Page 138 of Molt

Just brittle skin. Bone and dust.

A century and a half finally allowed to decay. And when morning comes, Sarah is still alive.

One heart.

Five fingers.

Two green eyes.

Her own jaw.

Her own scars returning slowly beneath the new skin. She looks down at the place where I was. There’s almost nothing left.

Except one thing.

A tooth.

Small. White. Unremarkable.

She picks it up and turns it over.

No filling. No hole. No label. Nothing strange about it.

Just mine.

Sarah closes her fist around it. And cries. Not because Lenora is gone. Not because the cycle is broken.

Because August is.

And this time…

I stay dead.

Epilogue

Three months later, I move.

Different city. Different apartment. Different fucking floor plan because apparently there are things therapy cannot fix and living beneath another human being is one of them.

I throw away everything from the old apartment.

The clothes. The furniture. The sheets. Every jar. Every photograph. Every piece of skin.

Almost everything.

August’s tooth sits inside a small wooden box in my nightstand. I tell myself I keep it because it’s proof. Proof that he existed. Proof that I didn’t imagine any of it. Proof that for a brief, terrible moment, someone loved me enough to destroy the world and then finally loved me enough to let it go.

Some nights, I hold it. Some nights, I fucking hate it.

Most nights, I just miss him.

My body is mine again. Mostly.

Five fingers. Two green eyes. My scar has returned above my knee. The first morning I noticed it, I sat on the bathroom floor and cried for an hour. Three little white lines.

Sarah.

Mine.