Death strikes without warning, snatching away everything like a merciless plunderer leaving you empty handed in the blink of an eye. For Penny, it stole the opportunity to leave. In her convoluted mind, she had conjured a path to exit her cold life by passing the poisoned chalice to his Mother instead. She felt heavy like she had unwittingly engineered her death when she had exiled her. She felt guilty like she was dancing on His bleeding heart.

I got sucked into the maelstrom like a rudderless dinghy caught in a riptide. It is inherently human that we feel the need to take action. It fuels the belief that we are in control. That we can orchestrate the outcomes. Sometimes all you need to do in a storm is sit tight and let the storm ride out. If only we were taught this. Those who are perpetually forsaken feel the need to act even more deeply. I starved myself for three days in the hopes that the ketosis would amplify the pain I was feeling and that she would hear it and come back to me. To us.

When she did return, she was an empty shell. Haunted by Her ghost. Constantly looking over her shoulder like she would be exposed. It felt like I was hugging a mannequin. There was no reciprocity. She knew the reality. Her only option now was to leave in a wake of destruction. But that would steal the ability for her to play a victim. A card that she always had up her sleeve. The one that always gave her the sense of victory.

She had already decided it was over. She just didn’t have the heart to say it. She couldn’t look me in the eye and slit my throat and walk away. How could she? I was the only one who showed her what love truly felt like. She instead sighted admonition of paths crumbling. Annihilation cloaked as potential outcomes that we need to be prepared for, when she knew that’s where she was nudging us to.

The warning bells in my head went off like Chernobyl just before the meltdown. I believed I could still save this. I believed our love was strong enough to weather the storm. I believed the Seer who predicted us getting married was right. I believed she loved me truly that she would choose the path less trodden. Like a hungry eagle who had caught its prey for the first time in weeks, I dug my talons into her promising to never let go. I made her vow to me that she wouldn’t give up on us or make any purposeful attempts to push me away.

She looked in my eyes. For the first time her face was inscrutable. She crossed her heart and hoped to die while she had unobtrusively crossed her fingers to absolve her of the guilt of the massacre she knew she would bring forth.

Part 9 – The Crimson Abyss