DARK SOULS (Dark Souls Series) (6 page)

A memory triggered inside me, and I gasped, stepping back and nearly falling onto the stairs behind me. Macy blinked, and as soon as her eyes opened again, she was back to normal, though the worry line between her brows that she had sported ever since she found me on the roof was now gone. 

“Why are we just standing here?” she asked, grabbing hold of me again. “Let’s get you home to bed.”

I was too confused to say anything else. I just let her lead me through the house, ignoring everyone as she weaved us between the crowds.

“Hey, you guys aren’t leaving, are you?” I heard Nick say above the crowd. “I just cracked open a fresh bottle of tequila! I wanna see you eat the worm, Em!”

“She’s not for you!”

I made another grab for Macy as she whipped around, preventing her from stalking over to Nick and doing god knows what.

“Okay Mace, okay. Let’s go. Let’s get a cab,” I whispered once we exited the house, my thoughts scattering like frantic butterflies in my brain. “I can’t handle the subway right now.”

Macy nodded, thoughts of Nick already long forgotten. “Good plan, but it’s gonna be balls to find one around here. Then again, I see you don’t have shoes.” She stumbled down the stairs of the brownstone but caught herself on the railing, her steps a little wobbly as she descended.

“So, did you have fun at the party?” she asked without looking back. She was too busy focusing on getting down the stairs in one piece. “Too much…vodka shots…or wait, whiskey shots. Whiskey-vodka shots,” she said, turning the words into a song only she could enjoy.

I stopped midway down the stairs, my hand clenching hard around the banister as my mind finally computed what her question was. “What?”

“Well, I lost track of you for a while there,” she said, turning around to face me once she reached the small gate that led to the sidewalk. She leaned on it heavily, causing the wrought iron to screech under her weight as it opened. “Sorry. I spotted Asher and just had to introduce myself. You know, he is a really nice guy. Seriously nice. You have to meet him! He’s a sexy, tattooed…” She threw her hands into the air, nearly toppling onto the street. “Masterpiece!”

Now it was my turn to sport a worry line between my brows. Was this because she was drunk? Was she only forgetting time because of vodka, or did I do something? What could I have done to her? My bare feet smacked against the wet sidewalk as I followed her, uncaring of what disease I could contract—because let’s be honest, I probably already contracted one. My mind raced, paused, and then raced again as I tried to understand.

Instead of questioning Macy further, I decided to remain silent. I needed to sort out my own thoughts over what just happened before asking anyone else about theirs.

As I watched Macy try to flag down a cab, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just somehow mentally forced Macy to forget about not only taking me to the hospital, but about everything else that she’d seen, too. And that I’d done the same thing to Rob before I killed him. Or had I killed him? Was it a hallucination? Monsters aren’t real. They live in imaginations, created under beds, pictured huddled in dark closets. Not in my life. Not in
real
life
.

And to add even more confusion, Macy was acting like Rob Morrow never even existed. Did I actually make him up? I couldn’t help but think about my mother. Was this what it was like during one of her bad days? Am I going to start having bad days now, too? I clenched my jaw at the thought, accidentally biting the inside of my cheek and drawing blood, but the coppery taste didn’t distract me. It only served to remind me.

Did Rob ever even exist? Or was Macy just too drunk to pay attention?

I didn’t think I could survive myself if I started hallucinating about monsters in people’s bodies trying to kill me on a daily basis.

Against my will, my mind shot backwards, instantly recalling the one and only time I saw my mother after that fateful day, when I had just turned ten and was coaxed by my family trauma counselor and my aunt to see her. Not even Aunt Sandy will ever speak of the moment when my mother’s eyes landed on mine. I was forced to watch as her eyes, initially vacant, fill with such violent hate that I instinctively took a step back and pressed against my aunt. I couldn’t look away as my mother’s face twisted into a mask of horror, her lips peeling back from her teeth as she opened her mouth to scream.

“
GET HER AWAY FROM ME!”
she shrieked, “
GET THAT FOUL BEAST OUT OF MY SIGHT!”

My hands trembled and pattered against my sides as I tried desperately to get my thoughts under control.

What is happening to me?

CHAPTER SIX

No. Stop.

The sheets were tight and damp as they tangled around me, my legs kicking out into the empty air, defending. But I couldn’t defend myself, not here, not while laying prone in bed. Because it was all happening behind my eyelids, the images as jarring as entering the light of day after hiding in the dark pit of a cave…

Trying to drown out the voices roaring in her head, she let the stream of water pound hard onto her back. The water was so hot she could barely stand it, but she forced herself to stay in the spray, to let it heat her skin so much she could practically feel her blood boiling underneath.

The high temperature normally calmed her, relaxed her. But not tonight. Tonight, it only managed to suffocate her and provide the constant reminder that she was alive, even though her mind kept screaming at her that she was dead.

Tilting her head back she let the rivulets slide down her face, the water slowly running down the planes of her cheekbones before nestling at the corners of her mouth. She tasted salt.

Tears were mixing with the scorching dampness. She didn’t even bother to quiet the wrenching sob that echoed throughout the tiled bathroom.

No longer able to stand on her own, her left hand grasped the slick wall and she leaned heavily against it, her breath short and laboured. Knees buckling, she tried to force herself to keep standing, but couldn’t do it. Falling on all fours and trembling, she curled up into a twisted ball, shivering violently despite the cloud of steam surrounding her.

And that was how he found her.

Clenching his hands hard at his sides, he looked down at her and felt another piece of his heart slip away. There she was, the most beautiful, wonderful, intriguing woman he had ever met, reduced to a sobbing mass of tangled limbs. He was anything but disgusted. To him, even in this state, she was still beautiful—she still had his heart. But to go to her… he didn’t know if he could. He wanted nothing more than to hold her so tight that she would almost be a part of him, to kiss her temples, to hold her shaking hands in his. He also knew that if he did that, if he pulled her to him, the pain of letting her go again would destroy not only him, but her as well.

He had already done enough damage to her soul. He had already ripped her heart and mind to shreds and left her to bleed alone. He was already out of her life.

And so, he took one last, longing look at the only person who ever made him whole, and left her there to fight on her own. For he could no longer fight the monsters for her. A single tear slid down his cheek as he quietly opened the door, the only visible testament to the wild storm raging inside him.

Through blurred vision she watched him leave, her heart screaming at her to call him back. But with one last gut-wrenching sigh, she quieted her heart, knowing full well that to have him back here would only extend her pain. Closing her eyes, she rested her quaking limbs, and let the jets of water numb her to sleep.

There, she let go, at least for a little while, and fell asleep in a cloud of mist, praying that one day she could find her spirit again…

 My eyes slowly opened, my vision still blurry from the tears I had shed in my sleep. The pillow underneath me was damp with cooling sweat, and I struggled as my mind tried to recover from the heart-wrenching dream and settle itself back into reality.

For two nights now, I had been having the same dream and waking in the same way, covered in sweat and tears. I never saw the faces in this dream, but I felt their emotions as if they were my own. Soon, I knew the dream would dissipate from my thoughts completely, floating out of my mind like a cobweb ripped free from its shadowed corner and caught in the wind. I could never hold onto it for long. As soon as my eyes opened, the scene, so devastatingly clear as I watched it unfold in my sleep, would blur, the mist of that poor woman’s heartbreak obscuring my memory and preventing me from remembering any further.

I sat up, scrubbing the sleep from my eyes probably harder than I should have.

Frustration was beginning to overtake my initial feelings of panic that had begun on Friday night. It was now Sunday morning, and I was no closer to figuring out what was going on with me than I was two days ago.

I knew that I should probably book an appointment with a shrink as soon as possible, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t begin that downward spiral that I saw my mother go through, right up until the very end when she gave up. That wasn’t going to be me. They would throw medications at me, change me, turn me into a zombie. I would be diagnosed with something best suited to my symptoms, each diagnosis differing with each specialist I went to. It would be a never-ending loop; a process that I had witnessed before and refused to ever be part of again.

I would fight this. Whatever was going on with me, I would fight it. I would not give up like my mother. I would not get into my car and drive over a bridge in an effort to permanently stop my suffering.

Grabbing the glass of water on my nightstand, I finished it in one gulp. I was getting thirstier and hungrier with every hour that passed, and I especially felt it in the mornings when I woke up, my mouth dry and parched, my tongue thick and sticky. The rumbling in my stomach would begin almost immediately, pleading with me to feed it. I tried everything from junk food to salads to protein shakes, but nothing was working. However, I was always a firm believer in mind over matter, so by sheer determination I was becoming accustomed to ignoring the hunger pangs.

Other than my relentless hunger and thirst, physically I had never felt better. When I woke up yesterday, my mind quickly forgetting that strange dream, I felt refreshed, better than I had in years. My energy was pumping so hard that I honestly had to talk myself out of doing a backflip off my bed and onto the floor.

I bounced out of bed instead and caught my reflection in my vanity mirror above my dresser, gasping in pleasure. My hair fell in waves just past my shoulder blades, practically as luscious and thick as Macy’s. Usually, I was forced to fight with my hairbrush in order to tame my unruly tresses every morning, but now I barely had to run a comb through. My eyes sparkled, truly sparkled, like moonlight glinting across a dark aquamarine ocean. My cheeks were stained a light pink, my lips plush with the same pale rose color. I had to smile. I couldn’t help but think that this was probably how my mother felt on her good days.

This morning was no different, although my hair was definitely duller than it was yesterday. My cheeks were also not as flushed, my eyes not as bright. My skin had also toned down its subtle golden glow, but I still felt refreshed, though I didn’t have the urge to backflip off my bed like yesterday.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew that this all had to do with whatever happened Friday night. The unfortunate part was that I didn’t altogether remember
what happened on Friday night. All I could recall was that, as I flicked through all my Facebook photos and my Instagram feed, there was no Rob Morrow. Nothing. His smiling face did not appear anywhere, not in any party photos, not hanging out at Cream of the Cup with his arm slung over Macy’s shoulders. He was just…nowhere.

My mind tried to process this, even though it felt like I had gulped down fifty cups of coffee.  My energy had been sky high, and it had been difficult to focus all day yesterday. Now, looking back in a much calmer state of mind, I allowed the concern to finally break through. I couldn’t possibly have made up a
person
. My mother, whom I considered to be the epitome of what it looks like when a mind shatters, never even made up a person. And my memories of him, how could they have been made up? So detailed, right down to the fact that I knew he hated flavored coffee and that it was because of him that I was finally able to learn Sudoku. He was always happy to talk whenever he came to the coffee shop. He even treated me like a friend, despite only knowing me through Macy. How did I make that all up?

Sighing in exasperation, I got out of bed, trying hard not to wake Macy as I moved, though my efforts weren’t really needed because she was sleeping like the dead beside me, another night out now safely ensconced in her drunken memories.

I headed quietly to my bathroom and turned on the shower. I always thought best in showers—
hot spray misting over her body as she curled up in agony
—and so that is where I decided to begin my Sunday. Today, I was going to seek some answers. While my conscious mind had deliberately blocked out most of what went on Friday night, I remembered enough to know that something horrible had happened. Since I refused to consider myself crazy just yet, I thought I might as well do some research on what else could possibly have happened to me.
There is always more than one answer to a problem,
my mother used to say to me. And on that point, she was right. I couldn’t necessarily explain away what was going on with me mentally, but my physical manifestations were hard to disregard as insanity. I wasn’t hallucinating my physical differences; other people had been commenting on them, too. Macy noticed the changes almost immediately when she saw me last night.

“Did you put on a new kind of make-up? And did you finally try a blow out? You look great!” she exclaimed as she bent over and reached into my tiny, waist-high fridge for the vodka.