stick in her throat, much like the memory, but a glance up from the bacon sandwich laying cold on the counter to meryl’s eyes steels suki with a new resolve; this, they could do. “i was a kid, probably 6 or so. i remember it vaguely; the sticky sweetness of the ice cream, the maraschino cherries in the mix. they were vivid red, like…” like blood, they didn’t say. “I remember my grandmother being there; she used to give me treats when i stayed over at her house; she died a year later. i wasn’t allowed to go to her funeral, but i remember her all the same. she was nice to me.” 

they want to apologize for bringing up cheryl - they don’t. they want to press forward and pull meryl into their arms - they don’t. they do wince, and sigh, trying for a smile. 

“rocky road sometimes has too many almonds in it,” they say, stubborn, and then relent, all sugar and sweetness; all molasses for the woman in front of them. “but it’s my favorite too. coincidentally, i don’t remember when the first time i had it was.” and wasn’t that just the way of things?

𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗬𝗟  𝗗𝗜𝗗  𝗡𝗢𝗧  𝗠𝗢𝗩𝗘.  The  diner’s  air  sat  thick  and  still,  pressing  down  on  her,  pooling  in  the  hollow  between  her  collarbones,  slipping  into  the  spaces  where  breath  should  be.  The  weight  of  it  is  different  than  grief,  but  not  by  much.  It  carries  the  same  quiet  violence,  the  same  bone-deep  knowing  that  things  have  shifted  beneath  her  feet  and  would  never  realign.  The  hum  of  the  lights  above,  the  low  murmur  of  someone  talking  at  the  counter,  the  scrape  of  a  fork  against  a  plate — mundane  sounds,  sounds  that  belong  to  people  who  did  not  live  in  the  shadow  of  the  things  she  has  seen.  But  they  felt  distant,  unimportant.  The  only  thing  tethering  her  to  the  moment,  to  the  here  and  now,  was  the  WEIGHT  of  this beautiful stranger's  gaze.

It  is  not  intrusive,  not  devouring — not  the  way  some  people  stared  at  a  WRECK  just  to  see  what  had  been  lost — but  it  is  steady,  unwavering,  and  Meryl  isn’t  sure  she  has  the  strength  to  hold  it.

She  had  spent  her  whole  life  perfecting  the  art  of  being  unreadable.  A  locked  door,  a  curtained  window,  something  people  looked  at  and  then  away  from,  assuming  there  was  nothing  beneath  the  surface  worth  pressing  for.  But  the  blonde  is  pressing,  even  if  they  did  not  realize  it.  Not  with  words.  Not  even  with  intent.  Just  with  the  way  they  stayed.  The  way  they  sat  with  the  silence  between  them  like  it  wasn’t  uncomfortable,  like  they  expected  it  to  be  there.  Like  they  were  willing  to  wait.

Her  fingers  flexed  against  the  tabletop  as  has become  her  new  habit,  the  tension  a  silent  thing,  the  only  betrayal  of  the  storm  still  moving  inside  her.  It  had  been  over  three  weeks  since  she’d  arrived  in  Arcadia.  Over  three  weeks  since  the  night  her  sister  was  taken.  Over  three  weeks  since  she  had  last  stood  beneath  a  sky  she  RECOGNIZED,  since  she  had  felt  like  a  person  that  belonged  to  a  world  that  followed  rules  she  understood.  She  has  survived  so  many  nights  in  this  strange,  suffocating  place,  survived  in  a  way  that  felt  cruel,  survived  in  a  way  that  did  not  make  sense  because  Cheryl  had  not,  and  every  morning  she  woke  up  with  the  reminder  of  that  fact  pressed  like  a  knife  to  the  base  of  her  throat.

She  had  tried  not  to  count  the  days.

But  her  body  knows.

Her  body  remembered.

And  the  worst  part — the  absolutely  devastation of it all — is  that  she  can  STILL  feel  Cheryl’s  presence  somewhere,  like  a  breath  on  the  back  of  her  neck,  like  a  whisper  at  the  edge  of  a  dream,  like  a  voice  calling  from  the  bottom  of  a  deep,  dark  well  that  she  could  never  reach.  There  were  nights  she  awoke  to  the  sound  of  footsteps  pacing  just  outside  her  door,  rhythmic,  unhurried.  Cheryl  had  always  been  restless,  always  moving,  always  there.  And  now  she  wasn’t.  And  yet,  she  was.  Meryl  had  learned  to  ignore  it.  Had  learned  to  keep  her  eyes  shut,  to  keep  her  breath  even,  to  let  the  shadows  stay  shadows  and  not  reach  for  her,  not  listen  too  closely.  Because  she  knew  what  happened  when  you  listened  in  Arcadia.  She  knew  what  happened  when  you  believed.

But  she  had  always  believed  in  Cheryl.

And  that  was  the  part  that  was  KILLING  her.

Meryl  had  survived  things  most  people  would  have  collapsed  beneath.  She  had  walked  through  fire  and  come  out  the  other  side,  her  skin  charred  but  intact,  her  bones  cracked  but  whole.  She  had  survived  a  childhood  carved  by  sharp  edges,  by  the  quiet  and  the  loud  of  a  man  who  had  worn  the  word  father  like  a  mask,  who  had  built  his  love  out  of  cruelty  and  called  it  teaching,  who  had  taken  and  taken  and  taken  until  she  had  learned  to  live  with  emptiness  like  it  was  something  sacred.  She  had  lived  through  his  silence,  his  violence,  his  hands  and  his  absence,  his  words  and  mouth  that  slithered  beneath  her  skin  like  maggots  until  she  had  to  peel  herself  open  to  get  them  out.  He  had  cut  pieces  from  her,  had  made  her  something  angry,  something  ferocious,  something  murderous.  But  he  had  never  taken  Cheryl  away  from  her.  This  town  had.

Arcadia  had.

It  has  stolen  the  only  thing  she  had  left,  the  one  thing  she  had  fought  to  protect,  the  one  person  who  had  kept  her  ANCHORED,  that  had  kept  her  Meryl  and  not  just  a  collection  of  wounds  stitched  into  the  shape  of  a  person.  Her  father  had  hurt  her,  had  built  her  into  something  cold,  something  untrusting,  something  that  could  not  be  touched  without  flinching,  but  in the end he  hadn't  won.  He  had  never  erased  her.  She  had  gotten  away.  She  had  left  his body  behind  in  his  rotting  house,  with  his  rotting  mind,  with  his  rot,  his  rot,  his  rot — but  Arcadia  has  reached  into  her  chest,  has  taken  what  even  he  had  not  managed  to  destroy.

Cheryl.

Cheryl,  the  who  had  been  hers  before  she  had  been  her  own.

Cheryl,  who  had  been  the  first  voice  Meryl  had  ever  known,  who  had  been  her  first  home,  her  first  witness,  the  only  thing  in  this  world  that  had  belonged  to  her  without  question.  Cheryl,  who  had  been  GNAWED  out  from  the  inside,  emptied,   hollowed,  left  behind  like  something  used  up,  discarded,  as  if  she  had  never  mattered, in that fucking clinic.

Meryl  had  thought  she  knew  what  pain  was.

She  had  been  wrong.

Because  grief  is  not  a  bruise,  not  a  wound,  not  something  you  carry  like  a  scar  to  show  the  world  you  had  survived.  It's  a  thing  with  teeth.  It  burrows.  It  consumes.  It  had  already been  INSIDE  her  the  first  time  their  father  showed  who  he  truly  was,  and  even  more  palpable  since  the  night  Cheryl  whispered  her  last  breath,  since  the  moment  Meryl  had  heard  her,  felt  her,  and  had  been  too  slow,  too  weak,  too  human  to  stop  what  had  come  for  her.  It  had  settled  in  the  hollows  of  her  ribs,  in  the  spaces  between  her  vertebrae,  in  the  marrow  of  her  bones,  whispering,  whispering,  whispering —

She  should  be  here.  She  should  be  here.  She  should  be  here.

Her  father  had  thought he made  her  into  something  small, she thought for the longest time he didn't.  Until Arcadia  had  finished  the  job.

And  now  she  was  nothing  but  the  space  Cheryl  had  left  behind.

She  could  feel  the  stranger's  eyes  on  her,  searching,  still waiting,  but  she  said  NOTHING.  Couldn't  say  a thing.

Because  how  did  you  explain  this?

How  did  you  tell  someone  that  you  had  already  survived  one  monster,  only  to  be  devoured  whole  by  something  much  worse?  How  did  you  say,  I  lived  through  hell,  but  I  did  not  escape  it,  because  hell  simply  changed  its  shape?

She  exhales,  slow,  CONTROLLED,   letting  the  weight  of  it  press  through  her  ribs,  letting  the  taste  of  it  settle  against  the  back  of  her  teeth  like  something  bitter.

❛ I  don’t  remember  the  first  time  I  had  Rocky  Road, ❜  It's said as if it were a sudden EPIPHANY,  voice  soft,  but still  an  offering,  not  much,  but  something.  ❛ But  Cheryl  loved  it, too. ❜

It's  the  SAFEST  way  she  can  say  her  sister’s  name  aloud,  to  let  it  exist  between  them  without  breaking  apart  at  the  seams.

The  words  are  quiet.

Half a  lie.

But  it  is  the  only  thing  she  has  to  give.

She  does  not  say  that  some  nights,  she  swore  she  could  hear  Cheryl’s  voice  threading  through  the  walls  of  her  boat  like  a  radio  frequency  only  she  is  tuned  into.

She  does  not  say  that  she  has  stopped  looking  into  mirrors  longer  than  a  glance  because  sometimes — just  sometimes — there  is  another  face  behind  hers,  something  too  familiar,  something  with  Cheryl’s  eyes  but  wrong,  wrong,  wrong.

She  does  not  say  that  the  smell  of  almonds  makes  her  stomach  turn now,  not  because  of  the  grief,  but  because  she  swore  something  in  this  place  reeked  of  it,  something  watching  her  from  the  corners  of  the  town,  something  waiting.

Instead,  she  only  looks  at  the  other  person,  meets  their  gaze  and  holds  it,  though  it  feels  like  the  HARDEST  thing  she  has  done  in  years.

OLIVIA COOKE for Variety's Power Women of Hollywood 2024 (October 2024)

I am the face of love's rage I am the face of love's rage

suki might have smiled, pleased as anything that the other had moved closer to her, if they had been naive to meryl's pain - if they had been anything but themselves. instead, the movement was barely caught from the corner of their eye as a steaming cup of coffee and their sandwich was placed in front of them. barely reacting at all to the sandwich, only to half it, then push one half just inches to the left, until it was in front of meryl; maybe they could get away with this too, suki thought. if not, then at least suki had tried and now had learned a lesson in meryl-ettiquete. the words on the page blurred together in the companionable silence they had found themselves in as suki waited for meryl's reaction. every so often, suki would cast a glance to their left and they would watch and see that meryl was trying. suki was trying too, so that made two of them.

soon after, the half sandwich that suki had kept had been wolfed down quickly, their hunger always a ferocious tide that needed to be sated before they could think to act more human; more like a person and less like a dog. the plate had been taken away and they had been asked if they had wanted more at that time, to which they replied with a steady 'yes, please.' the book was reaching its climax, and tom had already ran off to join the cause by the time the other sandwich was back, leaving the joads to an uncertain future and suki to wolf down more food. suki had hummed at this, displeased with tom's choice, but turned the pages anyways until, at last, they had reached the end of the book and sat it down on the countertop.

"you know what i miss?" she asked the only other person within hearing distance of her low, sultry voice. "ice cream. cherry vanilla, cherry garcia, rocky road...." a sigh of longing fell from their lips as they longed for something sweet. suki didn't have to ask what meryl missed - a sobering thought as they tossed a glance at their broken wrist watch, still worn but long passed saying the time as it had stopped the day they arrived here. suki missed their mother in that moment, so much. with an aching clarity, that's what the feeling was; a longing for someone to tell them what the right thing to say was. they were not going to ask meryl how she was because that question was stupid, but they also did want to ask that same thing.

suki still hadn't properly looked at meryl yet, either. a realization that struck them hard in the chest. turning in their chair, they faced the woman and felt a distinctly like they were out of their element; they had no idea how to comfort someone. but maybe meryl didn't want to be comforted - maybe she just needed a little human decency since people in town had been decidedly not decent. suki thought that they could be that for meryl - they could be whatever meryl wanted if meryl asked. but how to start? suki guessed that the only way would be to offer up information about themselves as meryl didn't seem like she wanted to converse about herself right now. so they began:

"my mother gave me this watch before she ran off." their fingers had found the wrist band, a worn leather a little too small for them now, and they dug their index finger underneath it so that it sit right. the face of the watch read 3:33pm, a sort of mocking sentiment as suki had wandered into town at this exact time, but had planned to kill themselves before then in the forest. "she had to leave in the night to get away from my father as, i know, that's the only way she would've been able to get away from him. the only way she could leave safely. i was sixteen at the time and i spent a good junk of my time alternating between being mad at her and wishing she would've taken me with her, to just being sad that this was her life." and my life too, suki didn't say. "i..." pausing, they didn't know why they had shared that, until eventually, the steam ran out of the engine and suki sighed. "i am sorry that you are here." suki wondered if anyone had said that to meryl yet, if anyone had the guts to just look sorrow and anger and grief in the face yet and say these things. "i am sorry that this happened to you."

❛  … 𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗥𝗬 𝗩𝗔𝗡𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗔 𝗜𝗦 𝗧𝗢𝗢 𝗦𝗪𝗘𝗘𝗧. ❜

The  words  hang  in  the  air,  brittle  and  jagged,  like  the  remains  of  shattered  glass  caught  in  the  throes  of  gravity,  shimmering  just  before  they  meet  the  ground.  It  isn’t  what  she’s  supposed  to  say — not  in  this  moment,  not  when  the  weight  of  the other's gaze  presses  heavy  against  her  like  a  confession — but  the  words  escape  anyway,  slipping  through  the  cracks  of  her  teeth  before  she  can  smother  them.  Maybe  it’s  easier  to  cling  to  something  inconsequential,  something  that  doesn’t  matter,  than  to  acknowledge  the  depth  of  what  lingers  unspoken  between  them.   Maybe  it’s  a  deflection,  a  shield  thrown  up  against  a  world  that  has  always  been  too  eager  to  pry  her  open,  to  carve  out  PIECES  of  her  for  its  own  consumption.  Maybe  it’s  nothing  at  all,  and  that’s  precisely  why  she  chose  it.

The  sandwich  lies  between  them,  a  mute  offering  edged  with  quiet  insistence,  a  gesture  that  is  neither  demanding  nor  dismissive,  but  tender  in  its  hesitation.  Suki  has  slid  it  across  the  counter  with  the  kind  of  gentleness  reserved  for  handling  fractured  things,  for  approaching  wild  animals  with  barbed  wire  caught  in  their  fur.  It  waits  there,  nestled  in  its  mundane  ceramic  cradle,  half  a  meal,  half  a  question.  Her  stomach  does  not  protest;  it  has  learned  silence  too  well,  has  been  trained  into  submission  through  years  of  neglect,  an  obedient  dog  refusing  to  bark.  Hunger,  when  ignored  long  enough,  becomes  nothing  more  than  a  ghost  that  HAUNTS  the  hollow  spaces  within,  lingering  without  the  strength  to  rattle  its  chains.

And  yet,  she  reaches  for  it.  Fingers  curling  around  the  crust,  feeling  the  soft,   yielding  bread  give  beneath  her  grip,  the  cold,  greasy  touch  of  bacon  peeking  out  like  a  concealed  weapon.  She  bites  down,  the  texture  unyielding,  like  chewing  on  cardboard  dipped  in  grease.  There  is  no  flavor to her,  no  spark  of  satisfaction,  just  the  mechanical  act  of  eating,  of  swallowing,  of  forcing  sustenance  into  a  body  that  has  become  distant,  estranged  from  its  own  needs.  The  taste  is  drowned  in  a  sea  of  numbness,  diluted  by  the  bile  of  memory,  of  things  swallowed  down  too  deep  to  ever  resurface.

The stranger does  not  comment,  does  not  press.  That’s  why  she  takes  another  bite,  lets  the  silence  coil  around  them,  thick  and  palpable,  a  third  presence  at  the  counter.  There’s  a  strange  comfort  in  the  absence  of  pressure,  in  the  allowance  to  exist  without  justification,  without  EXPECTATION.  And  then,  without  warning,  their  words  spill  into  the  quiet  like  an  apology  wrapped  in  an  anecdote,  the  kind  of  story  that  stains  the  air  with  its  residue,  sticky  and  inescapable.  A  watch,  a  mother  fleeing  into  the  dark,  a  father  left  behind  like  a  bad  taste  on  the  tongue. Meryl’s  eyes  drift  to  their  wrist,  to  the  worn  leather  band  that  encircles  it  like  a  shackle,  to  the  cracked  glass  face  frozen  at  3:33,  a  mocking  reminder  of  a  moment  suspended  in  time.  She  knows  the  cruelty  of  stopped  clocks,  the  way  they  trap  you  in  the  instant  of  their  death,  leaving  you  to  rot  in  the  echoes  of  what  once  was.  Her  own  hands  remain  still,  fingers  splayed  against  the  counter,  nails bitten to the quick,  remnants  of  a  different  kind  of  burial.  There  is  no  comfort  in  the  story  that is  offered,  only  a  recognition  that  seeps  into  her  bones  like  a  cold  draft  through  a  cracked  window.

Then comes the apology. The  words  settle  like  dust  in  her  lungs,  like  something  stale  and  thick,  something  suffocating.

Meryl  stops  chewing.

Something  shifts  inside  of  her,  sharp  and  sudden,  like  a  splinter  driven  deeper  beneath  the  skin.  Not  quite  anger,  not  quite  pain,  but  something  that  wants  to  be  BOTH.   The  air  around  them  suddenly feels  too  thick,  too  full,  like  a  room  with  no  windows,  no  doors,  only  walls  pressing  inward.

She  wants  to  leave.

She  doesn’t.  Instead,  she  sets  the  sandwich  down,  half-eaten,  forgotten.  Her  fingers  curl  against  the  countertop,  pressing  so  hard  the  tips  go  white.

❛ Don’t. ❜  The  word  is  short,  sharp,  a  blade  snapped  shut  before  it  can  cut  too  deep.

She  looks  at  them  now.

Really  looks.

It  feels  like  stepping  into  a  place  she  is  not  SUPPOSED  to  be.

The  first  thing  is  the  eyes — brown,  deep-set,  the  color  of  earth  just  before  a  storm,  lined  with  something  tired  but  unwavering.  The  kind  of  gaze  that  seems  like  it  should  be  warm  but  ISN'T,  something  too  acute  behind  it,  something  that  cuts  more  than  it  soothes.  They  do  not  belong  to  someone  who  waits  for  the  world  to  soften  them.  The  rest  of  them  is  just  as  stark — cheekbones  drawn  high  and  precise,  like  they  were  sculpted  with  the  edge  of  a  knife.  A  mouth  that  does  not  seem  made  for  softness,  lips  that  always  look  on  the  verge  of  saying  something  they  will  not  regret,  something  meant  to  be  swallowed  whole.  Their  hair,  light  and  fine,  pulled  back  just  enough  to  keep  from  falling  into  her  face,  though  strands  slip  loose,  framing  her  in  pale  gold,  catching  the  dull  glow  of  the  diner  lights  like  the  last  flicker  of  a  dying  flame.  They  look  like  they  should  belong  somewhere  cold,  somewhere  distant — on  the  edge  of  a  nameless  town  where  the  sky  stays  gray  and  the  wind  bites  like  teeth. Arcadia.

They  look  like  they  doesn’t  belong  anywhere  at  all.

Meryl  recognizes  that.

Her  fingers  press  harder  into  the  counter,  and  she  knows  the other is  waiting,  not  for  thanks,  not  for  reassurance,   just  for  something.

❛ … you  shouldn’t  be  sorry. ❜  Her  voice  is  flat,  DRAINED  of  inflection,  a  monotone  stretched  thin  over  a  chasm  of  repressed  rage.  ❛  It’s  not  yours  to  carry. ❜

Regret  is  a  chain  she  has  worn  too  long,  its  links  rusted  and  heavy,  dragging  through  the  mud  of  her  memories,  leaving  trenches  where  hope  once  grew.  She  knows  how  people  WIELD  apologies  like  shields,  deflecting  the  burden  of  their  own  discomfort,  diluting  pain  into  something  palatable,  digestible.  But  this  feels  different,  and  that  difference  stings  like  salt  in  a  fresh  wound.

The  sandwich  lies  half-eaten,  a  CASUALTY  of  their  conversation,  a  testament  to  attempts  at  nurturing  that  neither  knows  how  to  accept.  Her  gaze  returns  to  the  watch,  to  the  hands  trapped  in  perpetual  mid-afternoon,  the  exact  moment  the blonde  had  decided  that  breath  was  worth  holding  onto.

She  taps  her  fingers  once  against  the  counter,  a  hollow  sound  that  DISSIPATES  into  the  air  between  them.

❛  …. I  prefer  rocky  road. ❜

𝗡ot  a  thank  you.  Not  a  forgiveness.  Just  something  simple  that  can  exist  between  them  without  breaking.