It took me weeks of prowling the back woods to find the one I needed, and you know I am not a four-wheel-drive kind of girl. But I found him eventually—though by then I walked in mud-caked boots and hadn’t washed my hair in days.

I thought it would take some time to convince him to help me, but once I made contact I realized almost immediately that he would never help me, no matter what I said to him, no matter the tactic I employed to persuade him that I needed what he had. In the end I had to resort to other methods.

His cabin was sparsely furnished and filthy, his isolation profound. The few things he owned were neatly stowed away, but the layers of grease and dust and other unspeakable grime coating every secret divot in those walls had taken years to develop and would have taken years more to erase. Fire was a better cleanser than anything else I could muster, so I immolated his body and all traces of his solitary life after I had extracted what I’d come for. Silver and leather and whispered charms and the proper receptacle—the hive mind can help you learn to do anything.

Now I’m back in the city, our city. This place with hot showers and clean towels and boots with heels that were never meant to experience mud. This place with dimly lit restaurants where warm bodies bring you rare steaks on white plates. You can saw delicately into them with sparkling knives and sate your craving in plain sight. I’m back in this place with dark lights and cold winds howling down lonely streets blown with garbage and wasted lives. This place I have both loved and hated. This place with you in it.

I have to admit that this was not always my plan. I thought at first I would ignore the pain ripping into me. I thought I could rise above it, but it turned out that I couldn’t. I only wallowed in it until it sickened me. I worked harder, I changed my tactics. I tried to let it enfold me, to experience it fully—feel it sink in and saturate every corner of who I was. I thought if I lived in it I could understand it, accept it. But it was too big, I couldn’t possibly absorb it all. I laid in my bed and thought of you and all the things you’d said to me, the things you’d done. I puzzled over them, I sought to unravel them into a pattern that made some kind of sense. But I couldn’t, it led me nowhere.

I thought then to destroy myself, to erase myself from the picture, to punctuate our story with clarity and finality. But that seemed at once too hard and too easy. It ended everything but solved nothing. So I was frozen, drifting, lost in a wasteland of confusion you had constructed for me. No solution appeared to be the right one—until this came to me on yet another sleepless, moonbright night.

Having a plan made it so much easier to go on. It took up most of my days and all of my nights. It took my mind off of the way you smell, the sound your laughter makes over the relentless buzzing of the crowd. It kept me from lurking in smoky bars waiting to catch sight of you, waiting for you to change. And then finally the maps were drawn and my knowledge was complete and it was time to go. As I drove away I felt a tugging at my back, like some vital part of me was trying to return to you as the distance between us lengthened. You felt nothing, I know. But it didn’t matter, I felt it enough for us both.

I’m back now and I can’t wait to see you. I thought I might have forgotten your scent while I was away, but now I smell you everywhere. The places you’ve walked, the things you’ve touched, the people whose hair you’ve stroked instead of mine. I am overwhelmed with your essence no matter where I go.

She won’t be calling you back, you know. She might have, I do believe she intended to before I took her fingers. And her ears and her sweet, soft lips. And then she was quite dead. So there’s very little chance you’ll hear from her. I hope you don’t  feel rejected when your phone lies dormant in your hands, when there are no tiny lights blinking up at you to indicate that you’re necessary to someone. I want better than that for you. I don’t want you to ever be lonely again.

Anyway, now it’s just waiting. Only six days more. You don’t know it, but we’ll be together then. We’ll be together forever. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that I need you to be a part of me. Inside me. You won’t take me in your arms, but I’ll take you in mine. I’m on your trail now, and when the moon turns I will take you. I will rip open your skin and gnaw at your flesh and tear out your heart and suck at your bones and finally you will belong to me, only to me.

We’ll haunt the streets here forever, you and I. We’ll walk in companionable, eternal silence. Better than whispered promises, better than clinging to each other’s hands, better than stealing meaningful glances from each other’s eyes. You will be in my eyes. You will be in my gut, you will be in my heart and my lungs and my every single aching breath.

And finally, since the first time you touched me, I will know peace.

This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.