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I gasp, pulling in the breath my dream stole from me as I sit upright in bed.My heart hammers in my throat.Mina stirs beside me.
“Brian?”
Her voice calls out to me in the darkness, but it’s not the terror she displayed on Halloween night, it’s concern.It’scarefor me.I can’t fucking stand it.I lost control and almost killed her.She doesn’t know that, though.It was easy enough to focus on the crime of fucking her through her tears.No, I can’t trust myself to fuck her.But that one rabid decision may be the only reason she’s still breathing.
She’s just not safe with me.How can I keep her safe when I’m the biggest threat?
I turn on the lamp and get up and go to the dresser.I pull out a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt, socks, and running shoes.
Mina starts to get up, too.
“No.Stay.I need to be alone.”
I turn to see the tears shining behind her eyes, but I ignore it.Yes, I’m pulling away… somebody has to.How can she sleep beside such a monster every night?How can she snuggle up beside me in the dark?How can she trust me when I don’t trust myself?
When I reach the gym, I turn on the Chopin and start running on one of the treadmills.This music doesn’t go with blood and screams, but it’s what I see and hear as I run.The two incongruent sounds blend and twirl together until it almost makes sense—until they almost belong together.My yin and my yang dancing together on the air just outside my reach.
My running shoes hit the treadmill harder, and louder, faster… but I can’t shut it off.The sounds, the blood, Mina.Chasing her through that pumpkin patch while everything inside me called for her blood.I’m too broken.I should be put down.
I shouldn’t even be allowed to exist in this world.
I run until I’m exhausted.I just want to stop the sounds and images, all the thoughts that ran through my mind, thoughts I barely remember thinking… of all the ways I wanted to remove her from this world.But it wasn’t me… I don’t want her gone.I’m not some crazed jealous abusive boyfriend.I wasn’t mad at her.I know she did nothing wrong.
It was the wild in me.The dark in me.It was the other, the something else that isn’t me, the broken shards of what I became so long ago.
The animal.The monster.That inhuman thing.
There is no saving me.
2
MINA
Iturn the lamp back off and lie in the quiet stillness of the dungeon room.It’s been three weeks since Halloween night and piece by piece, every day Brian slips away from me a little more.He won’t meet my gaze, won’t touch me, barely speaks to me.
He hasn’t told me what the nightmares are about, but I know.He can’t forgive himself for Halloween.I’m surprised he hasn’t run off on a personal job and left me behind—or gone hunting tocreatea personal job.Brian doesn’t require a contract or a directive to kill.
I lie in the dark forever, waiting for him to come back, wondering if he’ll get back in bed and fall asleep beside me, giving me the one unguarded moment when I can press my body against his and pretend things are the same, that we’re fine.How did we get here?
And how do we get back?
I finally drift off again into dreamless sleep and when I wake, I turn to find the glaring red numbers on the digital clock say eleven am.I turn on the lamp.Brian’s side of the bed is exactly as he left it when he got up to go run.He’s not coming back.I try not to let it bother me.He’ll get over this; he has to.But I cry in the shower anyway.
Once I’ve had enough of feeling sorry for myself, I put on some leggings, furry boots, and a sweater.I put a 9mm and several extra magazines in holsters on my waistband and make my way upstairs to join the rest of the house.
I grab some food from the kitchen and wander the grounds.The girls and the trainers stare at me as I pass, including the new girl, Julie.Gabe’s girl.Though is she really Gabe’s?It doesn’t seem like it to me.
They all know something’s wrong, but no one dares ask.They’ve still got enough healthy fear of the new me to prevent that.
I find Brian out in the woods where I knew he’d be, throwing rounds down his homemade gun range.Glass shatters in perfect time as he goes down the row, taking out six bottles, changing magazines, and then taking out the remaining six.
“For fuck’s sake,” I say when he removes his hearing protection.“I need you to get over this.”
He rounds on me, eyes blazing with far more fury than I expected, but I’m so tired of this mope-y Brian.Since when does he have guilt about anything?And I know that’s what it is.He can’t forgive himself for something that didn’t happen.
I never told him no.I never wanted him to stop.It’s unnatural for him to be this worked up about this.
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew,” he says, cryptically.
