His Nepenthe | complete

6. Beating

B E A T I N G H E A R T

*

No one was home.

The house was empty, and I was entirely alone.

The echo of my night pounded in my eardrums, the roar that I used to revel in gone from my fights. I boxed with Zane a couple of times a week, generally at night. Sometimes I let him break the rules of it all, allowed him to beat me down until I couldn't move, and blood is spluttering from my nose. Zane was a nice guy, still, but he didn't know why I let him go. He let me go, too, all the anger and frustration of us both resonating in blood and bruises.

He always helped me to my feet, as I did with him, too. We lifted each other up after beating each other down and that was fine, but I didn't want to be able to get up at all. I just wanted to bleed there, feel the pain shake my core, feel my muscles clench in ache. It felt so real, and I liked that.

I had been bleeding from the fight all night, bruised and tattered skin asking for ice to heal the ache.

I turned the faucet, a heavy stream of cold water leaving the tap as the water began to fill up the bathtub. I had a bag of ice from the freezer in hand, dumping the contents into the bath to help sooth the ache.

As it filled, I stepped into the frozen water, goose bumps rising across my skin as a result of the cold. Slowly, I sunk my body down, coated in the ice. My jumper was heavy on my shoulders and clung tightly into my frame. My track pants attempted to suffocate my legs, trying to tighten as if to beg me to leave. I couldn't have removed the cotton if I tried, aching from the beating I had allowed to be given to myself. I was weak and alone.

I ignored the feeling, letting my body fall beneath the water.

The porcelain cage that trapped me let my head rest against the bottom as few bubbles of air broke the sun-speckled surface. I closed my eyes, forcing my body to relax under the water's weight and give into the lack of air.

I wanted my lungs to cave in at that moment.

My body was tired as it lay enveloped in the small body of water, ears pink and thoughts cluttered as the sound of the world halted. The pressure compressed my chest, forcing my lungs to burn like a wildfire. Like a bird trapped in a cage too small for its wingspan, my heart hammered against my ribs, the intensity and volume turning to the only thing I could hear.

My throat seared at the rising pressure of the trapped air, head pounding at the porcelain to try and force my head above the surface. An instinctive motion caused my lips to part, a breath taking in the water to filter into my pressured lungs.

I thought about how it felt to breathe four years ago, different from how it was now. I had more hope then, I think, though he was gone. The nightmares hadn't started, and Clarisse didn't lie so loudly.

Marco was more present, making sure that he was there for me as consistently as he could because Clarisse sure as hell wouldn't be. He took us to the park a lot, away from the woman who's best friend was tequila.

Marco had told me about his future plans - to move to New York and be a photographer for some fancy magazine.

He found people so beautiful, always found the positivity in them even when they were sour. He told me he still loved our mother when I didn't, because without her, he wouldn't have me. I told him that was stupid, of course, because he told me I was annoying at least a hundred times a week when I wanted to play the Playstation when he was using it.

He grinned at that, the forcing of a lie I found in his kindness. He knew that I was pessimistic, and told me I had been long before our loss. He said when I was born it started to rain a lot more, which was blessing to have after the drought. But it always made me cry.

He said we had a nanny when we were very little to make sure we were fed and sent to bed, and that he had never met someone kinder than the woman who was so poor she could hardly afford to get to work. But she was so happy, even when I could cry at the food she attempted to feed me, even when it started to rain.

He told that my first word was 'sad', and that it made him want to cry like I did at the rain, because he didn't use that word and didn't know why I would know it. He thought I was doomed because my mother was so gone from me that I didn't have enough love from just himself.

But he said that it was beautiful that I saw such terrible things in the world, because I knew what I wanted to happen to fix my sadness. He hated that my first word was 'sad' but he thought that, hopefully, it could only be better for me from there.

He smiled as he told me that - after a rainstorm that we spent doing puzzles with the kind nanny - my second word was 'light', and that also made him want to cry because he had never felt so proud.

He then told me that he wished that he wouldn't have to move to New York to have a job taking photographs for a fancy magazine because he wanted to watch me grow along side me rather than from afar.

He was so positive and he told me so many things because Clarisse never blinked a second eye at me because she hated that I was her problem. She hated that I was the baby that cried, she hated that I was a second issue to hide.

But everything I knew wasn't a problem if I was drowning in a porcelain white bathtub.

Icy cold water was thrust up my nostrils, a stream cascaded into the back of her throat and nose, sending a bout of pain through my body. The commotion of my body wanting to thrash drowned to a low hum, buzzing at my ears, gradually muting into silence. I was ready to allow the water to hold my body beneath the surface. My heartbeat pounded in my chest, ringing in my ears, the oxygen deprivation taking away my thoughts.

As I felt little more than a few seconds of my life reaching me, the sound of a sweet laugh and the image of a warm smile overtook my senses, somehow, dragging me to the surface with its persuasive golden hands.

I spluttered in blood and water, gasping at the oxygen in the room as I allowed myself to breathe again, the beat of my heart increased and rapid.

What in the fuck was that?