Page 4

His tongue. You fat, frigid, pathetic whore.

His cock. You never want it. What’s wrong with you?

Bile and vomit rise in my stomach, but then turn to something else.

I reach inside and lift out the hand. I rub at the spot just below the thumb until… there it is. A mole that looks like the number six. I used to wonder why there weren’t two more of them.

666.

The devil’s numbers.

I drop it back in and place my hands firmly on either side of the box. They are covered in blood and leave dark handprints on the desk.

Laughter fizzes and crackles in my lungs.

He would never have imagined this could happen to him. He would never even have dreamed someone could have this kind of power over him.

But someone has.

Someone took him apart, piece by piece, and they did it for me.

I will always protect you.

All that fear and worry that he was right around the corner about to jump out at me. And the entire time, he’s been in bits.

Dismantled.

The way he dismantled me for so many years.

Next, I lift out Steven’s tongue. Because of all the things he ever did to me, the things he said, the words he carved in the deepest crevices of my psyche, and which grew deeper, and heavier, turning my soul to blackness – those were the worst.

Looking at it in my palm, I almost expect the tongue to have a pulse. To start lapping at my skin, trying to find its way back to the Steven-shaped body that lies dismembered somewhere in the dark.

I drop the tongue and it lands with a sound that makes me start to shake.

I grip the edge of the counter and try to breathe.

This time, the laughter does turn to vomit. I puke onto the floor. Some of it splashes my shoes.

Who, and how, and why, and when circle in my head, pound against the inside of my skull.

Whatever glimmer of strength and power I felt when I realized Steven was gone has instantaneously morphed into something else.

Fear.

Solidifying like ice in my veins.

What do I do with them?

Do I tell the police?

Everyone thinks Steven left me for the woman he’d been having an affair with. The detectives showed me transcripts of their online chats, texts, his search history, proof that his car had driven up to Scotland then disappeared somewhere in the Highlands.

But he can’t have.

Because he is here. In pieces. In my hands.

The eye.