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My eyes are barely open by a thread as I round the cottage, walking as fast as I can without looking through its windows. I’ve never desired sleep more in my life. Not just because my body is drained of every last bit of energy, but because sleep is that sweet symphony of relief. It’s the only escape I have to stop living in this hell I’m trapped in.
My hand touches the wooden shed door, and before I can blink, I’m sucked into an emptiness of calm, disorienting darkness. My stomach dips, and blood rushes to my head. A tremor of energy washes over me, tossing my body through the air until I’m upright again, looking down at Kane and…me. I’m standing at the door, looking down at them lying near a gas lamp. She’s tucked against his chest as he reads a book. Her foot is propped up and wrapped after it got stuck in the bear trap.
This isn’t a lost memory.
But it is one I cherish. And somehow, I’ve fallen back to it, watching it play out before me as if I’m an invisible third-party bystander.
“Are you going to fall asleep if I keep going?” he asks the woman snuggling against his chest.
She breathes in, savoring his cedar scent. “Mmm. Would that be so terrible? You have a nice voice.”
And as she closes her eyes, Kane smiles to himself, places a soft kiss on top of her head, and continues on to the next chapter.
My chest burns, and a log jams into the back of my throat. I clench my hand around the wooden door until splinters pierce my fingertips. It’s all so real. He looks real enough to touch. To kiss. To hold.
Tears sting my eyes as they pool over my lids. It’s pathetic, really. The way my heart pounds like a set of drums, echoing through my throat and in my ears. How his presence can still make me weak in the knees.
The subject has visual and auditory hallucinations.
My bottom lip quivers at the sound of his deep, soothing voice.
“I hate you—for leaving me,” I say to him with labored breaths. “I hate you for making me feel so desperate to hear your voice again that I’d give in to thisdelusion. This mental disorder.”
But Kane stops reading and looks down at me—at theotherme now sound asleep. Her breathing is heavy and borderline snoring. I wince in embarrassment, but Kane chuckles quietly. He sets the book down, taking a deep breath.
“Who would have guessed that the three-year-old little girl with curly golden hair and squishy pink cheeks would have me wrapped around her little finger for the rest of my life?” He sighs, stroking her cheek with his tan fingers. His brow knits together in affliction or sorrow at the sight of her. “Dessin spent years in that asylum, being tortured endlessly, so much so that new alters had to split off just to endure each sadistic treatment. All for my sweet Skylenna.”
I begin sliding down the shed wall with tears dripping down my cheeks. Anguish rips through my abdomen, bruising my insides, and my grief is energy formed into a dark cloud that hangs over the room.I miss you so much.
“And by the end of this, you’re going to be furious with me. You’re going to hate me for all of the secrets I had to keep.” He rubs a hand over his face, careful not to wake the sleeping woman draped over his chest. “But one day, you’ll be just like me. And in time, you’ll know why I had to keep those secrets.”
He leans down and kisses her temple, wrinkling his forehead like this entire conversation is burning him on the inside.
“It was all for you. So,pleaseforgive me.”
I close my eyes, imagining what it felt like to be kissed again by this man. And as he turns out the gas lamp, I listen to him fall asleep, obsessed and mesmerized by the sound of air filling and leaving his chest. And in this time, I cry in a ball, tucked away in the dark corner of the shed, next to the open door and the whistling winds.
And I allow the pain to consume me.
I wake before my eyes open. And I’m determined to keep them closed. If I can’t see the shed, I can still believe that he’s in here with me. Sleeping, breathing,living.
But the heavy rising and falling of his chest is gone from the air, and his presence no longer sinks into my soul. He’s gone. And I’m all alone again. After what he said last night, I’m determined to learn his secrets. I think that’s why he kept them… because one day, he knew I would be able to go back and remember, learning all of his secrets with this disorder.
I groan as I use the wall to sit upright. My body tingles and aches from sleeping on the floor, curled up like a baby in the womb. My neck is stiff, my joints have hardened into solid concrete, and my muscles might as well have been replaced with jelly. But it doesn’t bother me at all. No, it distracts me from the agony radiating from deep in my heart, down to my core.
I look through the open shed door at Kane’s childhood cottage. In the sunlight, it’s like this home was plucked from a fairy tale. No one would ever guess, as they walk through the front door, it once held a horror story unfit for children.
With a grunt, I pick myself up and walk toward the cottage. I don’t think I should go straight to the kitchen… which is where it all happened. I’d rather start smaller. My eyes scan the sides of the house, deciding which of the two windows I should climb into first. I see the reflection of a mirror in the first window, a glint of light from the curtains being partially left open.
A bedroom.
I hoist myself up with the little strength I have and lift the glass open. Stale air whooshes over my face, filling my nostrils with the scent of old books and mothballs. Staring into the bedroom, I freeze, with my waist halfway wedged on the bottom of the sill. Time has halted here. It’s a pinhole into the past. A mahogany wardrobe filled with dusty gowns, a matching vanity with glass jars of perfume and night creams for the lady-doll regimen, and a queen-size bed made neatly with a pink silk comforter and several fluffy pillows.
This must be his mother’s room.
I gulp down my hesitation and continue wiggling through the window. I use the nightstand to step on as I tumble from my perch. My knees hit the soft maroon carpet, absorbing the painful impact.
I’m not entirely sure where to start. This disorder might very well be exclusive to only my memories. But it’s worth a try. If there’s even a slight chance that it will work, that would bring me steps closer to understanding his world of secrets.
