Lilith (rewrite)

Chapter 12

Lilith

It's like there are a million screams caught inside of my chest, but I have to keep them all in because what's the point of screaming if you'll never be heard.

It's dark outside, and the rain is hammering down on Enzo's car. Lilith's grateful for the noise, as always. She hates silence. She thinks she has a deep fear of it. She thinks it suffocates her; a lot of the time she wishes it would. She wishes the silence would wrap around her so tightly and squeeze her throat so hard that her vision would go dark; she hopes it kills her.

The rain does little to drown out her thoughts, they're too obnoxious. Too truthful. Sometimes she feels like she has an epiphany; the voices in her head tell her things she doesn't even know about herself. She thinks there might be something deeply twisted in her brain, some damage that is so completely agonising it takes the breath out of her lungs.

Sometimes it leaves her gasping, aching. She wonders whether she can purely blame her parents, or her sexual trauma. Or any of her trauma, really.

She thinks it should scare her more than it does, that maybe this is just who she is.

She often wonders whether she should just grow up, all this thinking and mulling over her every action never does her any good. It's an odd kind of torture; self-inflicted, yet utterly out of her control. She doesn't think she could quiet the voices in her mind even if they broke her, and she's often left wondering if maybe she already is broken.

She mentally shakes herself, now is not the time. But the thoughts won't stop, she can hear whispers. What genuinely frightens her though is how real they sound; she knows that Enzo can't hear them though. She knows she's probably crazy. But they sound so, so real. So truthful.

She hopes that one day she'll learn to control them, or at least fight them away. Secretly though she hopes they never leave, they're her only comfort. The only true confidant she has is her own mind.

It's disorientating though, going round and round in mental circles. Arguing with your own mind; trying to prove your own thoughts wrong.

How does she even know which side is her true self? Maybe neither is, maybe she has no true self. Maybe she's nothing. Maybe she's everything.

Maybe I don't exist.

• • •

Enzo pulls up to her house, and she knows she should feel fear. But the fear that has plagued her for years is so far away now. She thinks he truly broke her. She thinks her dad has killed her. Yet her heart is still beating, her breaths still flood her body with oxygen.

I am decaying from the inside out.

It's twisted, so twisted, but she hopes her father is home. She hopes he is drunk; angry. She hopes he finishes the job this time.

Lorenzo is staring at her so closely, so intently, that it almost startles her. But it doesn't. Not quite. She doesn't think anything could startle her anymore. She doesn't think she has the emotional capacity to feel shock or fear. She thinks that part of her broke when her father shattered the bones in her wrist.

It's a sick kind of relief, if she's honest. But at the same time, she doesn't really know how to act, how to live, without constant fear pitted so deeply into the soft marrow of her bones.

She feels too scrutinised under Lorenzo's gaze, too threatened. It irritates her, that he's even looking in her direction. Why won't he just look away? Can't he tell? Can't he tell she hates his stare?

She doesn't ask him that though, instead she silently gets out of the car. Almost immediately becoming soaked by the downpour. She doesn't mind though; it gives her clarity. The cold sharpens her, builds back up her walls of defence.