Morning came like two people making love in a closet: quietly, but not without a reaction. Muted tones of a gloomy gray sky greet my eyes, accompanied by the soft whispers of the rain.
A deceptively peaceful scene considering the tumultuous night I endured.
I sit up in the sheets, half expecting to see him in bed with me. I pat the spot next to me, looking for the fine red dust.
Seeing only the clean, smooth surface of my blanket, I let out a sigh of relief. He wasn't here to torment me yet.
I let my feet touch the hardwood floor, steadying myself. A part of me was afraid that the floor would transform into quicksand again, repeating the events of last night.
For a moment, I imagine my heels sinking into the floor.
The thought terrifies me enough to make my head spin. I'm tempted to collapse in my bed again, but the sound of the birds chirping outside the window brings me back to reality.
The floor steadies. I manage to make it to the bathroom without falling apart.
I look at myself in the mirror, rubbing the sleepiness out of my eyes. I half-expected to see Charles behind me, but he was nowhere in the pale sanctuary of the bathroom.
Was I finally going to have a peaceful morning?
I turn the faucet and blood gushes into the sink, thick and warm. I scream, twisting the knob of the faucet back into place, but the blood keeps coming, filling up the sink and spilling onto the white tiled floor. I stand in a growing puddle of blood, frozen with horror.
It takes me three seconds to come to my senses. I step away from the blood, backing up into the bathtub. As the puddle travels across the floor, I think about all the bleach I'm going to need before this bathroom ever looks the same again.
I twist my head, hoping to crawl into the tub to avoid the blood. What greets my eyes is something out of a crime scene.
Charles is lying in the tub, his head tilted to the side to expose a deep cut in his neck. Blood trickles down his skin and into the water, staining the liquid pink. He clutches a razor in his right hand and I notice that his beard is full of shaving cream like the whole thing was an unfortunate accident.
No, no, no please be alive. I should have never left you alone.
Pause.
None of this is real, I remind myself. He's messing with you again. You know that. Charles didn't die like this.
But that didn't mean I wanted to cry and vomit any less. It was like I had to relive his death all over again.
I frantically dig through the medicine cabinet, searching for a roll of bandages. Desperation seizes me. I need to fix him.
I gently cradle his head between my hands, slowly moving it back into place. I keep my hands on the back of his neck while wrapping the bandage around the cut. He bleeds again and I can't keep up with the flow of blood. No matter how many layers of bandages I put on his skin, the red still soaks through.
Give up. It's futile, I tell myself. He's dead already.
I wanted to believe otherwise. He was dying, not dead. Just like he was in my bathtub and not six feet under. I could still save him.
He was going to live no matter how much it damaged him. I can't bear the loneliness of this empty house anymore. I'm insane without him, saving a corpse that's already dead.
If I was truly being honest with myself, I was never mentally stable in the first place. But with him, the walls stopped moving and the invisible voices quieted in my troubled mind. He was my wonder tether to life,
But now he's left me all alone.
His corpse disappears from my bathtub, retreating to the recesses of my mind. I'm inside the tub, wading in the lukewarm pink water. Clutched in my right hand was the razor that was in his possession only a moment ago.
There's a deep cut on my palm that stretches from my thumb to my pinky in an eerily straight line.
I drop the razor, watching it land in the water with a plop before sinking to the bottom of the ceramic tub. My hands won't stop shaking. I haven't cut myself in over a decade.
How did I not even register the metal breaking my skin?
I grip the edges of the tub, commanding myself to stay still. If I don't move, maybe I won't hurt myself.
The cut on my palm stings. My blood runs down the side of the tub, staining the water, but I know I won't die. I'm too scared to leave.
In my periphery, my dead husband's doppelganger enters the bathroom. He walks toward me, treading in the blood and sending red ripples over the white tiles before kneeling down in the puddle to face me.
He looked like Charles, but at the same time, his features did not exactly mirror his. There was a certain sharpness to his face that my husband did not possess and his eyes shone in a way that was not entirely human. He could really hurt me if he wanted to. I was already bleeding. All he needed to do was–
He brings his lips to my palm, stopping my train of thought. My cut seals beneath his mouth, a mouth that is surprisingly soft.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I went too far. You're in more pain than I can ever imagine."
I sink deeper into the bath water, pulling away. What would he know about pain? I made him up in my mind, this strange imaginary man.
He doesn't let me wade in my misery. He bends down into the water and scoops me into his arms, soaking wet and all. I don't try to fight him as he brings me back to my bedroom.
The day barely started, but I'm already so tired.
Wordlessly, he peels the wet clothes off my body. The gesture feels clinical like the way a doctor would tend to a patient. Other than instructions to lift my arms or my hips to make stripping easier, he doesn't say anything else. No taunts about my appearance or violent visions bother me.
He dabs a towel on my skin, cleaning up the blood and water on my arms and legs. I feel numb.
This is a dream, I tell myself. It has to be. He was never this nice to me. This Charles had to be a hallucination.
I hold on to the thought even as he slips warm dry clothes over me. He strokes my head gently, letting me lean on his shoulder.
"Who are you?" I ask this without thinking again.
He winces in pain. "You need to stop asking that question."
Maybe it was because he took care of me, but I didn't want to banish him just yet. At this moment, he made me feel less lonely.
"Why are you in my house?" I tried a simpler question.
He relaxes slightly. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "But someone imprisoned me here. There's a great deal of misery in this house. I don't think I can go back home until it's gone."
I blink in surprise. He wasn't pretending to be Charles anymore. I looked up to see that while he was still wearing my husband's face, it was clear that the person speaking to me was someone else entirely. Or rather, something else.
"What are you? I know that you're not human," I said.
He laughs, the noise rumbling through his chest. "I guess I've made that clear. Your kind has many names for what we are. The easiest thing for you to call me would be a demon, but I must let you know that it's not an entirely accurate name for what I am."
"And what would be an accurate name?"
"You wouldn't be able to pronounce it," he explained. "It's in a language that no one of your kind speaks anymore."
I nodded, glad that some part of the mystery of who he was finally unraveled. I did suspect that he was supernatural, but it did make me sad to know he was trapped here. In a strange way, we were both prisoners in this house. Only the bars to his cell were probably made of magic and mine were made of grief.
"Why do you hurt me?" I tell him about the violent visions I've been seeing ever since I met him.
"It's not intentional," he confessed. "My presence has been known to cause psychological disturbances. The emotionally fragile tend to be most susceptible to this."
There was some truth to what he told me, but I didn't entirely believe him. I knew cruelty when I saw it. The question was, could I get him to admit it?
"I'm sorry," he said again.