Page 301 of The Professor's Wife

They’re trapped, like me. They’re in this place, but they aren’t staring at the shadows. They’re staring at me.

You’re the only thing real to them.

The thought doesn’t come of my own volition. It’s been given to me. Seeded by something else. Something foreign and outside my realm of understanding.

“I don’t understand,” I grit out, though no sound is made. I don’t have a voice, and it feels strange because I never noticed that because I never had to use it.

I get closer to the sea of faces. Most of them are empty forms with no faces. Their bodies aren’t solid but made of thousands of fluttering butterflies. I stop and stare at them, unsure of what they want.

Until I see them.

Other figures, their butterflies glowing orange.

Figures…with faces.

They stand amongst the faceless forms, looking at me.

One of them is a tall man with glowing blue eyes. I feel like I’ve seen him before. He’s beautiful in a way that leaves a deepache in my chest. He stares at me, his eyes heavy and sad. His lips have parted, but I don’t think he has a voice in here, either.

The other form next to him is a girl with long black hair. She’s weeping soundlessly. Butterflies flutter constantly around her chest where there appears to be a gaping hole. I stare, horrified, at the black holes.

“I don’t know what you want,” I say, but again, I have no voice.

The third form flickers in my peripheral. I turn my head to look—

Terror slams into me with full force. I let out what would have been a guttural sound as my knees buckle, and I fall to the ground. No. Nonono. The weight doesn’t concern me anymore. I crawl against the force that screams at me to turn back to the wall—back to what I comfortably am told to believe.

But my son is in this fucking place, and I let out a soundless scream as I stare at his tiny form, looking at me with a blank stare.

“ROWE!” I beg for him to come to me.

I’ve lost him.

He’s gone.

He’s dead.

It’s my fault.

The thoughts are so devastatingly painful. The grief is so indescribable. I feel pain and only pain and nothing but sorrow and guilt. So much guilt and I know I should remember why, and the answer is there, but I can’t place it.

All I know is my boy is made up of butterflies and his eyes aren’t full of life like they used to be.

I reach out to him with trembling fingers. I’m so close to touching him, and it’s suddenly all I want to do. All I have to do. I just want to touch my boy, to hold him again because I think I haven’t done it in so long. I just want him in my arms. I want towatch him grow. I think I can do this. I think if I touch him, I can find a way to keep him forever—

But the second my fingers begin to touch him, his body scatters before me. He breaks apart before my eyes, and my grief is silent but ear-shattering in my soul. The butterflies that made his form flutter around me, wings beating furiously in all directions. I scream into the void, trying to snatch them, trying to grab a hold of a butterfly because it’s a butterfly made of him.

It’s my Rowe.

He disappears before my eyes, the butterflies rushing together now, moving fluidly as one whole. I twist around as the other forms break apart in thousands of butterflies. Together, they become whole and stream away from me, moving fast in one direction.

There is such a flurry of them, I close in on myself. I drop my head to the ground and wrap my arms around myself. I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling the rapid sweep of the air as it rushes around me for seconds that feel like a silent eternity.

Then there is stillness.

I look up, cautiously. My damp eyes blink around me, at the nothingness. The forms are gone. I’m alone again, and there’s so much pain in that.

I untangle my limbs and stand.