Lapidary

1 year later

As I made my way to the half-moon-shaped bar, I stumbled into someone. He gently touched my shoulders, and I noticed his big, brown wings first. The colors of angels’ wings indicated their position in the hierarchy. White wings belonged to the archangels – the most powerful of their kind. Grey wings were normal angels, like Ace. Brown wings were ‘lower’, weaker angels.

“Careful there.” He had a sweet voice.

I met his bright eyes and realized he thought I had flirtatiously bumped into him. He looked at the short skirt and apron I wore – it was my waitress uniform at Café Cocktail, and of course didn’t realize I was drunk. It would be unprofessional to drink on the job.

“Sorry,” I said.

I walked away from him, so that I could serve two goblins who were waiting by the bar, but felt his eyes on me as I went. After I poured the goblins’ ale into two big glasses, I realized the angel was still watching me. I hadn’t felt admired in a long time, and I hadn’t let someone touch me for longer. After Ryker’s death, my sex drive had disappeared. My therapist reckoned it was due to my depression, among other things.

I offered the angel a smile before I returned to my work.

The bar was busy on this Friday night, and I was having a hard time coping. There were too many full tables and too few hands. I got several orders wrong, got yelled at, and spilled a drink on a customer. When I returned to the bar, I poured myself another shot of tequila. I drank it, then slammed the glass down on the counter. Then I looked into the angry eyes of my boss, Cardan Redthorn. He wore a coat that covered his neck and clothes that would make him blend in with the night. His lips parted to reveal his long, vampire canines.

“You’re fired.”

This was the thirteenth job I had lost in the past twelve months. I might have cried if I wasn’t focusing so hard on standing upright. I removed my apron, handed it to him, then snatched the bottle of tequila from the counter.

“Cheers,” I said.

I took a swig from the bottle before I made my way toward the door. Cardan glared after me, but had evidently decided one half-empty bottle of tequila wasn’t worth the fight. I left the bar, drinking as I walked, and stopped outside to stare at the graveyard across the street. It wasn’t a weird location for a bar run by a vampire. It was, however, a bar and location most humans avoided because it was a magic hotspot, and unlike me, they valued their lives.

The streetlights illuminated the empty street, and the bar was the only lively building in sight. I crossed the street because my apartment was three blocks away from the graveyard.

“Wait up!” It was that sweet voice.

I stopped and turned to watch the angel from earlier cross the street. Did he know I had just been fired? I didn’t even feel embarrassed. I just felt…numb…

“Yes?” I asked.

He grinned goofily at me. “Can I walk you home?”

“No.” It came out harder than I intended.

His face fell, and wondered about his intentions. It had been so long since someone fucked me, so long since someone made me feel anything. I was a living zombie and desperate to feel.

“But you can walk me to that corner.” I glanced at the dark corner of the street. There was a perfect spot, hidden from sight by the wall.

The angel’s grin returned, and he took my hand in his. I swayed as I walked and swigged the last mouthful of tequila. It burned all the way down my throat. I tossed the glass bottle at the nearest trash can, missed, and ended up littering.

The angel spun me around to face him, before pushing me against the wall. I pulled him into me and let my tongue explore his open mouth. He tasted like beer. His hands traveled over my breasts and down to my hips, where he gripped me hard. He was hungry for me, and I felt nothing. I forced myself to continue, my hands sliding down his shirt.

Feel something.

I ran my hand over his pants and found it hard, ready for me.

Feel something.

He moaned before nibbling my ear.

Feel anything.

And suddenly I felt nauseous. I had had too much tequila and knew what came next. I tried to push him away but didn’t push hard enough. I puked all over his polished shoes.

“What the fuck?” He stepped back.

I was so empty I didn’t feel anything. I took in his mortified expression and shrugged instead of apologizing. Without saying another word, he took to the skies, leaving me in the dark.

I spat on the ground, as if that could get the wretched taste out of my mouth. And then the whispering started again. I put my hands on the sides of my head and squeezed – as if that would help. Shortly after Ryker died, I had begun to hear voices – starting on the day I found Zimran. Since then, the whispering had come and gone like bad dreams. Sometimes, I heard voices; sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes, I could even almost make out what they said. And sometimes, I saw shadows or faces of people I didn’t know.

The voices were part of the reason I drank. I tried to drown them out.

I had approached a licensed therapist who had diagnosed me with schizophrenia – a mental disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and behavior. She’d given me so many pills, and I’d taken them all without questions, desperate for silence in my mind. But the voices never stopped, and the meds made me fatigued, nauseous, or gave me headaches. I’d switched medications several times now and had concluded that there was no cure for craziness.

In my drunken state, I was unsure how I managed to find my way home, but I did. I climbed down the stairs, pulled the key from my handbag, and struggled to unlock the door. I leaned against it to push it open, but ended up falling forward, onto my face.

“Shithead,” I chastised myself.

As I got to my hands and knees, I realized I had fallen on top of an envelope someone had pushed under my door – like that someone did every month. I didn’t need to open it to know that it was filled with ten golden coins. I had received these coins every month since Ryker’s death, and I stashed them away in my room without ever spending them. I refused to use someone’s pity money.

First, I had suspected it was Ace who sent me the money. As captain of the Sky Watch he had a good income, but even for him it was a lot, which made me think he had gone into his savings to help me. I had confronted him, and he had sworn left and right that he wasn’t sending the money.

I didn’t have friends – all of them had disappeared – which meant the only other persons who could be sending me money were my parents. I moved around a lot – mostly because I lost my jobs, but somehow, they always managed to find me. From one shithole to the next, I went, and from one shithole to the next the envelopes followed me. I considered calling my parents to tell them to stop. I was doing fucking fine on my own. But then I thought about the last conversation we had, two years ago, and refused to call. I didn’t answer their messages, either. I stored the money and used the little bit I made from bartending to survive.

I left the door open and made my way through the dark, windowless, underground apartment. It was an incredibly cheap place to rent, with one combined living room and kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. I made my way to the bathroom and opened the mirrored cupboard. I took out my meds and drank several pills, even though the voices had gone quiet. I rested my hands on the sides of the sink and stared into the drain, thinking I might puke again. I didn’t. I straightened, looking into the mirror.

I didn’t know the woman who stared back at me.

She was a living skeleton, her dull eyes sunk away deep within her skull. Her hair was dry, with more split ends than there was sand on the shore. Her mouth’s edges were hanging as if they had frozen in an upside-down smile. She had vomit on her shirt, and her skirt was too short. She was a murderer. I didn’t want to look at her anymore.

I slammed my first into the mirror and it broke, sending shards of glass to the bathroom floor. My hand was bleeding. A piece of glass was stuck in my knuckles, and I pulled it out before stumbling to the bath. There were smaller shards still stuck in my flesh, but I didn’t bother with them. I plugged the bath before opening the tap and getting undressed. I stepped into a shard of glass and ignored the pain, like I was accustomed to ignoring the pain that consumed my heart.

My head was spinning as I got into the bathtub. Was the water brown from my bleeding knuckles or from dirt that was stuck in the pipes? Or maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me – it wouldn’t be the first time.

I reached toward the long shard of glass that lay next to the bathtub. I closed my hand around it and lifted it so that I once again could see my reflection. I was nothing but a remnant of the woman I once was.

The drugs and alcohol had drowned out the voices, but they also drowned out the small voice inside of me that told me I would survive. That voice was a lighthouse, leading me to safety. But the light was off, and suddenly it was too dark.

I just wanted it to end.

I wasn’t a particularly religious person but sent up a prayer to Ayana, the goddess of the elves, that I would meet Ryker in the afterlife. Of course, this wasn’t possible. Ryker was an elf, which meant his soul went to the Netherworld, like most magical beings, when he died. I was human – I’d go to Heaven, or Hell. I looked at the stone ring on my finger – it’d been a year and I still hadn’t managed to take it off.

Without thinking, I stabbed the shard of glass into my wrist, spraying the wall with blood. I ran it vertically down my arm before moving on to the other wrist. When I was done, I dropped the glass to the side of the bath and closed my eyes. The taps were still running, and the bath would overflow soon.

Nothing mattered.

I closed my eyes and welcomed the darkness.