Absorbed by Kylie Whitehead

Author:Kylie Whitehead
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: absorbed;kylie whitehead;new ruins
Publisher: Dead Ink
Published: 2021-05-19T10:38:58+00:00

SIXTEEN

I was still thinking about Helena when I woke. I had dreamed about her all night, and although I couldn’t recall anything specific, I woke feeling as if I had been wrapped around her for days. In the first moments between sleep and wakefulness, I was certain of her warmth beside me, which called to a corresponding warmth growing within me. I remembered exchanging messages with her the previous night, and I read them back to solidify the truth of my memory. I thought of all the women I had disregarded for fear that growing closer to them would give Owen the opportunity to do the same; as if by befriending the women I admired, I was opening the door for him to leave me. Perhaps my fear of beautiful, clever, funny and kind women stemmed from a perceived inability to love them as I innately wanted to. I liked boys, I thought, but hadn’t I really only liked one boy?

I was confused. I couldn’t face the prospect of a housemate that morning. Regret washed over me as I recalled the advert. I had been hasty. I stared at the coffee as it percolated. It was bitter; I must have left it to brew for some time.

Things seemed better when I wasn’t in bed, which was odd, because bed had always been a safe space for me. Whenever I felt sad, or anxious, I would curl up beneath the weight of my duvet and drift away. And even if I couldn’t disappear into that soft nothingness of sleep, I would find myself in worlds created by my mind and nothing else. Even when my dreams were bad, as they often were, they were rarely accompanied by anxiety comparable to that which I felt when I was awake. Every morning I woke with a deep feeling of dread which was rinsed away by the first half hour of the day. And so, that day, after I had showered and dressed, my plan for a housemate began to seem, once again, like a good idea. I needed to rebuild my life, if only to prevent the truth from getting out.

I had just sat down to start replying to the emails when I heard a slamming shatter from the kitchen. I had become accustomed to strange happenings in the flat, but this sound was violent, an explosion of shards: an attack, or a warning. A scream like none I had ever heard reverberated through the flat. This is it, I thought, it’s finally happening, although I would have been hard pressed to explain what exactly I thought was going on. I sprung up and followed the sound. The kitchen had a doorway but no door – my landlady’s attempt at open-plan living, I supposed – so that, as I approached, slivers of the room revealed themselves to me. As anyone who’s ever watched a horror film will appreciate, an empty room from which sounds emanate is infinitely more terrifying when it is revealed in fractions.

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