by Elena Monroe
My expectations were selfish.
My expectations disregarded trauma altogether.
I mumbled a quick sorry around my trembling bottom lip hoping that would suffice.
Few steps forward and ten back seemed to be the dance with the devil. He promised to fuck my halo into horns and now I felt overwhelmed by the need to be just as broken as him.
We always matched.
Now we didn’t and he could see it all over my face.
Running back upstairs, I let the tears break free, not for myself but for my Bowey. It’s hard to not blame yourself when you’re hopeful enough to believe you can change someone’s life by just being there.
I never contemplated anything but our happy ending.
EVE
It had been days of silence, treating each other as passing ships.
It became routine to ignore each other. I was ashamed of how tortured I felt, enough to let it change how I saw Bowen, and he was angry with me for not being as damaged as he expected.
If we were both damaged to the same degree this would be easier.
I went from being someone who wore a halo, too good for him, and now to someone he wanted to sear with enough sin to grant me horns.
I couldn’t begin to know what I wanted when every desire was to absolve him of all the pain of my absence.
Swallowing the fact that I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was anymore, I took my coffee mug outside, avoiding Bowen’s morning routine of blending up veggies and fruit at a deafening tone. It was easier to lick my wounds and digest the truth by myself than to pretend I didn’t see him in the room.
Walking along the perimeter of his vast yard, I put more and more distance between us when I got lost deeper than I had before. There was this odd looking tree sitting in the corner of the yard, twisted and demonic the way he was seen as. I found it devastatingly beautiful.
I made the mental note to paint this since my subject content had to move past Bowen and eventually take shape as other things. The painting used to help me work things out, every stroke peeling a layer deeper to the things holding me together, making them permanent on the canvas.
My pain was a variety of different colors, but I normally only painted in blue.
Bowen’s backyard basically opened into the wilderness and he had already warned me that coyotes and wild animals roam free.
We didn’t have anything roaming Denmark and nothing was free.
Enjoying my coffee slowly enough to waste time until Bowen was out the door, I found a white snake slithering in the grass at my feet. The snake was small, and you could barely see its scaly pattern coating its body. It felt like the world dropped a metaphor at my feet, many of them actually, snakes in the garden was the perfect way to describe my life now.
Secrets.
Lies.
Things appearing one way but being another.
The small snake stopped at my bare feet in wonderment and the sudden urge to protect the snake from all the wild roaming animals felt overwhelming.
I felt like that snake: everyone knew them as venomous but compared to most wildlife, it doesn’t rank very high. That’s how I felt clashed against Bowen’s truth: suddenly not that venomous.
Bending down, I dumped out the contents of my large coffee mug and held it against the grass for him to crawl inside. It took a lot of coaxing before he slithered in, and I promised to keep him safe.
Laying my hand over the top lightly to hold him curled up inside my cup, I went back inside assuming Bowen had already left. He normally woke up at 6 AM and left the house by a prompt 6:25, wasting no time to leave me here by myself, stranded.
Not expecting him to be standing in the kitchen, I felt myself hit an invisible boundary in our silent treatments. It had been actual days since I spoke out loud in his presence and now I felt how mute that made me.
Just like Denmark—selectively mute if I couldn’t speak to Bowen. It drove my mother mad before it made things worse with Elias. Her silent contempt turned into punishments doled out by my new stepbrother so her hands could stay clean.
My mouth was still open while my brain and my heart argued over the words that should come out. “You’re still here. It’s after 7.”
“Didn’t know I had to leave by a certain time.” Poking a straw in the blender, he drank the smoothie right from the machine carelessly in a way that didn’t suit him. Bowen cared no matter how vile he seemed on the outside—he never stopped caring.
“You always leave by 6:25… It’s routine for you. Did something happen? Are you okay?” A rush of worry flooded me him with questions, but everything about him came up cold, just like his house, nothing felt like home again. My eyes even shifted to his arm looking for new wounds even though they tell you don’t open old wounds.
“Bad night. Not enough Henny,” his voice was flat and unwilling to meet me in the middle enough for this awkwardness to dissolve. We fed it instead.
“I saved a snake in the garden… He’s too small to be out there unprotected.” I left the cup on the island and Bowen flashed a look my direction that was clearly assessing if he broke me a little too much with his confession days ago.
“Snakes don’t need saving, Eve.” The flatness of his words landed heavily on me, and I had to stumble my way through deciding if we were speaking figuratively or about my new pet. “Just because something looks tough doesn’t mean it is...” My voice cracked realizing saving the snake was more about me.
“Things look tough as a defense mechanism, Eve, to keep predators away. You’ve been tough our whole life. Is that why this is so hard for you? It rattled your strength? Or because you weren’t supposed to ever be a victim?” Taking his smoothie, he walked away not waiting for the answer. Close to the invisible lines separating rooms I heard him shout, “Don’t worry, I’m leaving.”
My chest felt tight until I heard the front door click closed and I could finally take a deep inhale. Dropping down to my elbows, I watched my new friend coil up from the cup. “What should we name you?”
Thinking of our childhood together, seemingly where all things were born between us, I landed on the perfect name. A spin on our favorite series we would take turns reading until we finished all 6,095 pages of a world we soaked up. “Severus Snake. Do you like that?” His tongue flicked the air, and I took it as a yes because I wasn’t Harry, and I couldn’t speak Parseltongue.
Taking the cup with me, I felt the urge to snoop now that Bowen wasn’t here. I didn’t have the balls to snoop when we were so clearly at odds, but the key Khaos gave me was burning a hole in my proverbial pocket. This lingerie didn’t have enough material for pockets.
I tried all the obvious doors and all the ones I never walked through, until I found one particular door that wasn’t black like the rest but a navy blue. A navy-blue door when every other door in his house was painted a matte black.
I wondered to myself if I ever noticed before or if I simply was more interested in the black doors because those seem to match his insides better. Blue was my color, so whatever was behind that door wasn’t sinister like the rest. It was last on my list of places to snoop.
Trying the door handle, I saw Severus Snake coil up tighter like this was a bad idea when I twisted the handle enough to realize it was locked.
I found the one locked door in Bowen’s house. All his flaws properly displayed yet this blue door was sealed.
Setting Severus Snake down in the mug he was making his new home, I darted upstairs to my room that I had occupied during our silent treatment. Searching frantically for the key, I finally found it hiding under the candle lid where I taped it.
I hid things my whole life, taping them to the underneath for safe keeping. It wasn’t lost on me that all the mementos that made it to our wedding were ones I hid all around his room.
Photos taped under his bed frame.
Movie tickets tucked into books.
Other small trinkets taped to places I made special by letting it hold m
y favorite memories.
Maybe this is where he taped all his favorite memories.
Letting my brows furrow, I prayed the key fit when I pushed it inside the lock and twisted. The door pried open with a creek like it was abused, used until a sound like this screamed from its spine.
Inside the door was a large room with a wall-sized window full of light pouring through. There were bookshelves lining every other wall and even two rows free-standing.
Bowen Astor built himself a library and locked it away. Why?
Letting my eyes eat up every detail I could, I weaved in and out of the rows of books and held Severus like a guard dog. He wasn’t vicious—just curiously by my side.
Behind the rows of books, I found a small desk pushed up against the window with a small table and comfy chair creating a small nook. I wanted to imagine the Bowen I knew, quiet and subtle, curled up with a book, but the one I knew now was so much more painfully beautiful with his wandering mind and blatant cynicism.
The desk looked old like it survived our childhood when I recognized it.
It couldn’t be his childhood desk.
A desk that took up a large portion of his room and was too big for him.
Setting down my new pet again, I got on my knees, pushing the desk chair out of the way and checked the bottom for our signatures.
My fingers ran over our names etched into the wood, and I felt my eyes water enough to blur the beauty of it.
It was his desk.
The same desk we wrote our names on with my butterfly knife.
He kept it all these years and shoved it in a room with his favorite things behind a lock to keep it safe.
Pulling the chair back, I sat at the desk letting my curiosity get the best of me as I attempted to open the drawers. I don’t remember his desk having locked drawers before.
Taking a hopeful leap, I used the same key and the drawer let me pull it open. All I found was folders, black folders that seemed too daunting to peek into.
Staring at them too long, I finally cracked, peering into his privacy like some voyeur violating him again. Only this time he didn’t know.
Opening the folder, the first thing I noticed was a shiny white plastic scrap with sharpie all over it. Spotting the anarchy A, replacing all the normal ways for an A to be written, this was unequivocally from Khaos.
Reading the messy sharpie, I gathered it was an agreement of some sort by the dramatic language. It was like Kanye West and William Shakespeare mated, producing this nut job.
Turning it over I saw it was originally a bag of Starburst.
Too on brand.
Putting it aside, I shuffled through the folders complete with Polaroids of girls in plain satin dresses and a desperate look in their eyes.
Is that why he told me not to be so desperate on our wedding night? Is it because he saw something in me resembling these girls?
Picking up a faster pace, I shuffled through each folder, collecting all the photos in my grasp, finding more scary similarities to me in each one.
Pitch black hair.
A kind of pale that had cinnamon dashed in.
Piercing blue eyes.
These girls could qualify as doppelgängers for me. They were all the same build, with the same features, and had the same fear lurking under their skin the way mine forced me to sit pretty.
Dropping the photos, I opened the last folder to see another girl that looked all too familiar. Reading the name Chevy, odd name, I admired how she was flipping off the camera. A sense of macabre crept up my spine. Chevy was the spitting image of me with her attitude on full display to cover up any weaknesses from showing on the outside.
Tucking everything back into the drawer, I scooped up Severus Snake and flew out of the room in a panic trying to draw a conclusion that made sense.
Who were the girls who looked like me?
Were those girls keeping him from being lonely before me?
Why couldn’t he like blondes in my absence?
Every theory I had led back to Bowen trying to hold onto my memory in some kind of twisted way that required a paper trail.
The doorbell chimed loudly, making my shoulders shoot up to ears having never heard it before. Bowen basically had a sign outside his house that said abandon all hope here which worked well in its invisibility considering he never had any unexpected guest.
Opening the door suspiciously, I hugged the robe around me even though it barely touched my knees. Everything that once worked properly—my voice, my ability to run, the way Bowey taught me to throw a punch—all cowered away.
Elias.
He didn’t wait to be invited in, and it made me cringe.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, he told me himself he was moving here, and it brought on a storm I couldn’t control.
EVE
His body heat forced me back against the wall even more than I already was. His height casted a huge shadow over me and the darkness felt cold enough to make my hard nipples uncomfortable even with my arms crossed over my scandalous clothes.
Elias was the kind of demon that you never saw coming. He was personable, bright, happy, a perpetual flirt, and had a face that seemed to be stuck to looking much more average than he was.
Leaning into me, I pushed my face to the side trying to escape best I could when his fingers caressed my cheek. “No matter what you endure, you’re always so beautiful, Eve. A sleeping angel… I miss watching you sleep.” His husky whispers drenched over me and made my skin crawl.
“Elias.” I tried to make my voice stern, but it was a plea instead. My own plea triggered something inside me to shake loose, dragging me to hell unwillingly this time.
Denmark
Age 14
The tea they forced me to drink before bed was supposed to help with the cramps I was suffering. My periods were always agonizing and whenever I got mine, my mother always seemed to be missing. Always when I needed her, she would vanish from existence.
Instead, I was served a burning tea in my room before bed, and Elias was always the one to deliver the silver tray with the antique cup. It was supposed to help with the cramps, but all it did was make me so sleepy I could barely will my eyes open.
Elias always overstayed his welcome, letting his limbs brush against mine without permission, even lying down next to me like a concerned family member. I knew better than to think anyone would willingly care about me in a selfless way—other than Bowen—if the woman who gave birth to me couldn’t.
“Where’s… my… mom…” I didn’t even feel my voice go up at the end where the question mark should be. Just flat words falling on deaf ears.
Turning into me, I felt his hand brush down my face. “Always a sleeping angel. She doesn’t like this part, Eve. I’m too selfish to let you go and if this is the only time I can have you…” His words drowned out.
I felt so heavy as I felt myself sink into the mattress, so far down I felt like I was falling. That feeling never stopped—falling—it was dark and cold to fall so far into yourself that you pray you forget what is happening to you.
The memory shook me into reality when I felt Elias crowding me even more. My shoulders and bottom lip trembled while I tried to digest my own twisted reality: Bowen smelled it on me before I did.
We matched.
Always parallel.
A perfect pair of fucked up.
I wasn’t ashamed of how inferior I felt against the weight of his trauma. As fucked up as it was, we weren’t balanced, and our love wouldn’t survive as an angel and demon.
If one of us had to live with the other’s trauma it would destroy us. All we wanted was to protect each other and that creates more trauma, not less.
The front door was still open, but I knew he didn’t care. He shoved all his dirty behind a crooked crown.
I wanted to push him away, speak, punch, and fight my way out. I wanted to be the girl I used to be— too angry at the world to let it break me but that wasn’t who I was anymor
e.
The world broke me, and I had the scars to prove it.
I no longer had the same fight.
Elias’s hand slowly fell down my chest, pushing my robe open until I felt enough on display through the see-through material of my pajamas.
My features contorted into invisible pain when my voice pushed through the tremors. “What did you- you do to me?”
Elias smiled softly in this way that looked like relief. “You remember, my angel?” His hands dipped below the material pretending to cover me.
Everything I wore was meant to tease Bowen and it was all I had here. I regretted it during our silence, and even more right now.
Cupping my breast, I felt my lips tremble more and my shoulders pin against the wall, trying to create space that wasn’t there.
“Every period… you… you did that.” The memory didn’t feel like mine. It felt like a bad dream, a numbing feeling spreading from my soul and infecting everything else in my body.
Biting his lip, he leaned into me so closely I felt his teeth grate against my skin as he spoke, “You may not remember, but you loved every damn second, angel. I can still hear your moans and whimpers in my head… but I need more. I’ve missed this body so much.”
His unhinged words made me feel sick, and I tensed at his grasp on my breast just wanting this to end—none of his touch felt good. None of him was Bowey. And he just made me a liar because my first time wasn’t with the only person I’ve ever loved.
Everything happened so quickly.
That’s how good things happen, and when bad things happen, time seems to slow, collecting seconds like long inhales.
Grace somehow ended up standing at my door, producing a small blade that she poked into his neck until his hands went up like he had been caught.
She was about six months pregnant and yet a weapon suited her quiet demeanor well.
“Grace?” I whimpered her name, not sure if she was there or it was my hope running wild.