I can’t do anything but watch. I’m stuck. I can’t move. Not even shed a tear. All I can do is stare with my breath caught in my throat, burning, aching. I want to scream again—it felt so good to scream.
“Fuck!” Nate yells. He yanks the blankets off and pushes his ear against Evan’s still chest. “I—I can’t— ” He shakes Evan’s body before moving his head to Evan’s lips. “I can’t hear anything. He’s not fucking breathing.”
He’s not breathing, and it’s my fault. I should have figured out how to get rid of Letum. I should have turned down his advances. I shouldn’t have engaged with him in that stupid dream. I should have left Evan earlier, so he’d still be alive. I should have. I should have. I should have!
“Fuck.” Nate pushes off the bed and paces, running his hands through his bronze locks and down his face. “Fuck. Fucking hell. How—How did this—What—” Nate can’t even finish his sentence. He’s acting and feeling enough for the both of us.
I’m waiting for my eyes to start stinging or to start gasping for breath. But all I can do is stare. Slowly, the black tendrils in my mind reach for me, pulling me back into the spot where there is no hurt, there is no pain, there is just darkness. In here, I can’t hear Nate yelling at me and cursing or screaming that we need to call an ambulance. I don’t even see him start CPR.
Evan was an asshole, but he didn’t deserve to die. Before the accident, he was perfect, the man of my dreams. Evan was the type of man you’d read about in books, where you’d go home to find the shirt you’ve been eying up in a bag on the bed. He used to say all of the right things, shower me with affection, he’d try to spend every waking moment touching me. Not sexually, just to remind each other that we are there for one another.
I had planned our wedding: A three-tiered buttercream cake with violet orchid designs. I would have a simple lace dress with shoestring straps and a short train. We would play Abba while I walked down the aisle, because Dancing Queen was playing at the bar the first time we met.
I’ll never have the wedding I wanted. Not because Evan’s dead now, but because I am. The only difference between the two of us is that I’m still breathing. The only thing that I have to look forward to in my day are letters from my stalker and the flowers he leaves me.
The accident ruined everything. I lost my only remaining family, the job of my dreams and my boyfriend, all in one night.
I told Evan that the Faceless Man was real, and he didn’t believe me. He called me crazy and it cost him his life. I cost him his life. Will anyone else blame me for his death? Will Letum declare to the heavens that Evan’s death was done in my name?
The worst part is, despite the accusations running through my head, I don’t truly feel guilty. I only know that I should be. I didn’t ask Letum to kill Evan. I can’t be at fault for a trigger being pulled when I didn’t even know there was a gun. The signs were there—the obsession, the cryptic messages. He never displayed any violence, his touch was tender and soft. Except in that dream, but that was a different situation.
The thing I feel most guilty about is the sense of relief that comes with Evan’s death. It hurts that he’s dead, but death feels familiar to me. Death itself is sure. It’s stable and consistent. You can rely on it happening.
I cried for help. Over and over I begged for help. I begged Evan for support, and he gave me nothing. But it turns out, the only person that helped me was the person I thought I needed saving from. Except, now I realize I needed saving from myself.
Three ominous knocks pull me from the recesses of my mind and it’s like coming up for air after being in the water too long. I’ve heard it before. The knocks. The last two times I was with Evan, we both heard it.
When the fog from my mind clears, Letum is standing in front of me in his pitch-black coat and the drawn hood. Nate is nowhere in sight. His voice sounds from somewhere in the background, stuttering into a phone.
Letum reaches out to me, running his fingers over the curve of my face. Warmth spreads from every spot he touches. The touch is possessive, yet tender. Like he wants to take me down to hell with him, but wants to hold my hand while doing it.
“My beautiful storm,” he whispers, continuously caressing my soft skin. The way he says it isn’t pitiful or possessive, rather it’s a mirror of what I feel: Relief.
He brings his lips down to my forehead to plant a claiming kiss. “You’re all mine now.”
My breathing goes rampant, the events catching up to me. My hands find purchase with my neck and my chest, rubbing and massaging, trying to get rid of the urge to scream, trying to find the steady breaths that are lost inside of me. Cold burns my skin when the ring touches me, but for some sick reason, I don’t want to take it off.
The weight of the letter sitting in my pocket drags me down to the floor and I curl my fingers behind my neck. Rocking back and forth, back and forth, staring at the invisible speck of dust on his perfectly pressed coat.
Letum is kneeling in front of me again, just like he did on the night that I was meant to die. He took Dahlia from me, now he’s taken Evan. Why didn’t he take me? Why does he still refuse to let me die?
“What did you do to him?” I gasp. I know what he did. It’s a stupid question to ask.
Letum smooths a hand down my leg, and the other hand gently tips my chin up. “My darling, everyone dies eventually. The only question is when. I decided that it would be today.”
“You killed him because of me!” I choke out before slapping my hand over my mouth so that Nate doesn’t hear.
Letum’s head tips to the side ever so slightly. “No, my love. I did not kill him. I reprieved his body of his soul.”
“That’s the same fucking thing,” I snap.
His touch is so tender compared to my tone as he tucks my hair behind my ear. “The afterlife would not have taken him if it was not his time.” Letum’s body tenses and I brace myself. “Such a painless death was a kindness, my thunderstorm. Because of you, I did not make him suffer.”
Seriously? “Is that meant to make me feel better?”
He sighs, though not impatiently. Letum’s forehead touches my own. I know I should back away, but I don’t, I can’t. “You will come alive, my night monster. I want to see you shine.”
“Bullshit.”
“What’s bullshit?” a voice says from behind me.
I snap my head up to see that it looks like Nate has aged ten years in a manner of ten minutes. Or maybe it has only been ten seconds. He, too, hasn’t shed a tear. Though, like me, his hand is trembling at his side, shaking his phone.
He forgets that I said anything at all, and slumps onto the ground next to me and leans his back against the green couch that Evan and I thrifted together for our old apartment. “The ambulance is on its way,” he says defeated.
Neither of us says a word to the other. Not when the ambulance arrives. Not once they take Evan’s body away.
The paramedics question us, and we both say the same thing: We found him like that. Only I left out the part where I found him with a letter from the Faceless Man that has been stalking me for the past year and a half. It all goes by in a monotonous blur.
I can’t feel anything. I’ve already spent months grieving him. My mind has already pulled me into its clutches, just leaving one foot out just so I hear enough to nod every few seconds.
I didn’t even flinch when I told his parents. How could I not flinch? I should be crying with them. I should be screaming as they are. I should be getting in my car and following them to the hospital because after all they think I’m his girlfriend. In reality, the girl with the blue cardigan is closer to him than I am.