Sela: Last Night
1004 Words
This would be the last night I would spend with Thomas by my side, and the thought hurt me more than I expected. Thomas had been a balm to my weary and terrified heart, and even as I feared the world around me, I loved him completely. I didn't want to let him go, but in my heart, I knew I had to make the hard decisions. Both of our lives depended on it.
I couldn't explain the feeling of being hunted, of being watched, of waiting for the end.
Despite finding myself here for the fifth time in less than a year, I had no proof of my fears, save for the feathers that had been left. They always came the day before the memory, and the day after always brought The Shadow. The fear I felt as it stalked me, menacing me, threatening my very existence was not something I wished on anyone. Despite never loving anyone before, I knew that Thomas was in just as much danger as I was for being close to me.
Another sadness sat just below the pain I felt for my impending departure from Thomas. I knew that this would be the last night I would get to see my beautiful, untouchable Dash as well. The pull I felt towards him was unexpected and undeniable. It had thrown me into turmoil time and time again as I fell hopelessly in love with his best friend.
A part of me refused to deny that I was in love with Dash as well. But the memory was waiting for me and with it the horror. I didn't want to see any more of what I had done. I didn't want to face what I had been.
The memory itched, like an infected wound I couldn't quite scratch, though it had yet to reveal itself. I was terrified of what was coming, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening. Images were trying to unravel themselves. Shadows were trying to reveal themselves. The fear was pushing me over the edge, and I knew I had to allow it to happen now, or else I would risk allowing it to happen in front of Thomas when I least expected it.
He could never, ever know what I was.
I drew the curtains of my tiny apartment above the library, hiding me from the world and from the rising moon. I undressed in silence, allowing my clothing to slide over my overstimulated skin, and I sighed as the cool night air covered me from head to toe.
The fear brought on my defenses, and my, what a defense mechanism it was.
I stretched, unfurling my wings from the aether in which they resided, allowing the magick and the power of my existence to wash over me. They stretched out, each feather greyish white and tipped with black, and the fear left me immediately. Whatever was coming for me, I knew I could face it. I had the strength within me to survive.
Maybe it was time to stop running. Maybe I could make a home and a stand here in D'avoir.
The wings faded away again, and a calmness washed over me, but it didn't last long.
I tried to get myself ready but found my hand shaking as I dried myself after leaving the shower. Each time I closed my eyes for the briefest of moments, I could feel the images threatening to come to me. I wanted to cry out in anguish and frustration, knowing that this fear had taken everything from me.
I wondered what would happen if I conquered this fear and ignored it completely?
After all, there couldn't possibly be any truth to what I was imagining; that something was hunting me, and that it could only find me if I remembered.
I had seen therapists and read books and tried desperately to cure myself of what I thought was nothing more than an imagination gone while courtesy of post-traumatic stress.
There was nothing hunting me. There was no doom that would befall me if I remembered anything else about my past.
And even the things I had remembered, the things that had sent the shadow searching for me through every dark corner of each and every home I dared to have, those things could not have possibly existed.
My mind had been thrown into survival mode by whatever life I had lived and whatever had happened to me before my twenty-first birthday. Before I lost it all and woke up in a hotel room in New York, a wound on my throat and a letter telling me I needed to run. I had not announced my story to the world, because something inside of me desperately did not want to be found.
I knew that whatever life I had lost, had not been a life worth living.
But this life...
This life...
I wanted to spend forever with Thomas, and I felt guilt at having kept him from loving the way he was meant to. I was afraid of loving him, afraid of losing him...afraid of exactly what was happening right now.
Now I had to leave him behind.
I could never ask him to come with me, for I feared he wouldn't understand. Even I didn't understand my fear, nor the certainty of death I felt when dealing with my own memories.
I could never allow him to get hurt.
I touched the scar on my neck and removed my hand just as quickly as I had placed it there. It would do me no good to go searching for the memories that had endangered my sanity time and time again.
Living in the moment was what I did best, and for now, I still had time to do just that.
I wanted to be beautiful tonight. I wanted Thomas to never stop touching me because when morning came, he would never be able to touch me again.
- Writer
