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“Let go! Leave me alone! You’re dead, mom! You’re dead! Go away!” I screamed, trying to escape her grasp. You left did this to me, Starla. You sent him away, so I’m taking you down with me.

“No!” I kicked and struggled against her hold. Two arms came around me. Strong arms. I stared into a pair of dark eyes. A memory flashed in my head.

“Why are you here?”

I shrugged and looked at the ground. I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. “My dad did bad things. He had to go away. And my mom? She drowned herself in the lake.”

I didn’t want to tell the whole truth. I learned the hard way that people didn’t like the real answer about my dad. I told another girl that he raped women and butchered them in our house, and I found him doing it. She screamed and ran away. I couldn’t make friends in these orphanages. People did not like me. Maybe because I carried a darkness with me, and they could sense it.

“I’m sorry. I lost my parents too. They died in a fire.”

I looked up. His eyes were like the moon on a black night. Starless. Empty. I wanted to drown in his gaze. There was something alluring about his eyes.

“It’s me! Malakar.” He grabbed my face in his hands. “It’s me, bluebird. Stay with me!”

I started to fall again. Down, down, down. I wanted to keep falling. Suddenly I was in the air. The last thing I saw were the skulls. Their hollow gazes pleading for me to save them.

The skulls vanished into the fog. Black walls swung around me. Maybe I was swinging. We went up and up and up until the light came into focus.

Every bone in my body was trembling. Was I dying? Maybe I was. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate anything. Or drank anything. I was falling again. My body landed on something soft. Everything was blurred and dark.

I could see him at the edge of my vision. A shadow in the fog.

“Here, drink this.” Hands shoved a glass on my lips. I drank. “I shouldn’t have left you down there so long. I’m so sorry, so sorry. My sweet Starla. I never meant for this to happen.”

The water felt good on my throat. He helped me sit up. There was a plate in front of me. “Eat food. You need to stay with me. Just stay with me and it’ll all be alright.”

He shoved me towards the plate. I picked up the food with my bare hands and ate it like an animal. I shoved it all down within minutes. I was still shaking, but my vision was coming back. I saw my mother’s drenched body in the corner of the room. Hair dangling around her face.

I blinked and she disappeared.

“You left me down there to die.” I could barely look at him.

“No! I didn’t. I was just showing you what I don’t want to happen. I was trying to help you, don’t you see? I don’t want you to go, Starla.” He brushed the hair away from my face. His touch was so gentle, so tender. I found myself leaning into it.

What was wrong with me?

“You keep saying that, but then you hurt me.”

He shook his head. “I can’t control it. I try to, but the pull is so strong, Starla, so strong. It pulls me under.” He took my face in his hands and forced me to look at him. “I love you, don’t you see? I love you too much to toss you away.”

“You don’t love me! You don’t know what love is, Malakar. You idealize me, that’s not love. That’s delusion.” I knew better than to try and get away, so I sat still.

“You’re wrong. It’s love. It is. This is what love is.” He looked so sincere. Did he really believe this was love? This was the panic of being left and the violence of making sure I never did.

In his eyes though, there was no deceit. That was the worst part. Somewhere in his ruined head, he truly believed this was love. He wasn’t trying to be cruel. He was trying to keep me. To him, there was no difference.

“Did you even love those other girls?”

He looked sad. “No, I didn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. And they couldn’t love me, so what was the point? I couldn’t be what my father was. So I saved them by killing them. I let the dark eat them. It was the best mercy I could give to them.”

“You could have let them go,” I told him.

“No, that wasn’t an option. They had to disappear. If I didn’t kill them, they would’ve lived through a worse torment. Me. For the rest of their life.”

I whimpered. “What’s going to happen to me? In the future? Will you torment me?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. I think deep down, he didn’t know. He didn’t want to hurt me, but he kept hurting me anyway.