This was the best moment of Arsen’s life. There was no competition, not a single moment that came close. His cheeks had started to hurt from smiling too much, but he couldn’t stop. He smoothed the frizzy strands of Maya’s hair on top of her head and moved down to her neck, feeling the pounding of her pulse through the veins in her throat. “You were amazing,” he mumbled, gently scratching at her skin until her eyes fell shut.
His whole body felt warm, like he was completely submerged in comforting water, but after a few minutes, he felt something start nagging at the back of his mind, breaking the perfect peace that otherwise enveloped him. Something’s wrong, his inner voice said softly, getting louder and louder as it repeated itself. Something’s fucking wrong. Look at her.
Even though Maya’s eyes were still shut, there was a little wrinkle between her furrowed eyebrows, which always signified that she was worried about something. Arsen brought his hand up to smooth his fingers over that wrinkle, trying to make it go away. “What’s up?” he whispered, attempting to sound as calm and collected as possible, even though his own heart had started pounding again in his chest. Maya didn’t answer right away, but her brow furrowed some more. Arsen blew out his breath, feeling despair sink down into his body, replacing the warm fuzzy afterglow of his orgasm. “So, what, you’re already regretting this? Is that it?” he asked, pulling his hand away from Maya’s face.
Maya’s eyes flicked open, revealing a deep expression of pain within. “I don’t know,” she whispered, but then she reached forward and wrapped a hand around Arsen’s neck, tugging him closer. “I don’t know what I’m going to do or how I’m going to feel or what the hell any of it means,” she said, cuddling her face into his shoulder. “I just need you to hold me right now. Is that okay?”
Arsen didn’t know what to think. At least some part of him wanted to say, No, no, it’s not okay. It’s not okay at all. You can’t keep me hanging like this. But the rest of him just ached for her body, ached for her touch. He couldn’t push her away, no matter how frustrated he felt. It just wasn’t in his genetic makeup to reject Maya, ever.
“Okay,” he said, rubbing the side of her face as gently as he could. “Okay, baby.”
Limbs entangled together, they fell asleep, succumbing to the darkness together. That’s what we always do, Arsen thought as he slipped off to sleep.
Arsen was stuck in a tiny, cramped basement, full of random knickknacks and childhood toys, covered by years’ worth of dust. His hands were bound by cheap handcuffs that rubbed uncomfortably against his skin, irritating his wrists. “Is anyone there?” Arsen said. “Hello?”
There was the sound of a faucet dripping somewhere, tiny little sounds repeating themselves over and over again. Arsen thought that if he had to keep listening to it, he was going to go insane. Maybe I already have, he thought. Maybe this is where crazy people go when nobody loves them anymore.
Arsen sat there in the darkness, straining his eyes in an attempt to make out any sign of a door or a window or anything else he could use to escape, but of course, none of it would mean anything if he couldn’t find a way out of his shackles. He flexed his muscles as hard as he could, pulling his wrists apart to try to break the cheap metal, but it was no use. He simply wasn’t strong enough.
After another minute of failed attempts, Arsen heard something else penetrate the dark emptiness of the cellar. Footsteps. “Hello!” Arsen cried out. “Hello, please help me! Please come get me, whoever you are!”
A ladder fell down from the ceiling in the middle of the room, right next to a pile of boxes, and down from the ceiling appeared a young woman with thick black hair that hung down in long braids to her waist. Arsen knew who she was before she even turned around. Elizabeth.
“Hello, little brother,” Lizzie said. She was smiling at him, but her eyes were empty. Cold.
“You’re the little sibling,” Arsen reminded her. “Even though you don’t look so little now…” She was older, much older than she’d been when she died. She was maybe even twenty, twenty-one, a full-grown woman standing there before him. Arsen had to blink to clear his eyes of tears, but they burned through him anyway, falling onto his cheeks in hot stripes. Lizzie was here. She was alive.
“Lizzie,” he said, clearing his throat as the tears began to slow down. “Lizzie, can you get me out of these handcuffs? We need to get out of here.”
Lizzie stared down at her own nails, not looking at him. “Mmm, no,” she said, casually shrugging him off.
“Lizzie, please,” Arsen said. “This isn’t the time to mess around. We’ve got to get out of here as soon as possible. Please, Lizzie. Save me.”
She looked up at him then with fire in her eyes, so bright and hard that Arsen felt like he was being incinerated from the inside out. “Why should I save you? You didn’t save me,” Lizzie said.
“I tried,” Arsen said to her, his voice coming out high and squeaky, as if he were a teenager still or maybe even a little girl. “I really tried to find you, but I was too young. I didn’t know what to do.”
“I was young, too,” Lizzie said softly. “And he killed me. Chopped me up into little pieces and fed me to the dogs.”
Arsen said nothing. What could he say that could make it better? What could he say to be forgiven? What could he say or do to make things right? “I love you, Lizzie,” he finally whispered, more hot tears sliding down his face. “I always will.”
She shook her head. “If you love me, you’ll fix it. Fix it, Arsen. Fucking fix it,” Lizzie said. Her words echoed in his head, over and over again, while heavier footsteps crossed the floor above their heads, heading for the ceiling.
Lizzie inhaled shakily and stepped inside one of the boxes against the wall. “He’s coming…he’s coming….he’s….”
Arsen sat up in bed, gasping for air and clutching his own head as the images from his dream lingered in his brain. He rubbed his eyes, which were wet from tears. At least that part was real.
He almost jumped up in the air when he felt a soft hand touch his back before he realized that it was just Maya. “Hey,” she whispered. “You were talking in your sleep. Everything okay?”
Arsen didn’t answer right away, focusing instead on getting air inside his lungs. “Um, yeah, yeah,” he said, clearing his throat noisily. “Just a nightmare, that’s all.”
Maya leaned her head against his back while she wrapped her arms around his front, tugging him closer until she was practically spooning him. “You wanna talk about it?”
Arsen didn’t know what to make of Maya’s sudden sweetness. He wanted to just lean back into it, let her soothing compassion wash over him, but he was afraid. He didn’t want to fall into her arms only to have Maya walk away again and leave him to crash down into the ground. She must have sensed his stiffness, as she started rubbing at his shoulders for a minute before sighing deeply and dropping a single soft kiss in between his shoulder-blades. “I’ll go make some coffee or tea,” she whispered before getting out of bed, leaving him alone in the darkness of the early morning.
Arsen sat there for a long minute, seeing Lizzie’s face in the shadows, before he finally got up the energy to move, quickly getting dressed and following Maya into the kitchen.
The television was on, muffled, tired voices of the early morning news rattling off various stories, but Arsen’s mind was still full of Lizzie’s adult voice, Lizzie’s footsteps, and the footfall of the man who killed her. He couldn’t make anything else out. He sat down at the kitchen table and buried his head in his arms, staring at the shadows of his own flesh.
Long minutes passed, ticking by without incident, before he heard something loud crash against the floor. Maya must have dropped something, but he didn’t hear her pick it up. Instead, she increased the volume of the television. Arsen finally looked up to see her standing there in front of the TV, her hand coming up to cover her mouth.
“What is it?” Arsen asked, feeling a spark of panic go up his spine. “What’s wrong?”
“Another’s girl’s been taken,” Maya whispered, her eyes still glued to the television even a weather report had taken over the story.
Arsen sprung up from his seat. “By…by him? The Blade? Are you sure?”
“I can feel it,” Maya said, her voice still not rising above a whisper. “I just know it.”
Arsen was silent a moment, staring as Maya’s hands started to shake, her fingers visibly trembling even from a few feet away.
“That means Roxie’s dead, or she’s about to be,” Maya murmured before stooping to the ground to pick up the broken pieces of the coffee mug she’d dropped a moment earlier.
Arsen straightened up, feeling all of his blood pump more powerfully through his whole body, readying him for war.
No more wasting time fucking or thinking about fucking or dreaming about people who couldn’t ever come back to him. Now it was a race against the clock. “It’s time to fix it,” he murmured to himself, repeating Lizzie’s words from his dream. “It’s time to save her.”