Dark. My room is dark. All dark. I am all dark.
I fought my way out of All Souls and it was like old days, old times, making myself hidden and smaller on the street, and I found an alley, a Dumpster, and fitted myself between that and the brick wall of a building, darkness everywhere around me.
And now I am back, hollow, and my room has been trashed. The green duffel bag, Blue’s purse, her clothes, everything is torn and ripped, stomped on and cut up. A half-empty bottle of whiskey quivers on the card table. Lipstick has been smeared all over my mural wall, the faces bloody slashes. She wrote Love, Wendy!
Did they come here together after he chased me away? Did they come here together to ruin my things, laughing, high? Was this another way for them to get off ?
The easy chair leaks stuffing, a knife lying innocently on the cushion.
I strip off all my new clothes and stand in the middle of the floor, naked.
You never get better.
I take four swallows of the whiskey. A hundred bees buzz in my ears. The little workers inside me sharpen claws, gather nails. They are singing. I drink some more, get down on my hands and knees, and crawl to Louisa’s suitcase in the kitchen, push over the milk crate that held my dishes so they clatter and break on the floor, a thousand white stars, a thousand pieces of salt. I heave at the suitcase, wedged tightly under the tub, until it gives.
A little sound, a cry, escapes from my mouth. My sketchbook is gone. The photographs and my old drawings, shredded. And my kit, my kit, stomped on and dented and emptied out, gauze strewn everywhere in the suitcase, my glass smashed to bits.
Why did I listen to Casper, to Mikey? What was I trying to do, anyway? Thinking things would be any different? Telling me to be quiet. To breathe. To let everything pass. What a load of shit.
I kick the suitcase away and stand up. I close my eyes, drink the last of the bottle, smash it against the wall. I am dark, dark, all dark. I have to cut it out, this thing in me that thought I could be better. I have to remember how stupid I was, how fucking stupid—
I stop. Is this how Ellis felt, this moment of certainty? The text messages flicker in front of my eyes.
Smthing hrts. U never sd hurt like this. 2 much. A sparkling lake of bottle glass is beneath my feet. I grind down into it. Let my skin soak up the lake of glass. How powerful am I? How powerful am I. I can grind the glass to my face, erase my eyes, eat glass, and disappear from the inside. There, the window, my hands, that hand, balled and aching. That hand, a fist, give me more, give me more glass, I can drink it all. The glass raining over me from the broken window, it feels like home.
