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I scramble out of bed and rush across the room to turn on the ceiling light.
There are no monsters or creeping darkness. But there’s nothing else either.
I’m alone.
I wrap a long cardigan around myself and pad into the living room. Only darkness greets me here too, and panic creeps back with frightening speed until I slap my hand onto the light switch.
With my pulse pounding in my neck, I dart to the next lamp and turn it on. Then I’m rushing around the apartment, flicking every single switch I can find until the lights are blinding.
With anxiety still pounding in my system, I make another round, checking all crooks and corners, closets and hidden spaces with the same result as before. There’s nothing here. Only me and my paranoia.
It’s been years since I was this scared of being alone at night. Sometimes, I’ll get nervous when turning off the light at night, but I always feel in control, able to shut the anxiety down before it can eat me up.
But not tonight.
Tonight it gets to swallow me whole. There’s nothing I can do about it as I walk around the place on shaky legs, flitting my eyes back and forth at the tiniest sound.
Markus’s apartment used to mean safety and comfort, but suddenly it’s too big and cold—a reminder of the gaping hole existing between us.
I feel utterly alone. It doesn’t matter that I have two men in my life who care about me. Neither of them is here now when I need them the most. Markus is slipping away from me and Grigory is stuck at a distance, unable to move closer. So I remain here in this limbo, hoping for something that may never come.
The large, empty apartment is a constant confrontation with my loneliness. I can’t stand it. I need to shut myself into a smaller space, close myself off to the blaring emptiness. So I retreat to the music room like I’ve done so many other times, closing the door and finding comfort in black and white keys.
I take out my sheet music and find a piece I’ve wanted to play for a long time. Debussy’s “La Cathédrale Engloutie.”
It’s perfect with its open, suspended harmonies, blending into the night with a gloomy, dreamlike atmosphere. A hole in time.
The music pulls me into a meditative state, shutting out the world and letting me hover in its void. I lose all sense of time and have no idea how long I’ve been going at it when I finally lift my eyes from the notes.
I stare at the clock for a full minute before the time registers in my muddled brain.Four fifty.
Maybe I should go back to bed?
It’s not a very appealing idea, but my eyelids are like heavy weights when I try to refocus on the sheet music. So I push off the bench and stagger through the apartment, leaving all the lights on, and collapse on the bed.
I can still feel the blaring lights as I close my eyes, and they keep the crawling anxiety at bay, allowing me to drift off.
***
All too soon, consciousness tugs at me again. I try to fight it, but it’s no use. Someone is shaking me—a deep voice urging me to wake up.
I feel cold and weak even though I’m lying perfectly still under a warm comforter. As I drift closer to consciousness, the feeling intensifies until my entire system trembles, and I curse the person beside me inwardly.
“Wake up,” the voice repeats as the hand shakes me again, and I finally register that Grigory is the cursed person trying to force me awake too soon.
I grunt and roll onto my side, away from him. My eyelids are too heavy to open, my body too dull to even sit up, much less leave the bed.
“Devochka,” he says, shaking me harder.
“Leave me alone,” I groan.
“Why are all the lights on?” he asks, concern tightening his voice.
I drag the comforter farther up over my head. “I don’t know.”
The mattress dips behind me, and then I feel the intense heat of his hand as he nudges the comforter back down. “Talk to me,devochka,” he says, caressing my cheek. “Why are all the lights on?”
Angling my head slightly, I instinctively seek the warm hand. It soothes my frazzled nerves and coaxes out my words. “I was scared.”
