“Azadou, it doesn’t have to be like this.”
I clutch the tumbler in my hand, reducing the glass to powder in my palm as I attempt to dispel those words from my mind. Everything about that creature has been a plague on my senses, yet it's those words above all that cling to my thoughts like gum stuck under one’s shoe. Is it the words themselves, or the pleading tone her voice took when she uttered them? As each syllable echoes through my ears, I recall the look in her prismatic eyes as she spoke them. In their colourful depths, I saw hatred. It’s a look I’ve grown accustomed to seeing in the faces of those who gaze upon me and one I have come to expect. Until this morning, she had never looked at me that way.
I sought to break her, to make her beg me for rejection, but never once did the t
