Evony
After we make love Reinhardt undresses slowly, watching me with a soft half-smile on his face, as if he’s thinking pleased and secret thoughts. When he’s naked he pulls the covers back and tucks us beneath them, settling me in his arms. I know I should go to my own room but after all the worry it feels so good to be held by him.
Ich liebe dich. I love you. Those words on his lips make me weak with hopelessness and longing. They wind like satin ribbons around my heart; beautiful, but binding just the same.
How is it I love you back?
It’s so easy to lose myself in the bliss of his mouth, his body, because he’s right. It’s not him I want to flee, just all that he represents. I couldn’t bear the thought of him being imprisoned in exchange for my freedom. Being close to him, desired by him, protected by him, it’s the most alive and cherished I’ve ever felt in my life. Reinhardt is strange, powerful and addicting, and no matter what I tell myself I should feel I can’t hurt him, and I can’t get enough of him.
He falls asleep, but I lie awake for a long time, fretting over what’s going to happen to me. I’m still no closer to finding my father and I’ve lost my escape route to West Berlin. No, not lost—this group Peter told me about must never have existed. What would Peter have done with me once I’d given him everything he needed about Reinhardt? Handed me off to his captain and then gloated over my stupidity, I suppose.
This is what you wanted to happen, an insidious voice says. You wanted Reinhardt to find out about your spying and put a stop to it, didn’t you? You wanted a reason to stay with him in the East.
I roll toward him and kiss him as he slumbers. His cheek, his lips, his chin. I ease myself under his arm and he responds sleepily, tightening his arms around me and burying his face in the nape of my neck. How right I was to be afraid of this because it is blissful to fall asleep this way with him, held close and loved.
But I can’t stay in East Berlin, not even for him. I’m back to square one and I’m going to have to think of a new escape plan. This time I’ll just have to be sure it won’t involve sending the man I love to prison so there’ll be no reason to back out. My eyes trace the lines and planes of Reinhardt’s face, the curve of his lower lip, softened by sleep.
No reason at all.
In the small hours of the morning I’m yanked out of sleep by a cry of alarm. Reinhardt has sat bolt upright in bed, his chest heaving and his body drenched in cold sweat. I touch him and he jumps as if he’s forgotten I’m there.
“Reinhardt, what’s wrong?”
He pushes a hand through his hair, squeezing his eyes shut as if he’s in pain. “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”
He gets out of bed and I watch his broad, naked torso retreating. He pulls a dressing gown from the hook on the door and leaves the bedroom without looking back.
∞ ∞ ∞
I wake just after seven and he’s there, smiling as if nothing happened, wearing a white shirt and his hair damp from the shower and neatly combed. He trails kisses down my naked body, his eyes warm with pleasure that I’ve stayed the whole night. When he reaches my sex he hooks my legs over his shoulders and licks me with aching tenderness. I push out every thought but this; his warmth, his love, his tongue on me. I bury my hands in his short hair, trying to indelibly print this moment on my heart.
At breakfast he resumes last night’s train of thought once Frau Fischer is out of the room. “They don’t know, Liebling. That’s the most important thing. Heydrich and your little friend think they’re one step ahead of us but really we’re one step ahead of them.” He takes an appreciative sip of his coffee, clearly in his element. Subterfuge. Schemes. He thrives on this stuff. The fact that we may both end up in prison doesn’t seem to faze him.
I look up at him, my breakfast before me forgotten because my stomach’s churning too much to eat. “When should I turn in my first report, Herr Oberstleutnant?”
He ignores my sardonic tone and leans down and kisses me. “No need, my little double-agent. You relay everything directly to me.”
He’s so confident that I can’t resist goading him. “What if they sweeten the deal? What if I tell my contact that I know that they know who I am. Then they’ll know that I know that they know, but you won’t know. I could become a triple agent.”
But Reinhardt just shakes out his newspaper and peruses the print. “Ah, well, you know how I enjoy a challenge, meine Liebe.”
Over the next few days Reinhardt is calm and focused while I quietly go to pieces. I want to avoid Peter but Reinhardt insists that we do nothing different, and surely I’ll be curious to know if he’s learned anything about my “friend” Heinrich Daumler. Next time I hear Peter’s whistling I go to the filing room and he tells me that he hasn’t managed to trace my father. I pretend to be disappointed and hint that I may have discovered something of interest to the group and I will keep him informed.
Then I go and report to Reinhardt. He smiles broadly as he listens, clearly loving every moment of our deception together. He comes round his desk and tries to kiss me, but I put a finger to his lips.
“This isn’t amusing, or fun. We wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t humiliated Heydrich.”
“But Liebling, how I enjoyed it so.”
Later when I’m taking some papers to another floor I find myself walking past Heydrich’s office and I slow down, thinking about the bakery raid. What if he never gave Reinhardt and his Oberst a complete report about what happened that night? What if it was too embarrassing for him to reveal to his superior officers just how many dissidents escaped and where they fled to? He might have handed in an altered report that didn’t make him look quite so incompetent.
If I’ve learned anything from Reinhardt it’s that the Stasi are overly fond of record-keeping. Perhaps Heydrich has kept the real report to himself in case it has intel that might come in use later on.
There’s no secretary sitting outside his office. A frosted glass window shows no movement behind it. I knock on his door, just to be sure no one’s in there, and when I try the handle it’s unlocked and go inside, heart pounding. If Reinhardt knew what I was doing he’d be furious, but no matter what we feel for each other I need to keep doing everything I can to get out of East Berlin.
I love you. My eyes close briefly as I remember last night. He loves me because I’ll never stop fighting, and that knowledge gives me the strength to do what I need to do.
With my back against the door I scan the room. It’s not as large as Reinhardt’s office and doesn’t have as many windows, but it’s furnished in the same minimalist way, with buttery pine furniture and a studio portrait of the Chairman on the wall.
If Heydrich is keeping documents about the raid then they might be in his desk. I hurry over and try the drawers, but it seems Heydrich is a cautious man as they’re locked. I crouch down and fish a bobby pin out of my hair and stick it into the lock. I used to practice this on an old bureau in our apartment for fun and could open all the locks within minutes. There’s something different about this lock, though, or I’m wound too tightly to concentrate as the minutes tick by and I’ve made no progress. Every time someone passes along the corridor outside the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Do I have any legitimate reason for being in here if I get caught? Is there anything that I can say to excuse this?
While I’m worrying over this, the lock clicks and the drawer slides open. I scrabble hastily through the contents hoping to find something resembling an intelligence report like the one Reinhardt showed me in the Stasi archives. But all the documents seem to be reports, filled with codenames and words that mean nothing to me, and I start to despair that this is a waste of time.
Then a date at the top of a page catches my eyes, a week before the raid, and I pull out the document and start to read.
Apprehended man in late forties as he was exiting abandoned bakery on Pieterstrasse at approx. 0415hr. While he was in custody, inspection of the building revealed a tunnel that had been dug under the Wall as a means of escape to the West. Man, codename CARSTON, at first denied that anyone else was involved. Threats against his family were successful and he agreed to provide information about the group who intend to use this tunnel as a means of escape in exchange for allowing him to defect with his daughter. Have secured time and date of group’s intended use. Will apprehend CARSTON and his daughter on the night along with the other attempted escapees.
The report continues, dated several days after the raid.
Raid unsuccessfully executed. CARSTON is in W. Berlin with a number of other defectors who evaded border guards. A young woman killed by Obstlt. Volker has been erroneously reported to CARSTON as his daughter by one of his fellow defectors. This error is to remain uncorrected lest it prove useful in the future. The true whereabouts of CARSTON’s daughter are unknown, though she is suspected of being at large in E. Berlin.
When I finish reading I stare at the pages without moving. My father was the one to betray everyone in our group in exchange for allowing the two of us escape to the West. It can’t be true. How could he have done such a thing to all those people? To Ana, to his best friend Ulrich? I remember how agitated he was that night, how he changed our plans at the last moment, wanting me to go with him to the bakery instead of with Ana. I’m not losing you at the eleventh hour. You’re my daughter and I want you with me. Is that so hard to understand?
He must have suspected that Heydrich would go back on his word and try to take us prisoner. Who told Dad that Reinhardt had shot me rather than Ana? How could they have confused us? But then, we were always spoken of in the same breath at meetings. Ana and Evony are digging tonight. Ana and Evony are leaving next, go quickly girls, get home safe. Maybe whoever it was who saw Ana die always assumed that I was Ana and she was me.
Dad thinks I’m dead. He’s in West Berlin right now and he thinks I’m dead. A fat tear plops onto the typewritten page and ripples the paper. All this time I’ve spent puzzling over who sold us out while losing sleep over worrying about my father, and it was him all along. I fold the report into a square, shove it in my pocket and slam the desk closed, not bothering to try and relock it. Forgetting that I should take care not to be seen or heard I go out into the hall on shaking legs—
And run straight into Peter.
He’s got his hand on the mail cart. I stare into his eyes, my mind frozen with grief and surprise. I’m close enough to count every freckle on his face. He stares at me and then at Heydrich’s door like he doesn’t comprehend what he’s seeing. Then understanding blazes in his eyes. Before he can ask any questions I push past him and go straight to Reinhardt’s office, bursting in without knocking.
Reinhardt looks up, startled, and when he sees the look on my face he gets up from his desk and comes toward me. “Liebling, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”
I point in the direction of Heydrich’s office with a trembling hand. “It was him.” Reinhardt looks where I’m pointing and then back at me, confused.
I’m know babbling but I can’t get my thoughts to line up properly. “It was Dad. Dozens of people. His friends. I was ready to go to prison for Peter and a group of people I’d never even met and yet he looked us all in the eyes day after day and he lied to us. He always said that I should be careful, that anyone could be an informant, but I never thought he meant him.”
It’s the betrayal that I can’t fathom, that he thought he and I could live happily in the West knowing all the people we’d been closest to were in prison. It would have been freedom bought at too dear a price. Why couldn’t he see that? Did he think I could have been glad that we were together knowing what he’d done?
“Liebling, I don’t understand what you’re saying. What has your father done? Who is Peter?”
I grab Reinhardt’s arms and look up into his bewildered face. I can’t go another heartbeat not knowing if he’s lied to me as well. “This is the only opportunity I’m going to give you to confess. If you’ve ever lied to me and I find out later I will kill you.” I’ve never so much as baited a mousetrap but I know with thundering certainty that I will pick up a gun or a knife and murder Reinhardt if I find out he’s been deceiving me.
He doesn’t tell me I’m being hysterical. He doesn’t insist on knowing what I’m talking about. His hand covers mine and he speaks softly. “Evony, I’ve told you before that I’ve never lied to you.”
But I’m still not satisfied. “Did you know about any of this?” I take the report out of my pocket and thrust it at him.
Reinhardt unfolds the paper and reads it, his face darkening by increments. “Where did you get this?”
“Did you hide any of this from me? Did you know?”
He looks at me steadily, the clear afternoon sunshine lightening his eyes to blue. “No, I didn’t. I suspected there was something Heydrich wasn’t telling me about the raid but I didn’t know the informant was your father. I’m sorry.”
Informant. The word makes me sick. I know I’m a hypocrite, sleeping with the enemy, loving the enemy, but I’ve never sold out my friends or family to the Stasi and I never would, no matter how much Reinhardt cajoled or persuaded me.
But then, he’s never tried. He’s never been interested in the others. Just in me.
Reinhardt holds up the report. “Evony, I know you’re upset but you need to tell me where you got this.”
“Heydrich’s office. I broke into his desk.”
For a second Reinhardt looks like he’s about to explode. Then with effort he reins himself in. “Did anyone see you?”
“Peter. My contact. The mail room boy. He was walking past and he gave me such a strange look—I think he knows what I was doing there. He’s going to tell Heydrich.” I let go of Reinhardt’s arms. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off I’m starting to feel afraid. If Peter didn’t know who I was before he’s certainly going to realize now.
“Heydrich is in Leipzig. It will take him some time to get back here and confirm which papers you took.” Reinhardt passes a hand through his hair, thinking. “I’m taking you home, now. Get your coat.”
As I leave the office he picks up the phone and calls down to Hans and tells him to meet us with the car at the rear of the building. Lenore looks up from her typewriter as I hurry past and yank my coat off the stand, her pretty face an oval of surprise. “Is everything all right?”
I shake my head, hands tight on the woolen fabric. “I’m—I’m not well. Herr Oberstleutnant is taking me home.” I look at her, hesitating, feeling like I should thank her for her friendship these past months because I have an ominous feeling I’m never going to see her again. But there’s nothing I can say without alarming her so I give her a last look as Reinhardt strides out of his office and takes my arm, and then we’re heading down the corridor, away from the elevators. He takes us down the rear stairs and into the laneway behind HQ where the black Mercedes-Benz is waiting.
I want to talk in the back of the car but as soon as I open my mouth Reinhardt hushes me and grips my hand tightly. We ride in silence, his gloved hand holding mine.
As soon as we’re inside his cool, empty apartment his puts both hands on my shoulders and turns me toward him. I haven’t seem him look so tense since Ulrich nearly strangled me to death.
“Evony, I know you’re upset but I need you to listen to me. Go and pack a bag, a small one, only essentials, and then come straight back. Can you do that for me?”
“Why?”
“I’m taking you to West Berlin tonight.”
My mouth falls open in surprise. I wasn’t expecting this. I thought he’d ask more questions, pace up and down, find some way to fix this.
But it’s too late. They know who I am and it won’t be long until they guess I’m loyal to Reinhardt. That he’s been harboring a fugitive in his apartment. And, once they start digging, they’ll discover that he’s been helping others escape to the West.
Hope and happiness flares in my chest. He has to escape too—we can go together. It’s the perfect solution. “Then you’re coming with me. You’re in as much danger as I am.”
He shakes his head. “Liebling, I can’t.”
“Why not? We’re both in danger and we can both defect.”
He strokes a finger down my cheek, a regretful smile on his face. “They will not welcome me in West Berlin. I’m a Stasi officer. They’ll put me in prison just to be safe, or they’ll quietly hand me back to the East German authorities in exchange for political prisoners.”
I gape at him. “They wouldn’t. Surely that’s against…against human rights conventions?”
He muses on this. “It is. But if the West Germans are quick about handing me back, who is to know? Will the East Germans protest, or will they agree to the deal? I know what I’d do in their place.”
“Not everyone is as opportunistic as you, and if they are then it will be because of the intelligence you can give them on East Germany. You must know so much that will be useful to the West.”
Reinhardt grimaces as if he finds the notion abhorrent. “Perhaps. But I’m not going to trust my life in the hands of enemy authorities. I’ve lived that life before.”
As a prisoner of war, he means. He’s got a soldier’s instincts, but this is a cold war, not a hot one. Defection isn’t the same as surrender but I can see from his stubborn expression that he thinks it is.
I look up into his face, eyes supplicating, unwilling to let go of the sliver of happiness that I’ve glimpsed on the horizon. Both of us together, in the West. “Come with me. Please, Reinhardt.”
Pain flickers over his face and I realize with a jolt that he’s saying goodbye to me. This is the end of everything between us. He can’t keep me safe any longer so he’s doing what he said he’d never do and letting me go. He’s giving me my freedom at last, and I don’t want it.
I take a deep breath. Pleas aren’t working. I’ll try and make him sense instead. “Reinhardt, when I disappear they’re going to discover it was you who helped me escape, and that you harbored a traitor for months in your apartment. Frau Fischer knows we’ve been sharing a bed and Lenore’s not oblivious to what’s been going on. What happens when they’re questioned? What happens when the border guards tell your Oberst that you go across the border at night and match the dates to unexplained disappearances? They will find out that you’ve been unfaithful to the Party and you will be sent to prison for the rest of your life.”
Reinhardt watches me unemotionally, as if none of this is news to him and I realize that it isn’t. He came to the same conclusion in his office before he told me to get my coat. “I’m always aware of the risks, Liebling. There are things in this life for which it is worth suffering the worst of fates. You happen to be one of them.”
“Don’t be sentimental. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Do you think I was a happy man when I met you? Do you think happy men steal women off the street because they’re haunted by their pasts? I have held the sweetest flower in my hands when I have held you, and for that I would suffer worse fates than anything these people could ever do to me.”
“It is a needless fate when the West is a matter of miles away.”
He shakes his head. I don’t understand, and I’m not ready to give up. My mind races over the possibilities. Would life in prison be a severe enough punishment for a high-ranking Stasi officer turned traitor? The State sometimes liked to make examples of powerful people they thought they could trust. The dreadful realization slams into me. I take hold of his jacket in a white-knuckled grip.
“Reinhardt, they won’t put you in prison will they? You will be executed.”
He shrugs and digs his cigarettes out of his pocket. “Perhaps.”
I gape at him. “Don’t you dare be offhand about this. They’ll drag you before a firing squad and shoot you. They won’t even give you a proper trial. You know how it works.”
He turns the unlit cigarette in his fingers slowly, as if he’s choosing his words. I wait, still holding fistfuls of his jacket.
“Then I will die knowing that you’re safe. They will not have you.”
“No, Reinhardt—”
But he cuts me off. “Evony, I’ve told you this before. Being a soldier means I’m not afraid to die. On a battlefield, on the street, in the shadow of the Wall. I have accepted it, but more than that I have expected it.” He reaches out and smooths my curls back from my face. “Though I didn’t expect to find such sweetness at the end. I have no regrets, Liebling. They can’t take my love for you, even if they take my life.”
I’m shaking all over. This can’t be the hard, ruthless man I know who would stop at nothing to get what he wants. How can he give up now when I need him the most?
He smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t take heart, meine Liebe. It may not come to the firing squad. They’ll have to catch me first.”
They will catch him. The Stasi have soldiers and informants all over East Germany, not just in East Berlin, and Reinhardt is a conspicuous man.
“But I love you,” I say in a choked voice. “Why do I have to lose you now when you’ve finally found a place in my heart? Why did you make me fall in love with you if I was only going to lose you?”
He casts the cigarette aside and wraps his arms around me. “So you do love me, Evony.” He kisses me, and I taste my own salt tears on our lips. When I close my eyes I see him stripped of his uniform and hands bound behind him as he’s dragged before a firing squad, and my eyes fly open.
“No. I’m not going without you. I’m not leaving you here to die alone. I’m staying.”
He takes me by the upper arms, holding tightly, his eyes boring into mine. “Evony, listen to me. Your father is in West Berlin. There is nothing for you here but me and I will not be here for long. I can’t protect you from them and I will not see them take you away. If I go with you the West German authorities could think you’re a spy as well. I can’t control what might happen to you if I go with you, and if we both end up back in East Berlin as prisoners it will be worse than dying for me. Don’t you understand? Some things are worse than dying.”
He’s thinking about Johanna, how she suffered and died in the death camp and he couldn’t save her. The remembered pain is filling his eyes. That’s why he’s always admired my strength, because he’s believed that if the worst happened I’d never give up. I’d find some way to survive and he wouldn’t have to live through my death or capture as well. Maybe he’s felt all along that this could never last between us, that he’s been living on borrowed time ever since he was taken prisoner during the war; borrowed, painful time, because if he’d died in battle he would have been spared the horror of knowing what Johanna went through.
I shrug out of his grasp, angry now. “I’m not her and you’re not in the Wehrmacht. They are not our enemies in West Berlin. What about all those times you said I was yours forever even when I spied on you and lashed out at you? How could you love me through all of that but not now?”
“I do love you now. That is why you have to go without me. I can face whatever happens to me here as long as I know you are safe over there. If I am taken prisoner and die not knowing for certain that you are safe I will die tormented. Do you understand why?”
He’s imagining being trapped in prison and not knowing my fate. Being taunted with it by those holding him. “Of course I understand, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me to leave you behind. Am I supposed to just live the rest of my life without you?”
He holds me closer and presses his forehead against mine. “You are young. You will recover. Remember that you are stronger than I am, my Valkyrie. It took me a long time to learn to think for myself but you have never lacked a will of your own. You’ll make your own way in the world. I am a selfish man and I want to think of you out there, free, not in prison. Let me have this one comfort, at the end.”
At the end. He can’t die. He can’t. I thought I would be able to leave him when the time came but I see now that I was fooling myself. “And if I won’t? What if I refuse to go?”
I see the muscle in his cheek flex as his jaw tightens. I know that expression. It means I’ll do whatever it takes. I thump my fist against his chest and curse, tears running down my cheeks. I cry onto his uniform jacket, the one I’ve always hated. I’ve fallen in love with him and I can’t help but wonder what we might have been without the regimes, without the Wall, without firing squads and watchtowers. We might have been nothing, because the Fates may not ever have put us in each other’s path as they did on that freezing January night. But in another place, another time, we might have had everything.
“I don’t want to be anywhere if it means being without you,” I whisper thickly through my tears. “I don’t understand why you would choose the certainty of death in this country over the possibility of a life with me over there.”
He strokes my face, his expression pained. “The West is a foreign land to me, in every sense.”
“It’s still Germany. You always said you loved Germany, divided or united. That means loving West Germany, too.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I think hard, trying to come up with a way to convince him. For weeks all I wanted was to get away from him, and then for weeks I just wanted to find my father and make it to West Berlin. Now he’s offering me everything and my heart is breaking.
“Please, Reinhardt. Please, can’t we just try?”
He sighs, but he doesn’t say anything. Sensing that I’m beginning to wear him down, I say, “There must be some way of ensuring you’ll be safe. Even if we have to lie. Can’t we change your identity? Can’t we hide somewhere until we get Frau Schäfer to vouch for you?”
“You’ll never give up, will you?”
I’m a fighter. He knows that. “Never. I won’t give up until I’ve convinced you to come with me.”
Sounding resigned, he says, “All right, Liebling.”
I look up at him, hope flaring in my chest. He looks unenthusiastic about it but I don’t care. Reluctant is better than dead. “Really? You’ll come with me?”
He wipes the tears from my cheeks as if he can’t bear to see them. “Do you really want me to?”
I throw my arms around his neck, happiness singing through me. “Yes, yes of course I do.” He’s wrong about the authorities in the West. They’ll welcome him and all the intelligence he can bring them about East Germany and he’ll tell them even if he finds it distasteful because it will mean we can be together. “We’ll convince them you’re not a spy. We’ll do whatever it takes.”
He looks down at me for a long time, his fingers stroking through my hair. Then he kisses me softly. “Go and get ready. Put on warm clothes. Pack a small bag of things you need to take with you and I’ll go and change out of this uniform. We’ll have to hide somewhere until it gets dark.”
I run to my room and open my handbag, eager now that we have a plan to stay together. I look around and there’s not really anything that I need to take with me. It would be foolish to take a lot of luggage in case we’re stopped so I’ll have to leave my clothes behind. I change into a sturdy pair of boots and put a warm sweater on over my blouse, and as I’m sorting through the contents of my handbag the door opens and Reinhardt comes in behind me. My eyes meet his in the vanity mirror and I see he’s still wearing his Stasi uniform. There’s something funny about the expression on his face.
“Reinhardt, I thought you said you were going to—”
He reaches around and clamps a pad of cotton wool over my mouth and nose. When I rear back against him he presses more tightly and I struggle to push him away but his arms are holding me like a vice. I stare into the mirror at him, not understanding what is happening. Something sharp and astringent fills my nose and I feel light-headed.
Oh no. No no no. He’s tricked me. He never had any intention of going to the West with me, he just wanted me out of the room long enough to get chloroform and cotton wool. I hold my breath, squirming in his arms. I have to stay conscious. If I pass out I’ll never see him again. I make angry noises in my throat, like a bee buzzing against glass. My lungs start to burn and I can’t help it—I breathe in, and the sharp, cold anesthetic floods my lungs and a wave of dizziness rolls through me. Through blurred eyes I watch Reinhardt’s face in the mirror. He angles his face away from mine so he isn’t overcome himself by the fumes. But I can still see his eyes. They’re bleak with pain, as if he hates having to do this but is determined to see it through, my ruthless man who told me again and again that he’ll do whatever it takes to achieve his goals. Why didn’t I listen to him? As we stood in the living room just now and he stroked my hair he wasn’t showing me that he loved me. He was saying goodbye.
My body grows heavy in his arms. I still struggle, but my movements are becoming weaker and weaker. As unconsciousness begins to overtake me he sinks down onto the bed with me cradled in his arms. His voice seems to come from a long way off. “I had to lie. You nearly convinced, me but it wouldn’t have been right. I have to know that you’re safe and if I go with you, you won’t be.”
I feel his lips on my forehead, his soft kiss, the murmur of his last words. “Es tut mir lied, meine Liebe.”
I’m sorry, my love.
This is our farewell, me struggling to remain conscious as the chloroform overcomes me while he holds me in his arms. I’m drifting on vaporous waves, bobbing in currents that I can’t control. The drug works its way into my brain, whispering that everything will be all right, that I should just give in, stop resisting.
But as I slip into darkness I know that’s a lie, too. Nothing will be all right ever again.