The left side of your face is gone . Your eye hangs loose from its empty socket , and you can see your teeth through your cheek , which looks like a stitch coming undone , like it has been pulled apart by frantic hands . Looking over , you see that your skin has congealed into the bars of the radiator , which have turned black ; the room smells like chemicals , like charcoal and sulphur . Your hair lies in clumps across the carpet , parts of your scalp still holding them together . ‘ I ’ m sorry .’ You push down the dread of a long , painful healing journey . You ’ ll have to take time off work again , send a photo in a few weeks in lieu of a doctor ’ s note when it ’ s not looking quite so severe , when your eye ’ s reattached itself and the slit in your cheek looks like something a decent plastic surgeon could fix up . You feel suddenly , violently sick , can ’ t say for sure if it ’ s the drugs or the gore or Elodie ’ s face above you , staring aimlessly , staring through you .
I love you , you want to tell her , I really do love you . It doesn ’ t come , though . You fall asleep to her hushed sobs . The horror of being in your life , being your partner in death , being your whole world , is leaking out of her with a vigour of feeling that you have only ever felt once before . The day when you might have been claimed by the violent , crystal sea , when all of this might have been avoided . When the deal had been struck at the right time , out of your clumsy hands .
*** The night you burned yourself alive , Elodie started to look at you differently .
As you screamed and squirmed , as you rolled on the ground and took on the charred form of an amorphous shadow , the hint of the shape of a person , something changed . You think , maybe , it was her realising that you had been serious all this time . That she had been right , that day in college – it wasn ’ t about dying , and maybe it wasn ’ t really about depression , the emptiness you ’ ve felt since you were ten . It was a curse all along . An addiction to dying , and then an addiction to her care , her patience , her permanence .
She nursed you for months , and you never tried fire again . You always preferred the cold moving forward , the mess was less and the recovery more manageable . In the summer , you ’ d cleared out the freezer and shut yourself inside , and promised that it ’ d be the last one , the last experiment , because you felt whole – fire and ice , you know , balancing the elements . But it wasn ’ t enough . Nothing ever is .
Still , Elodie stayed , Elodie watched , Elodie helped , Elodie complained but never left . Not until now , that is . Not until she cracked under your broken smile , your fractured teeth , the ligaments of your jaw contracting beneath her practiced , sterile fingers .
Loïs Bolton 25