“Why are you screaming at me?!” I yell.
“Because you’ve got a job to do and it isn’t getting done!” He walks the edge of the table and back over to me, but when he gets close, I take a step back. “Why isn’t it getting done?”
My pulse races as I stutter out the words I’ve been afraid to say to him. “B-Because . . .”
“Because why?” he hisses as he glares at me.
Swallowing hard, I force out the words, “Because I want out.”
His jaw locks and he begins a rhythmic clenching and unclenching of his hands, fisting them at his sides. He takes a moment before he breaks the silence, seething, “What do you mean you want out?”
“Pike, please don’t flip out on me,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm.
“What do you mean you want out?”
“I can’t . . . I can’t do this anymore.” My face grows hot with the tears that threaten.
“It’s Declan, isn’t it?”
“I’m so sorry, Pike. I never thought—”
“You’re nothing to him but an illusion, Elizabeth,” he says, cutting me off.
“I love him.”
My confession sparks a fury in his eyes, and when he takes another step towards me, I take another back, pissing him off.
“So, what now? You think he loves you back?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
“You’re full of shit. You have no idea what you’re saying. You’re so wrapped up in this lie that you’re buying into this false reality. But it’s false, Elizabeth. It’s not real.”
“It is.”
“It isn’t. You are not Nina. Can’t you see that?”
“And what’s Elizabeth? Huh? I mean . . . who is she really? Is she me?” I question as the levies break and the tears fall down my cheeks. “Because she doesn’t feel like me. Because she was never supposed to be me!” My words now cries, pleading cries. “She only existed because of Bennett!”
“That’s right, Elizabeth!!” he barks furiously. “Bennett! Feel that fucking hate! He’s the reason for all of this! Don’t lose sight of what he did to your life! To your father’s life!”
And my fury parallels his, except that fury is robed in a mass of sadness and desperation when I shriek, “I know! God, I know, but I can’t do it. I can’t destroy Declan like that.”
“Fuck Declan! He’s the pawn. He’s always been the pawn, and you, the queen.”
“But sometimes the queen falls.”
“Not you,” he says sternly as his hands grip my shoulders that tremor under my emotions. “I’m not gonna let you fall.”
“I already fell, Pike. I want out. I’ll finish this; I’ll divorce Bennett, and no one will ever have to know about this.”
His fingers tighten around my shoulders, painfully. “You don’t love him,” he whispers, and I hear every morsel of pain he’s trying to hide, but I can’t lie.
“I do love him,” I say under my breath, and as soon as he drops his head, he lifts it right back up. The look in his eyes turns to cold stone, and he takes a couple steps back, releasing his hands from me.
His sudden shift in demeanor rattles me as I watch him start to subtly shake his head before questioning, “Are you not telling me something?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the fact that your hand hasn’t left your stomach for the past few minutes,” he says, and when I look down, I see that I’ve got my hand right where he said it was—an unconscious act of protecting what’s inside—and suddenly, all the blood drains out of me, leaving me utterly terrified as I watch the viperous hate surface in his eyes.
You’ve heard of Newton’s first law of motion, right? The one that states that an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force? It’s a science that can’t be negated, and with the game in full speed, I’m about to learn the catastrophic consequences of that law.
“Pike,” I soothe, needing him to calm down.
“Tell me that I’m losing my mind right now. That I’m not thinking clearly. That I’m not—”
Holding my hand up in front of me, I try coaxing my words as I speak slowly, “Please, Pike. I need you to just—”
And then he loses it, exploding like a grenade, screaming in sulfur, “Tell me you are not fucking pregnant!!”
“Pike!” I yell as he grabs my arms violently.
His face—raging red, spitting his words, “What the fuck have you done?”
“Nothing! Let go of me,” I yell, panicked, jerking to break free of his hold on me.
“Tell me!”
“Yes!” I immediately shout back, and he releases his grip.
He turns away from me, raking his hands angrily through his hair, as I stand here, nervously awaiting his next move. He keeps his back to me when he continues to talk, “You’re fucking pregnant. Jesus Christ. And it can’t be mine because you haven’t been fucking me.”
I don’t correct him because he assumes that I’m not as far along as I actually am. This baby could very well be his.
He turns back, and the look in his eyes scares the living shit out of me. I don’t see Pike behind them, only a monstrous version of what could be my brother. And when he starts moving towards me—body tense—the shrill of horror stabs me.
“This is over right now. I’ve spent too many years for you to fuck this up.”
“What do you mean?” I ask as I start backing away from him.
And then my world goes into a paradox of raging fast slow motion.
His arm rises with a tight fist.
My arms wrap around my stomach.
Fist barreling down.
My eyes squeezing shut and coiling away.
A collision of knuckles against jaw.
Blow after blow, he’s relentless as I fall lifelessly to the ground. The light begins to fade as my screams lull me into the blackness. My lungs cave with every fatal kick to my stomach, and there’s nothing I can do as I lie here defenseless to this monster above me. A beating fire of pain ruptures inside, paralyzing me to a corpse as I feel everything breaking inside of me. My screams turn breathless and everything vanishes as Pike grunts like a wild beast, hammering his booted foot over and over and over into the womb that carries the purest part of me.
Black ink bleeds over me as I drift into nothingness. I’m a hollow tomb. Looking up, I see a dark sky, flickering with diamonds. Thousands of them. There’s no more pain—there’s nothing in this solitude of pure, deathly silence as I lie here and stare into the endless black hole.
Wishes.
I could make an infinite amount of them with all the stars that shine down upon me. But I’m not lying on the ground. I don’t feel anything as I float in negative space.
Where am I?
How did I get here?
And then I see him. My old friend. He never changes and that constant nurtures the despair that has always followed me. His green and yellow accordion body slinks over to me, and it’s then that I realize how small I am because he appears to be the same size as me.
“I’ve missed you,” he says in his eloquent English accent.
“I’ve missed you too, Carnegie.”
“Where have you been?”
“In hell.”
“Is that why you came back?” he asks.
“I don’t even know how I got here,” I tell him, and he smiles, saying, “Maybe someone knew you needed a little break from hell,” as he gives a nod up to the heavens.
“Maybe,” I whisper and roll over onto my belly. It’s then I see where I am. Large, green blades of grass standing high above the mass of earth beneath. Gigantic trees that border a sea of dark water. Brilliantly massive blooms are illuminated by the full moon above, casting its glow on the array of colorful, exotic flowers; pink, orange, yellow—but no purple in sight. And when my eyes shift down, I take in a breath of awe when I realize why Carnegie doesn’t look so tiny. My body, a tube, roped in pink and black, and when I look back at Carnegie, he laughs, “It’s spectacular, isn’t it?”
“I’m a caterpillar!” I say in wonderment. “Carnegie, do you see this?!”