would ask it.
“No.” I almost answer as if I’m asking a question.
He turns, facing me. I can hardly make out his face in the dark. “You might sleepwalk.”
“I thought you made that up.”
He shakes his head, rustling it against the pillow. “No. You really killed a cat in front of me. You really sleepwalk. You really wake covered in blood—not often, but you do.”
“You didn’t do that to me?”
It’s his turn to sit in silent contemplation. I regret asking it, even more so when he answers.
“I have done everything I can to make you safe. I have told you a thousand times that I love you. You have always been my priority, even when you didn’t know me. The first chance you are given something that could make you doubt me, and you believe that, over the years of love and sacrifice? How did it take such a small thing to make you doubt me when it was so hard to make you love me?”
My insides clench. “I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what to think about the sleepwalking. I don’t think I did it when I was a kid.”
He gets up abruptly, bringing instant panic out in me. He walks from the room, flooding the hallway with light and heavy footsteps. He bangs and clangs and rifles through things downstairs in the concrete basement.
It’s then that I realize how little I know about him, and it makes me trust him even less, if at all. I have a fear that he’s downstairs making something that will be my demise.
A realization hits me like a shovel to the face: Our love will never work. He will always be a suspect in my brain that is naturally on the side of the law, even though I never knew it was. I am naturallyskeptical, even if I am lost in the mud and fog in my head. I wish I could take it all back. I wish for a second I could just be the girl with no memories again.
His heavy footsteps leave the basement as he rushes back into the room. He looks me over, giving me the strangest face. I can hardly make it out with the light of the hallway behind him. He starts to speak softy, but I’m lost in the look on his face. I think it’s defeat, but I can’t be certain.
I don’t hear what he’s saying, not completely. I just watch him, hating how beaten and rough he looks. It’s more than tired and stressed. It’s loss in its simplest form. He is losing me and I am losing him, and we both know it.
I fear it puts me in a sticky situation, though, what with him being the serial killer and me being the ex-agent of sorts. I don’t think either of those roles defines us, but our love doesn’t either. Not anymore.
My doubt in him is a betrayal of the worst kind. It matches his lies, even here in the dark where we can’t see everything and we say nothing that will patch these injuries.
He drops to his knees, and I realize he’s holding a box. He’s telling me things I don’t listen to. The box has become my focus. Its contents drive my curiosity.
He struggles with words for a moment, taking a deep breath. “Your name is Samantha Barnes. You were an agent assigned to bring me in.” I watch him slip away, fading as a person and becoming a shell, a husk. He is empty when he says his next words. “I was also an agent, assigned to something different. Killing people is an art, one only a certain type of person can stomach.” He blinks and breathes and looks pained in some way, but he is a robot. I see that now. “I was a doctor in the military—easiest way to become one without paying for it. I didn’t have money growing up.” There is something else to his story of growing up that I can see is therein his hollow eyes. There is pain there that he has buried with the deaths of others.
My skin shivers. How is all this possible?
I pull back from him, distancing myself from his words as he continues to speak softly, as if the quiet of his voice will mask the horror of his words. “The CIA recruited me when I was twenty-five. I became a cleaner.” He lifts his face, smiling blankly.
“No.” I almost answer as if I’m asking a question.
He turns, facing me. I can hardly make out his face in the dark. “You might sleepwalk.”
“I thought you made that up.”
He shakes his head, rustling it against the pillow. “No. You really killed a cat in front of me. You really sleepwalk. You really wake covered in blood—not often, but you do.”
“You didn’t do that to me?”
It’s his turn to sit in silent contemplation. I regret asking it, even more so when he answers.
“I have done everything I can to make you safe. I have told you a thousand times that I love you. You have always been my priority, even when you didn’t know me. The first chance you are given something that could make you doubt me, and you believe that, over the years of love and sacrifice? How did it take such a small thing to make you doubt me when it was so hard to make you love me?”
My insides clench. “I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what to think about the sleepwalking. I don’t think I did it when I was a kid.”
He gets up abruptly, bringing instant panic out in me. He walks from the room, flooding the hallway with light and heavy footsteps. He bangs and clangs and rifles through things downstairs in the concrete basement.
It’s then that I realize how little I know about him, and it makes me trust him even less, if at all. I have a fear that he’s downstairs making something that will be my demise.
A realization hits me like a shovel to the face: Our love will never work. He will always be a suspect in my brain that is naturally on the side of the law, even though I never knew it was. I am naturallyskeptical, even if I am lost in the mud and fog in my head. I wish I could take it all back. I wish for a second I could just be the girl with no memories again.
His heavy footsteps leave the basement as he rushes back into the room. He looks me over, giving me the strangest face. I can hardly make it out with the light of the hallway behind him. He starts to speak softy, but I’m lost in the look on his face. I think it’s defeat, but I can’t be certain.
I don’t hear what he’s saying, not completely. I just watch him, hating how beaten and rough he looks. It’s more than tired and stressed. It’s loss in its simplest form. He is losing me and I am losing him, and we both know it.
I fear it puts me in a sticky situation, though, what with him being the serial killer and me being the ex-agent of sorts. I don’t think either of those roles defines us, but our love doesn’t either. Not anymore.
My doubt in him is a betrayal of the worst kind. It matches his lies, even here in the dark where we can’t see everything and we say nothing that will patch these injuries.
He drops to his knees, and I realize he’s holding a box. He’s telling me things I don’t listen to. The box has become my focus. Its contents drive my curiosity.
He struggles with words for a moment, taking a deep breath. “Your name is Samantha Barnes. You were an agent assigned to bring me in.” I watch him slip away, fading as a person and becoming a shell, a husk. He is empty when he says his next words. “I was also an agent, assigned to something different. Killing people is an art, one only a certain type of person can stomach.” He blinks and breathes and looks pained in some way, but he is a robot. I see that now. “I was a doctor in the military—easiest way to become one without paying for it. I didn’t have money growing up.” There is something else to his story of growing up that I can see is therein his hollow eyes. There is pain there that he has buried with the deaths of others.
My skin shivers. How is all this possible?
I pull back from him, distancing myself from his words as he continues to speak softly, as if the quiet of his voice will mask the horror of his words. “The CIA recruited me when I was twenty-five. I became a cleaner.” He lifts his face, smiling blankly.
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