but there's blood on my hands
and my lips aren't clean
–leon bridges

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ 07 ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

            I KNOCK TWICE.  Wait two seconds. Knock thrice. My fingers itch, my heart beats a thousand times per second, my eyes dart from corner to corner.

She opens the door. I don't see what she's wearing. I have her trapped against the wall, and I'm tasting her lips, filling my lungs with oxygen. Between kisses, I tell her I love her.

Then I'm on the other side of the room, trying to regain my balance. That delectable odor of the bed and breakfast room hits me, a physical blow. She's looking at me with empty eyes, standing under the weak light of the living room, breathing heavily.

"Trina?" I whisper, and I feel like something in the air is weighing down on me.

She wraps her arms around her small frame, cocooning herself, and sighs. She shakes her head, as if the forces of the world were too much for her to handle.

At once, she seemed so small and delicate, wedged between all that matter. I wanted her to put me to bed and sing me a lullaby.

"Tell me what's wrong, Caterina," My voice wavered. "Tell me what's wrong–"

"Nothing's wrong. Nothing's anything." She shrugs, lifeless, eyes on me and mind anywhere but here.

"Tell me what you're feeling." I probe, desperation coating my voice and making it waver.

She looks at me, eyes vacant and dead, a blank expression plastered on her face. "Christ. I feel nothing, Nathaniel."

"Don't fucking lie to me, dammit," I hear my father bark, and then I realize it's me, then my heart bounces right up to my throat. And then I start regretting it. "I'm sorry," My voice is hoarse. She drives me mad. "I'm sorry. Come here, amore,–" I grab the back of her neck, bring her closer, press my mouth against hers.

Two blazing turquoise eyes fill my senses as her voice invades my ears. "Son of a bitch," she screeches.

I taste her blood in my mouth. Or mine.

And then I notice it. All of it. Shards of glass littered across the carpeted the floor, all from before I arrived. The curtains are ripped and lay in shreds on the floor, things I didn't notice in my haste to come in. There is an untamed animal in her every move.

I am stupid. The last time wasn't the last time. I shouldn't have come here.

"Look at you, in that suit and tie." She spits at me, and I know the lovely Caterina from last time was long gone, or has never even existed : she had simply masked this one.

"Where were you, Nathaniel? fucking your whore of a secretary? Drinking bubbly champagne with your rich, horny, pathetic friends because that's all you lot are good for?" There's a blazing fire in her eyes. She wasn't human, she wasn't a goddess.

She was a beautiful, lethal monster. The mirror of my own corruption.

"Were you having fun while I'm left here, like a goddamned dog?" She comes to me, shoves me with all of her might, throws punches at me with pure hatred oozing from her eyes. "I can't get out! They think I'm sick, Nathaniel, me! While lowlives like you and your family and your associates who steal money from the poor get to roam the streets, free!" I am pushed and pushed until I can't feel my shoulders. "Answer me, you damned coward. Answer me! "

I answer her. I don't know what I'm saying. She's animalistic. She's the Caterina of last month, primal and barbaric, incomprehensible.

"You're a coward, Nathaniel," She's smirking now. I feel shivers trail my spine. Icy waves are dowsed onto my body, from my head to the soles of my feet.

She knows me too much. She is me.

"You're a pitiful crybaby. You're afraid of daddy because he hit you when you were a small, weak boy," High-pitched laughter. "You're still a small, weak boy! The only person who's obliged to put up with you and love you is dead. You're afraid to speak up to granny, to stand up for yourself. You let your job dictate your life, like all boring, mediocre businessmen. You're mediocre, Nathaniel, that's what you are. Just like your dad, mediocre like every other person on the bloody street," My heart constricts at that word. I hear myself whispering nonsense, telling her to stop, telling her I'll kill her, I'll kiss her until she can't breathe. "You're disgusting, do you hear me? You're so normal and typical that it's a disgrace."

I shouldn't have come. I shouldn't have come, and yet I can still taste her on my lips, still taste heaven on my tongue. She's intoxicating me. She's carbon dioxide and I can't exhale her out of my system.

"You don't mean that," I hear myself whisper.

A high pitched, screeching laugh, like nails against chalkboard. "Do you hear yourself? You. Are. Worthless. You make me fucking sick,"

She rolls her eyes and propels down on the couch, resting both her feet on the coffee table. She reaches for the remote, but I'm quick to stop her. My hands are shaking.

"You don't mean that, Trina." I say, more firmly this time, looking into her eyes and silently pleading with her to look into mine.

When she finally does look up at me, all I can see is white. White, everywhere. She has sobered up. She's the most serious I've ever seen her. Her eyes are a black well. "Man up, Nathaniel. Grow a pair of balls and make me pay for talking shit at you. I didn't fall in love with a damned coward," Fire is dancing in her demonic eyes. "Hit me. Hit me, Nathaniel, and be a man for once in your shitty, meaningless life."

I stare at her. She's sick. They all told me she's sick, over and over. I never listened. I needed her, still need her. I can't, will never be able to walk out of this Bed and Breakfast. She's all I have. She's all I want, all I'll ever need. If I lose her, I lose myself.

"Get up," I mutter, feeling myself go dizzy. "Get up, dammit, Caterina!" I grasp her wrist and yank her up. She tries to gain back her balance.

My fingers are a ghostly white as they wrap around her chin and tug it upwards, wanting to demolish her skull and dominate her every cell in the process. "You're bloody sick, you know that?" I tell her. Two turquoise wells pierce my being. I grip her chin tighter, almost lifting her entire body with the force. "You're fucking sick, do you hear me, Caterina? Sick in the damned head. You're–"

But I don't finish that sentence, because my left side has been lit on fire, and liters of gasoline were being thrown in the mix.

Slowly, my eyes dip downwards.

Then I see it.

The glass shard in her hand, coated in red. The diabolical look of inhuman hatred.

My eyes get blurry. There's a burning pain in my stomach, slowly spreading to ever cell in my body until I'm consumed by a raging fire that starts eating me whole.

She's not there, the last seconds before I blackout.