Encase Page 24

“I know.” He smiles, and his teeth are red, yet the action is too honest. As though it is the best thing he can consider. “I know.”

  “You – I – I am... sorry.”

  “It isn’t your – fault.” A grimace, and all I can hear is the rush of my own blood in my ears, as though jealous my attention should be on his. “She was always going to – kill me – eventually. I knew it.”

  “No.” He opens his mouth, as though to fight my defiance, but I am faster. “I am sorry for not believing you were real. I am sorry for being cruel. Not just then, but... for so long. I am sorry for being cruel.”

  “Never thought – I’d live to – hear that.” The smile on his face can only be categorized as playful, and I hate it. I hate that I cannot respond, Shut up, for soon he will shut up, and there will be no words ever again. No playful lilting. No voice. “I forgive you.”

  I try to stop the blood with whatever power I have in this world, but whatever it is seems to have faded. He is slipping in my arms, and I keep grasping at him with everything I have, and yet he falls ever still, always and always, smaller. I recognize red waves are claiming him, that he is becoming one with death. I can only taste my terror, can only feel my gut churn endlessly and restlessly in desperation.

  “T – Thomas – please...”

  “Shh,” he’s hushing. Too gentle. I bite at the air around us, and my forehead meets his.

  “I – I don’t know what’s – happening. What... what will I do without you?”

  “W – watch someone – e – else, I suppose.”

  My response is a whine, a choked out gasp. I realize for the first time that I am crying, that my salt is claiming his skin as the ocean fights for him, and I lie, lie as though waiting for the ocean to swallow me whole, too, to join him. I can no longer feel his legs, and my heart hurts, it aches, it all aches, and soon there’s no stomach, and no arms, and I do not know what to say, and I am holding his head and whining like a pathetic dog, searching for him, needing him.

  “Don’t die,” I whisper into his hair. “Please. Please, don’t die.”

  He laughs. It’s all shattered, just a gasp of air, and he’s choking – on his own blood, and the ocean now, too. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Take me with you,” I say, into his mouth.

  “Ives – ”

  And he slips. Rough hair runs through my fingers, and then I crouch there, alone, nothing in my hands, hardly breathing.

  “Thomas,” I breathe, but he is gone. Waves have swallowed him whole and left me atop again.

  My fingers feel as though they peel as I attempt to claw the waves open, for I am still above. Everyone is beneath. Isaac. Haunted eyes. Freckles. Optimistic gaze. Screech. Shrouded glare. Thomas. Beaming glance. Everyone’s beneath, and I’m above. Me, and me alone, with myself.

  “Still no,” she says. I try to breathe, and taste nothing but their deaths, nothing but their emptiness, all around me.

  “It truly is a pity. He really seemed to have high hopes for you. Was always defending you. I’ll never understand.”

  I want to yell at her, but my teeth grate on nothing, open and close and I glare, a wounded animal, wishing I had fangs again to rip her limb from limb, no matter how akin she looked to me.

  She sighs, turns her head, beckons me over with another finger. Like hell, I think, but outside of my own volition, I rise, walk with footsteps lighter than I feel, lighter than I’ve felt in so long. She holds at me again.

  Her grasp hurts, somehow. Hurts like electricity in her veins, reacting with mine. Hurts like circuits frying and coming apart. Hurts like darkness wearing holes into me.

  I open my mouth, to beg her for understanding, to ask her to stop, to call for someone to come back to me, but I feel servos unlink and break and pour open and then there is nothingness and death and I am alone and gone.