Chapter Thirty-Eight
Darkness.
It possesses me. It entombs me. And darkness is all that I am now. The void is empty and vast. It cannot be mended.
Nothing can ever be fixed again.
My father comes to my room often to check on me. The room where he has locked me. The room where he tries to feed me.
I have traded one prison for another.
He tells me he wants to keep me safe. He tells me he doesn't know who to trust. But when I look at his face, it is him I don't trust.
I trust nobody. I feel nothing. Nothing can hurt me anymore. It's what Javi wanted. And I refuse to believe that this is my reality. I refuse to believe that he isn't here with me.
I'm back in the piano room. Everything else is an invention of my imagination. My hallucination. That's what I keep telling myself. That's how I go on, breathing and thinking and living.
He's going to come for me soon. He will tell me that it's all been a trick. And now it's time for my reward. Because I've been a good girl for him, he will comfort me. He will take me in his arms and hold me. Fix me. Give me the thing only he can provide.
My sanctuary.
My peace.
"Isa," my father's voice echoes through the cavernous space of my new prison. "You must eat. You must stay healthy and strong."
I blink up at his distorted face, and I am glad that he is obscured. I can’t bear to meet the eyes of this man who has raised me.
This man who- in my nightmare- took Javi away from me.
It plays on in my head. Over and over again. The whiskey. The whiskey he asked me to pour. The whiskey he did not drink. And the expression on Javi's face.
Betrayal.
It was the last thing I saw in his eyes. The last thing he felt in this nightmare. He thought I had betrayed him. My stomach churns, and I curl into myself. My cheeks are wet, but I know the tears don't mean anything.
It still isn't real.
Javi will come for me. He will ask me to play him a song with words only he can hear. I will play him a million songs. And I will sing words that I have never sung before.
When my father leaves, I scribble them down in my journal. I write pages upon pages of lyrics. Frantically. Endlessly. Until my hands are black with ink and my eyes are too blurry to see anymore.
"Sing me a song, Javi," I whisper into the darkness. "With words only I can hear."
I repeat it, over and over. I cry. I pace. I never sleep. I don't eat. I drink water only when my father makes me.
I'm dead inside already.
And the longer the days go on, the less certain I am. The harder it becomes to deny. He will come for me. That's what I tell myself. That's what I tell my father. Until the day that he comes for me instead. And he carries something with him this time.
It is a card. And something else.
A silver urn.
An urn painted with crimson roses.
"This came for you today.”
His voice is solemn, and I hate him.