I stumble back to my own studio, closing the door behind me and locking it, leaning back against the cool wood with my heartbeat scattering frantically across my ribs.
I’m breathing hard, clutching the front of my shirt, sweating more than ever.
He’s lying! He’s fucking lying!
He’s not gonna gaslight me. I know what I saw that night. He was standing there, staring down at me. I didn’t make that up—I couldn’t. How could I have imagined his face before I ever saw it?
Maybe you had seen it before. In a photograph. In a magazine.
No, fuck that. I didn’t see his picture and forget about it. That’s not what happened.
What can I do? Who can I tell?
He kidnapped me. Did he? Someone did. And Cole was there.
Bits of memory cut at me from all sides, jagged as a shattered mirror. I see little flickers, fragments. I want to burst into tears but I know he’s still somewhere close by, he could hear me. He owns this building. HE OWNS THE FUCKING BUILDING!
What is happening? The coincidence, the situation, it’s making me feel like my head is splitting apart. I don’t know what to believe.
Maybe I could have imagined it.
But the way he reacted when I confronted him . . . he wasn’t surprised. His eyebrows dropped, his pupils contracted, he didn’t hesitate for a second, he bit right back at me, attacking like a snake. That’s not normal.
He says it wasn’t him.
Is that true? Can it be true?
That would mean there were two soulless psychopaths in the woods that night. That doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes sense.
I’m pacing back and forth, still strangling my shirt, sometimes lifting it up over the bottom half of my face and breathing into it.
What am I supposed to do?
What about the grant? What about the fact that all my stuff is here now?
Does any of that matter? There might be a murderer walking around. There is for sure, I’ve seen it in on the news—girls beaten and hacked to bits by the Beast of the Bay, which is a fucking upsetting nickname by the way – like the media itself wants to give him power over us. Turning him into some supernatural force before which we can only be prey.
Did the same person snatch me off the street? Was it Cole Blackwell?
These questions shout at me from every corner of my mind. I can’t get a grip on myself, I don’t know what to do. I feel frantic and powerless, and like I really might be crazy.
That’s what Blackwell said. He called me “unstable.”
That’s what people will think if I accuse him publicly. Hell, even the cops didn’t believe me and that’s before they heard some famous rich guy was involved.
No one believes me because my story makes no sense.
Why would someone snatch me off the street and cut my wrists, then leave me there? Only for a completely different guy to appear ten minutes later?
Blackwell said it wasn’t him. But he also said he wasn’t there at all, and that’s fucking bullshit. I know what I saw.
I know what I think I saw.
Could I really be unstable?
That stirs up some deeply buried shit for me. I’m talking the stuff you pack way, way down in the back of your mind and never look at ever, under any circumstances.
Your mom is so nice.
How can you hate her?
She just wants what’s best for you.
I know you’re lying.
She told me what you said about me.
She told me what you did.
You’re disgusting . . .
And then, even deeper down, the voice that makes up the worst fucking part of me. The part I wish I could tear out and burn on the fire, but I never can, because she is a part of me. All the way down in my DNA.
You can’t escape what you are . . .
I’m just doing what any good mother would do.
You can’t imagine what it’s like, having a daughter like you.
All mothers love their children. All of them. If I don’t love you, what do you think that means?
I read your journal. I know what you think, secretly, when you’re pretending to be so sweet.
I know what you do alone in your bed.
You’re disgusting. Disgusting.
I slap myself across the face once, hard.
Then I grab my own wrist to stop me doing it again.
You’re not going to do that anymore.
When you hurt yourself, you leave marks. That makes you look crazier than anything. Then nobody believes a word you say. All the marks look like you did them.
I have a better way now.
I just have to remember to use it.
Breathe. Take the feeling. Turn it into something.
I look at my half-finished canvas, at the collage I was so proud of this morning.
It’s not bad. But it’s also not great.
It’s just . . . safe.
Safe is pointless. Safe is an illusion.
I wasn’t safe when someone snatched me off the street. And I sure as fuck am not safe here, now, today, in Cole Blackwell’s studio.
I’m not getting the grant, that much is obvious. Blackwell is jerking my chain.
Well, fuck it then.
I take the half-finished collage off the easel and rest it against the wall.
In its place I set the larger canvas, the one that intimidated me, the one I don’t actually have time to complete.
I pick up a bucket of dark wash and I throw it against the canvas, letting it rain down onto the floor.
If this fucker plans to evict me, I’m not gonna baby the hardwood.
I’m so tired of fighting. Every time I feel like I’m getting just a tiny bit ahead in my life, something happens to slap me down again.
Maybe the common denominator is me.
Maybe I am fucking crazy.
And maybe that’s just fine. I’d rather be crazy than be like half the people I meet.
I pick up my brush and start painting with wild abandon, with vast strokes and no hesitation.
I think back to that night. I remember the things that I know were real: the cold ground beneath me. The agony of my arched back, bound hands, and bleeding wrists. I remember the lonely rustle of wind in the trees, the black, empty sky.
And then footsteps . . .
Lighter than the ones I heard before.
The hope that fluttered up in my chest.
And the sickening dread when I saw Cole Blackwell looking down on me.
Merciless. Pitiless. Curious . . . but uncaring.
I pick up my pencil and begin to sketch an outline on the canvas: a girl’s body, bent and bound. My body.
He can deny it all he wants. I know what happened. I can draw it clear as a photograph.
I work on the new painting feverishly, until I can hear lights switching off all over the building, people bidding each other goodnight as they leave.
I check the studio door once more to make sure it’s locked. Then I return to the painting and keep working.
I work all night long.
