Beast at My Side

The Metronome Stutters

For a while I was haunted. Every dream was a nightmare, and every waking hour filled me with an unspeakable dread. Jane would come. I was sure of it. She would come and tear me limb from limb with her tiny hands; she would taste my blood on her pretty pink tongue. She would end me. Each morning I woke in a silent scream. The days were long, spent trembling and quaking, and praying for the end. But each end only came when I shook myself apart, the pieces of me too tired to continue quivering.

And then, one night, I dreamt of Luc.

It was easy to lose myself, to float away with him in to the night. Easy to hang myself from his smile and let the fear wash away. I hoped to awaken unburdened. New and clean. I wanted to tear my chest open and flood it with light, paint my bones a warmer shade. But things are never so easy. It is three whole months of shaking and shivering. Three whole months of wreckage and ruin.

Then came Tuesday.

Tuesday is pancakes, and short-shorts, and learning to breath again. Tuesday is classes, and friends, and thinking of him. Jasper's a fire-coloured sky when I imagine him. Stars and smoke signals. He's a thumb across my cheekbone, a mouth pressed to my own. For the first time in so, so long I ache to have him near me, but I have kept the promise I most wanted to break: I let him go. I did not follow him. I did not stop him. No matter how fervently Bella had insisted I go to him, I had left Jasper to carry out his foolish errand alone. So I make a wish. Nothing happens, of course, because wishes are little more than futile hopes. They are things we say aloud because they hurt too much to hold inside. But the thought is small and soothing so I keep on thinking it. Five words, five tiny words. I wish you were here.

Also on Tuesday, I fix things. Fix my hair, fix my nails, fix the unsightly hole in my bedroom wall. It was a childish attempt to regain control. My fist through the plaster, my fist through the grief, my fist through the unspeakable terror of being alone. But I can fix all of it. I will paint my life with a shiny new coat of Hot Pop Yellow, of Riverland Blue. I will start my life again. This story will be my own.

Tuesday is a phoenix born of Mondays ashes. It is a light in my chest. My ribs, my heart, my tender flesh and umber skin all warm and glowing. Even as the sunlight dims, I feel the heat of it. By dusk I am done. Golden and glorious. No longer half of a person, half of a pair.

On Tuesday, I am whole.

Night comes late, the tender dark drawn slowly like a veil. It feels like an omen. My phone rings in familiar staccato beeps, and I hold it up, breath thick and slow against the screen.

"Could I get a lift?"

His voice is strange after so long, softer than I remembered. Sweeter. We have three months of silence growing between us. It has bloomed and blistered in to something twisted and prideful, something almost impossible to make peace with. With silence we wounded each other. Perhaps it should have been me who spoke first, who pierced this solemn thing, but I would forgive myself my petty grudges. I have forgiven so much worse.

"Just... tell me where you are."

He does. I snatch up the keys to my ugly orange van and tear out of the apartment. The stairs are narrow. Where once the concrete walls felt like a vice—crushing, closing, clamping—there is now comfort in their closeness. My sneakers hit the tiles with a screech. The foyer is blue and grey, no more than smoke as I tear my way through it.

Then, I am driving.

Traffic's sparse until I hit the marketplace. I watch my own hands drum restlessly against the wheel, fingers stained pink by the row of stop lights. It is purgatory. Trapped in a moment, a liminal space, held motionless by the rush around me. These nerves are strange. Misplaced. The dampening neck and quickening heart are relics of a forest, a riverbed, a cabin in the snow. I draw air into my nose, into my lungs. It's sharp, and hot, and stinks of gasoline. Warm and foul. A horn blares behind me and my stomach flies in to my throat, coating my neck in a new, slick sheen of panic. I have no plan, no schedule, no idea what unseen force pulls me forward. But it's there. A thrilling compulsion to advance - no matter what. And so I do.