“… this maiden she lived with no other thought,” he begins to recite from memory.
Is this whack job seriously reciting Edgar Allan Poe right now? And not just any Poe work, but “Annabel Lee”, to be exact.My favorite poem.
“… than to love and be loved by me,” he continues to quote.
My heart flutters so fast that I feel lightheaded. I lower the gun and bring my hand to my temple, rubbing it in disbelief of all this man keeps putting me through.
“Carmine, stop it!” I beg.
He stops reciting the poem and brings his hands to the chain on his neck. Ah, fuck, that key. I try to stare away from it. I have pleasurable memories tied to a key that I don’t think many people can say they have.
“You have a choice; either I unlock it or you do,” he says as he rubs the top of the skeleton key with his thumb, eyeing the box he placed on the shelf.
“I want you to unlock it,” I demand
He nods in satisfaction with my response. “As you wish.”
He stands there with the key in hand, but neither of us move. I feel every emotion possible at this moment, though my anxiety is starting to take over, making me increasingly angry.
“Carmine, the box,” I urge him
“I was a child and she was a child, in this kingdom by the sea …”
There he goes again reciting Poe. I can’t take this anymore. He has stolen everything from me, and now, I feel him stealing my Goddamn sanity, or whatever remnants are left of it.
I charge him, gun in hand, and strike him to the ground. He maintains his firm grip on the key, quite literally holding onto it for dear life. As we tumble, entwined, the gun thuds against the floor, skidding away from us. I try to crawl toward it, but he flips me over, pinning me to the ground.
I squirm under his grip; his eyes are pinned on me just as much as his hands.
“Is this why you dragged me here, to torture me?” I yell, with tears flooding my eyes as he remains fastening me to the ground, overpowering me.
He says nothing as I continue to yell at him.
“Do you get some sick satisfaction knowing that you have fucked what he used to? Knowing that you killed the person I once loved”
I stop.
Once.
I said once. Not love, as in the present.
I said the person I once loved. Past tense.
The truth stings as it whips me in the face. A part of me will always love Leo, but knowing he was killed, as tragic a reality as it is, is the closure I need. Fighting this man, killing this man, won’t bring Leo back. And it certainly won’t bring me back. Nothing I do can resurrect the girl I once was, and as I look into Carmine’s dark irises, I realize maybe I’m not supposed to.
“No,mi reina, I brought you here not to torture but to unravel you,” he declares, with an odd sense of pride. “You have tried to stitch your broken pieces for so long, but what makes you so uniquely beautiful is the pain you carry, because it has turned into the strength you wear so eloquently.”
His words are as oddly poetic as they are cryptic. I squirm once more under his grip as he continues his speech. “You asked why I summoned you here. The answer feels complex, but it’s simple, really. I needed to provide you with a new foundation of truth. Perhaps it is one you didn’t think you needed, but it is one you deserve.”
Well, shit, this sounds a whole lot like a fancy, drawn-out version of torture to me, but even his evil truths are aphrodisiacs, it seems.
“And what foundation is that?” I say, holding back the burning tears I feel beginning to collect, waiting to be released.
“On me. Where you are meant to rest in peace.”
“You’re going to kill me?” I ask, my voice trembling.
“I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to resurrect your soul, so you can feel alive again and free from the shackles of grief that have bound themselves to you.” His words sound sadistic, but the passion that he exudes feels anything but.
