Where the Blood Went

Léa-

I woke to the sound of breath.... his breath... calm and careful, like he was pretending to be asleep beside me. But I knew that rhythm. That wasn’t sleep. That was listening. I kept my eyes shut. My body a statue. My mind anything but.

There was a dream. Or something that called itself a dream. And I wasn’t sure if it had ended or if I was still inside it.

In it, I was holding a match. And everything around me.... trees, paper, pages, skin.... was soaked in gasoline. I didn’t strike it. I didn’t need to. It lit itself.

I turned, and there was a shadow in the flames.

No face. No eyes. Just a voice—

“You wanted it gone. That’s why you don’t remember.”

My body shuddered, even in waking. I pulled the blanket tighter. Felt his warmth at my back. Still pretending. Still quiet.

He hadn’t touched me since I told him. Since the truth dripped out of me like a leak I couldn’t stop. The journal. The man. The blood. My silence.

I should’ve lied. I should’ve buried it deeper. But instead, I’d let the words out like they were innocent. And now I could feel his fear radiating through his skin.

He thinks I killed someone. He thinks I’m a monster. And maybe I am. I opened my eyes slowly, expecting morning. But the room was wrong.

Too quiet.

Too dark.

Too… clean.

I sat up. Verlaín wasn’t next to me. The window was gone. The door was locked. The air tasted like metal and hospital and things never spoken.

My heart began to pound. I stood... naked, cold, trembling.... and walked to the mirror on the far wall.

But it wasn’t a mirror. It was glass. Observation glass. And just beyond it, a chair. Empty. Until it wasn’t. He sat down.

Verlaín.

Expressionless.

Eyes dark.

He spoke, but I couldn’t hear. I pressed my palm to the glass. He didn’t move. With terrifying slowness, he reached into his coat and pulled out....

My journal. The one I burned. He opened it. Flipped through it. Page after page. Bloodstained. And then he looked up at me. And smiled. The dream shattered like glass. I screamed myself awake. I was back in bed. Verlaín beside me. Asleep for real this time.

But my hands.... My hands were shaking. My fingertips were black. With ash.

I stood up and walked barefoot through the apartment. Everything was real. Normal. Unburned. Until I got to the kitchen. The sink was filled with paper. Wet, torn, soaked in something red.

I leaned closer. Not paper. Pages. From my journal.

Scrawled over and over in handwriting that wasn't mine:

You were the one who locked the cage.

You were the one who fed it blood.

You were the one who begged to forget.

And beneath it, a sentence I didn’t remember writing but recognized like my own skin:

If he finds out what you did, he’ll never love you again.

I turned. Verlaín was behind me. Awake. Silent. Staring at the mess in the sink like it wasn’t the first time he’d seen it.

And then he said:

“You didn’t burn it, Léa.

You buried it.”

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