Page 131 of Undertow

“Just watching the news of our deaths.”

His smile fades as he comes to stand beside me. “Damn, kid,” he mumbles. “Don’t see that every day.”

He slips an arm around my shoulders and squeezes.

“Guess I’m officially no one now,” I say.

I stare down at the eye on my hand. The bruises from last week are starting to fade, but the scars never will. They’ll continue to scream the dark, ugly truth about who and what I am.

They can “kill me” every day and it won’t change the fact that I’ve been beaten and broken. Used, abused, and subjected to every evil this world has to offer. I’ve been bathed in sin so deep and dirty there are times I can’t even look at myself in the mirror. And now I’m supposed tostart over?

What does that even mean?

“Jonah?” Julia’s voice is filled with concern. “You okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I force out.

But my hands are shaking now. My lungs hardening.

Memories are flooding back. Nightmares bright and raging in broad daylight.

What good was any of this? All I’m doing is running again, a coward on this futile chase to hide from the monster inside.

“Jonah, come here.”

I shake my head. I don’t even know why. God, I can’t breathe.

Julia shuts off the TV and grasps my hand, pulling me around the couch. She tugs me down beside her, but I’m trembling so hard I can barely feel her.

“What if it’s too late?” I whisper. “What if this is what I am? I don’t… look at me. I’m so fucking ugly. Inside, I’m…”

“No,” she hisses. “No! You’re not.”

She pulls me in and holds on tight as I break down.

“You’re not, Jonah.”

I shake my head. She’s wrong. She hasn’t seen the worst. The years of pain and suffering. The years of doing the unspeakable to survive. What if it’s too late to be anything else? Maybe thisiswhat I am now.

We jump at a slam on the coffee table in front of us.

I look up to see Gramps standing across from us with a stern look. He points to a composition book on the glass surface.Mycomposition book.

“Open it,” he says.

“Gramps, I?—”

“Open it!”

I sigh when Julia releases me to obey.

I open the book, cringing at the years of weathered ink. Tears and blood blot the pages. As I flip through it, every entry is another demon screaming accusations of another crime committed and suffered. Over and over in an endless cycle of horror.

I get to the last one, my hands shaking as I smooth the page, still not sure about the point of this exercise.

It seems that wisdom didn’t come accompanied by clarity because I didn’t know the severity of my condition until now. I am a coward with cracked bones and swollen eyes, trying to make the pathetic sound prophetic or even poetic,

I’m a heretic deserving of total isolation.