Page 45 of Teddy Bear

Danny killed my parents.

That thought opens up an empty space inside my head, an endless, empty hole seething with drafts and a muffled, dead echo against nothingness.

Danny killed my parents.

That thought is equal parts liberating, monstrous, painful, and incredible.

I almost can't piece it together inside my strained brain cells; I can't squeeze it into that space of the real and the acceptable, it makes me believe that this is all, once again, just a horrible bad dream.

Danny destroyed everything, and freed everything, erased the borders, and finished what my father started - he burned and turned everything to ashes.

There is nothing left. A slight chill goes up my spine as I walk down the familiar snow-covered street.

There is nothing left, and in a dull, heavy, and blessed way, I don't care anymore.

The pack I'm carrying is heavy, and I can feel the straps cutting into my back and shoulders, feeling the slight tension and all the strain of my rather numb and unused muscles, lately devoted only to the easy, sweet and hazy nirvana and service to Danny's dark perversions.

I carry a small shovel and a pick - a digging tools that I could fit inside my backpack, which is still quite massive.

The sharp and harsh winter air enters my nostrils, stinging and pinching my cheeks red and dry from walking and exertion.

I approach my destination as I look at the snow-covered treetops, a white, delicate blanket that has lain over the dry, brittle branches.

The black Dr. Martens boots on my feet trample the snow that has covered most of the road; the leather, fitted jacket warms me and clings to my body while the gently falling snowflakes get tangled in my loose hair.

Danny killed my parents.

And then what?

Their death was an inevitability that would happen sooner or later. I have to admit, I'm amazed that I think like this, but somehow at the same time grateful to the man who wiped out my family and deprived me of the hell I grew up in and lived in - man or monster?

I kept thinking about that question all the time.

After a few minutes of walking, following an almost completely covered, well-known, private road, I reached the place where our family villa used to be.

Here I am, at the graveyard.

A strange current runs through my body, and the whiteness of the snow is so bright and icy-blinding that I think I can see Danny's crystalline gaze looking straight at me.

Man or monster?

A man full of darkness, personal horror, and terrible terrors hiding behind icy pupils, but a man who freed me and allowed me to dance with the demons, mine and his, surrendering to the abyss, the darkness that unfailingly leads my pulsing heart to only one destination - him.

And that is the destination from which there is no return.

He makes me shiver. He crawls under my skin. He doesn't want to love me; he doesn't want to kiss me; he wants to own me, to use me, to absorb every bit of me, to blend and mash our movements until all that's left is the crystalline cotton candy of his obsession.

He is always there, always in front of my eyes.

His love is neither loud, nor explosive, nor dramatic.

His love is quiet, reliable, steadfast, always there, behind the icy shadow of his eyes, the shadow of his eyes is a curse, his love is eternally petrified ice that does not melt, just floats on the endless expanse of an icy ocean showered with foaming waves, his love is a fire, silent, that starts with a spark and then can burn everything in front of it.

His love is patient; it waits, and it knows that it will take me sometime, just as it took me now, according to its game, according to its rules, brought into its small, cozy, dark world like the most beautiful crystal doll on the shelf.

His love is not even love so much as consumption, obsession, the desire to have me near him - to be surrounded by my laughter, my breath, my steps through the deaf nights from which there is no way out. He does not want to make love to me; he wants to screw my brain in such a way that I will never think of anyone else but him.

He doesn't want to fuck me; he wants to enjoy himself, like a murderer butchering his corpse. He wants to take inch by inch of my skin, to take the paleness and darkness without brakes.