Page 19 of Requiem & Reverie

Match lit and burning, he pauses, and I push to my feet, stumbling backward into the wall behind me. I catch a glimpse of the girl, whose eyes seem heavier, more sedated, as she rolls her head against the floor, tears streaked down her temples. My mind disappears into the blank space it usually goes when Carl torments me. The void inside my head, where nothing is real, none of this exists.

It’s all a bad dream. A nightmare.

Like a robot, I stride toward the girl and fall to my knees before her. I close my eyes, and swallow hard, shaking my head. “I’m sorry.”

In my dream, I hear whimpers and sniffling, and I clench my eyes tighter, covering my ears, drowning them out with the sounds of a groan inside my head.

I vow to be gentle and slow, but I can’t open my eyes. I need to stay in blackness, where it’s all inside my head.

I imagine heat and wetness and softness inside this place, a mishmash that is both terrifying and exhilarating. Little sounds in her throat that tickle the back of my neck. Breathy, feminine sounds, as if we were somewhere private, and I could say her name, look her in the eyes as I do this. There’s heavy breathing and things that feel good, encouraging me to open my eyes.

So I do, and suddenly my reality comes crashing into me.

I’m not staring down at the girl. I’m standing in my grandfather’s office beside him, reliving the fateful day I watched him violate my mother.

Her head is turned away, as she surrenders her body to him, and the anger inside of me is unbearable. It stretches and grows within me, until it’s too big for me to contain anymore.

“Why are you letting him do this?” The venom in my words lashes out at her, not even a fraction of the rage I feel. “Why do you just lie there? Fight! Fight him!”

Carl’s laughter grates my spine, and I shake my head, breaking from the visual. I stare down my body, where I’ve not yet penetrated the girl, keeping myself hoisted away from her on both arms. I won’t do this. I won’t violate her this way.

The girl is still, and aside from those breaths, she doesn’t say anything.

Rage explodes into flames, and I barrel forward, straight toward Carl’s midsection, knocking him backward into the shelf behind him. A can of paint crashes against my spine, but it hardly registers as pain, with the rush of adrenaline pumping through my blood like ice in lava. Carl tumbles to the ground, the knife falling to the floor with a clang.

I scramble over him, and I’m staring down at my grandfather. His face still red with climax after he strangled my mother to death. I hammer a fist into his face, kicking his head to the side. Another punch. And another. Slivers of pain shoot up my knuckles, as I pummel him senseless, until one sharp punch finally knocks him out.

Breaths burn inside my lungs, while I drag myself off his body and fasten my pants back in place. I crawl back toward the girl, whose face has gone pale, her lips an unhealthy shade of white. Hands shaking, I cover her back up, drawing her dress back down, and slide my hands beneath her.

“I’m getting you out of here,” I whisper to her. “I’m not going to let him hurt you.” With every ounce of strength left in me, I lift her from the floor and carry her limp body up the staircase.

7

Nola

I sit in Oliver’s room, staring through the window. It’s been two days since I last saw my son. I remember once, when he was younger, we were at the zoo, the polar bear exhibit. Sunlight beamed down against the surface of the glass tunnel beneath the pool that housed the animals, giving the magical sense of being underwater with them. We were so fascinated by it, we didn’t notice when Oliver was no longer standing beside Denny. The packed underwater exhibit suddenly turned suffocating. Like it was closing in on me.

We found him just up the aisle a bit, hands pressed to the glass, as a polar bear swam up and rested its paw on the other side.

In those frantic seconds, I most vividly remember the thought of never finding my little boy. How much it tore at my heart, to think he could’ve been swiped from right under my nose.

Taken somewhere and hurt.

Thoughts that stayed with me, reminding me to always be vigilant. To never get caught up in the world so much that I fail to notice my son again.

The planets painted on his wall almost feel like they’re bouncing around me, the dark spaces between, getting bigger and bigger, swallowing me. It’s those dark spaces I fear most. Without the shred of hope offering a small bit of light, the narrow possibility that we’ll find him soon, I’ll be consumed by that obscurity. Every day that passes, that shred of light dims.

From downstairs, Jonah’s voice carries up through the hallway, as he talks with colleagues who’ve been out scouring the streets. Jonah, himself, has been out three times today already, has directed a group of volunteers, who offered to help look for my son. My neighbors, whom I speak to on the rare occasions I run into them, have been bringing me meals each day. I probably have a week’s worth of meals in my refrigerator. And Diane. I suppose she’s been something of a sponge to me, sopping up my tears, crying with me, worrying with me.

Because all of this feels too familiar.

I remember, as a child, being so fascinated by the kindness of strangers who brought us meals and tried to comfort my mother after Nora disappeared. Back then, I couldn’t understand why she acted so ungratefully. So unappreciative of those trying to help, but as I sit here in the dark room alone, I get it. She wasn’t ungrateful, at all, but looking for escape. The one break in her day when she could slip into a quiet void, let it lull her to long periods of sleep when she wouldn’t have to think, because thinking is always the worst. Thinking manipulates a person into believing the things about which the darkness whispers.

He’s never coming back.

He’s gone.

Unfortunately, sleep doesn’t come so easily. It’s not come for me, at all, in the last two days, and I wonder how many hours a person can stay awake for, before collapsing. If it’s possible that I may never sleep again.