Page 75 of We Were Eternal Once

But you never answer the door. I linger in front of it for several minutes, hoping you’ll change your mind. Hoping I’d had enough of your punishment, of your rejection.

I suppose I had not. Anger replaces my longing.

I break the knob off the door and shove it open. Your room is as I remember it, because it was once our room. You sit in a chair, brushing your hair, not looking to me.

“Why was the door locked?” I ask.

“It’s been locked for months, did you just now notice?” You’d locked me out that long? Waiting for me to notice? My anger grows, because it is like that evening with the piano. You do not look at me, too entranced with your own reflection, with your own movements.

“Why is it locked?”

“To prevent you from disrupting me like this,” you say, the brush continuing its rhythmic motion through your hair.

“Is that what I am doing? Intruding? Disrupting?”

You don’t answer. Now you’re applying some cream to your face, as though you need it. As though we can age or get acne or discoloration. It is a ridiculous show.

“Will you ever give me an answer?” My anger melts to desperation, my hands clenched at my side.

“Are you going to destroy more things?”

“As if I am the only one capable of destruction,” I hiss.

“If only you knew,” you say softly, and that is enough for me. I am sick of your words, filled with double meaning. I am sick of being ignored by you. I am sick of all of it, of your distance, of the space you’ve created.

Above all, though, I fear I am sick of you.

The realization has me spinning on my heels and marching to my room, the door slamming behind me. I bury myself deep in my grave, press my mouth to the dirt, and scream. I scream and scream until the sun is well up in the sky and sleep takes me. There is dirt in my lungs, dirt in my mouth, and the weight of my denial pressed tight against my skin.

Melancholy

It takes me a few days to crawl out of my grave. I am not tired, I am not weak, but buried like that insulates me from the emptiness of our home, the echo of your silence.

I do not need to feed as often. I can go days, weeks, maybe even months without the need to feed. When I do hunt these days it’s a habit, the familiarity and rhythm comforting.

I tried to sleep, to let the dirt take me and time stretch around my stillness until it softened my fury. Even without movement my mind stirs—I do not forget despite how I long to. I want to bury this moment deeper than my grave. If I confront it, if I examine it—you no longer care, I am no longer yours—I will crumble.

What is my life if not entangled with yours? Where do I end and you begin? I cannot face this, and I cannot marinate in my sadness anymore. Instead, I dig myself free, my anger an armor against the simmering truth.

Zora finds me quickly, jogging to keep up with my quick pace.

“Where have you been these last nights?” she asks. She looks me over quickly, assessing for injury. Why else would I disappear without telling her? She does not know the real me, the one that leaves a salon bent on worshipping her because it’s too mundane. She thinks me reliable—hah!

How can she be my only friend, yet know so little of me?

“I was struck with melancholy,” I say, not slowing my march through Palais.

“Melancholy?” She stops abruptly, laughing. “Truly? You disappeared because you were sad?”

“What do you know of sadness?” I ask, turning on her suddenly. She studies my face, her brow furrowed. For a moment I think she might run, that I might have frightened her with the intensity of my anger. It is fleeting, replaced by a stubborn downturn of her mouth.

“I have known plenty of sadness,” she says. “And not once did I hide in my home and cry about it.”

“You don’t have a home,” I shoot back before I can catch the words. Her face reddens, as if I’ve slapped her.

“It is not me you’re angry at,” she says softly. Even with her attempts at comforting me, she displaces the conversation away from her. I could learn something of this. I should study how she balances it, as I give too much away time and time again. All these years with only you at my side and coerced humans left me without the skills to navigate these conversations.

It’s not as though you ever encouraged talk of my feelings.