Dark Places

08 | dissociation

❝we kept it safe and slow,
the quiet things
that no one ever knows.❞

☽

IT'S COLD AND QUIET in the apartment. The essence of an empty home, a silent catacomb, shrouded in darkness, darkness, darkness.

Ah, because it's almost midnight on a Friday. Yeah.

There's an eerie nothingness in my body, echoing through the absence of sound, of conversation, of shouting or screaming, of late traffic. There's nothing. It's too fucking quiet, and I can't stop tossing and turning, twisting, waiting for something, anything, everything.

Jess would be awake, beside me, lighting a cigarette, sitting at the edge of our bed, flicking ashes onto the windowsill, peering out through the thin veil of smoke to find a noisy city.

Instead, I'm... here, bunkered down on a Friday night, tangled into thin sheets, willing away the soft shadows that streak through abandoned curtains to reveal the hollow tomb of a bedroom that is, for now, my new home.

Portland is silent.

Jonah had left with Tiffany and Elijah before I got home. Connor works nights at a club downtown, or something, and Drake...

Well, Drake is probably parked in an empty Whole Foods parking lot, fucking Sophany in the backseat of his Volvo.

...no te preocupes, Melo, the backseat is still reserved for you...

Drake Medina in desperate darkness, fogged windows, fumbling fingers, broken moans, slick... skin... against... skin. The flood of images attacks, pouring through me, as if that sweet promise hadn't plagued me for hours. Mmm. His lips pressed to my throat. His tongue tracing along my jaw. His teeth catching my bottom lip. His hot breath on my—

Fuck. No.

Grinding my teeth, I fling the sheets away. I can't do this. It's not the static stillness of the barren bedroom or the groggy chill raising goosebumps along my bare skin. It's the empty apartment, the endless reticence, the inky trace of a Friday night: an anchoring silence, flooding the room; a halo of darkness, carving across wooden floors, deepening, shade by shade, into a black ocean; my nightmare of serenity; a coffin of calm chaos.

I can't fucking sleep.

"Okay." I crawl out of bed, heaving an exhausted sigh as I reach for the crumpled clothes on the floor. The movement is too fast, jarring, sending silhouettes skittering around my bare feet in a secret symphony. "Okay, bitch." Fuck. It comes out soft and shaky, a raw plea, on the cusp of a sob. Trapped. I feel fucking trapped, even as I slip on a pair of jeans and a loose shirt, seizing the silence for an escape. "Just... get some air."

Yes.

I need to get some air, clear my head, walk it off.

The quiet threat of night, stealthily, but steadily, closing in on me. The mellow energy of a Friday night. The sleepwalking slowness of a city that had always killed me.

Anxiously, I step out into the living room, almost expecting Drake to be there, sinking into the couch, dark skin and dark eyes hidden behind a curtain of smoky secrets, a charcoal drawing I've yet to destroy.

But Drake isn't there.

The apartment is heartbreakingly empty, a graveyard, cast into a silvery stroke of moonlight. Suddenly, I know. I know I'll die here, alone, within the confines of a deathly still darkness, fading into the delicate haze of grey. It's beautifully fucking tragic. The bedroom is a coffin. The apartment is a graveyard. The city is... purgatory, where I've been exiled to suffer eternally for my sins.