Page 39 of Pas de Trois
Slowly, it rises.
The song.
The one he’s whistling, the one that I was humming.
It’s the tune he whistled when he left me to die in his bathtub, locked beneath the mirror and the running faucet.
The blood is to his knees when he stretches his arms out wide. He tilts his head back. As if he’s willed it to happen, he explodes, bursting into crimson liquid that splatters the walls and drenches me and my baby in a thick coating.
I scream.
The baby cries and I look down, but he’s no longer in my arms.
I dropped him.
He’s sinking into the pool of blood that continues to rise.
I lunge after him, diving beneath the surface and reaching for him, but he’s already gone. I can’t find him. I don’t know where he is. I rise to break the surface, to catch my breath, but my head hits something hard above me.
I open my eyes and immediately close them again.
I’m back in Vigo’s bathtub, drowning beneath clear water, my reflection splintered in the cracked mirror that keeps me locked in my own watery grave.
Somewhere nearby, my baby cries again but I’m trapped. I can’t get to him. But I have to get to him. I need to get to him. He needsme.
I hear....
Italian.
A woman’s voice.
Renata.
Though I can’t see her, I know she has my baby. He continues to cry and scream. He doesn’t want her. He needs me.
“Sweet child. You were never meant for this world,” she coos.
I try to scream for him but water fills my mouth.
“Your father is a slave. You never should have existed.”
My baby screams louder and she only shushes him. His cries become muffled as if something smothers him.
“Go to sleep, baby. It’ll all be over soon,” she murmurs.
I scream as loud as I can, but the sound is swallowed by the water all around me. The air rushes out of me in bubbles as I scream and scream until I’m gasping for more air, but only taking in water. I’m drowning.
Drowning.
I hear the echo of Renata’s voice somewhere above me.
My baby no longer cries.
I open my eyes beneath the water and see my reflection above me, but then it changes. With each ripple of water, it twists and morphs until it becomes Vigo above me.
He waves at me with a sadistic grin as I gulp in more water, my chest aching as it fills my lungs.
“It will be done soon,” his reflection tells me. “Just a few more counts of eight. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.”
