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To everyone who never believed in fairy tales because they understood the villain. And to me, for finishing the series of a lifetime.
“You’re not schizophrenic.” Ten years.
A lot of my life had been spent living a lie crafted to protect others. Some who didn’t deserve my silence and others who would always be given it freely. And now, I have to sit here with this truth—my truth—and try to make sense of that means for my future. Would I know how to live a life that wasn’t a lie?
No one would ever know why Ronald Brewer made loving parents and a vicious town believe a twelve-year-old boy had schizophrenia. A secret. An oath I’d vowed to take to my grave. To this day, I’ve kept my word to her. This was the only way I could still protect her.
“How long have you known you weren’t schizophrenic?”
“Since I was fifteen.”
So, I gave in and got quiet. Why speak if no one put weight to the words you said? They’d conditioned me so well I’d even believed them for a short time.
“Silas.” Her eyebrows raise to her hairline in surprise. “I can provide extensive medical proof and data I’ve gathered over your stay here. I am your proof of this false diagnosis.”
Fuck hope, because it fucked me a long time ago. “If you never give them the chance, they have no opportunity to surprise you.”
It has always been better to remain quiet than risk speaking words no one believes.
Life is a constant pendulum of pain. Everyone experiences it, and I am not special.
I can’t breathe, ever. Why can’t anyone see that? Can they not see me turning purple? The hands of my mind choking me?
“You told me you knew what it was like to fight demons you can’t see,”
“Did you mean that?”
“I meant every word,”
“I don’t have anyone else—” I swallow the lumpy truth in my throat. “I don’t think anyone understands what’s happening to me.”
“They can’t see the demons, can they?”
“No.”
“I was abducted a year ago today.”
“When I woke up, I was naked and cold. They sprayed me down with a water hose and examined me. I still feel their hands at night, can see the flash of
the camera on my skin as they spoke out loud about my body. How much they could sell me for. I don’t even know if I tried to scream because the drugs, they made everything fuzzy. They kept me so fucking high that by the time Ste—”
“I went through withdrawal the first few weeks I was in that basement. Alone. Covered in vomit, and I had these insane muscle cramps. It was physical and mental agony, and it was only the beginning.
“I wish I died in that basement.”
“I want to go back and die there. It took so much of me—why not just take it all? Why leave me this fucking empty!”
“Life left you empty so that you’d have room to fill it. We are only hollow if we allow ourselves to remain that way.”
“Learn, Coraline. You lived for a reason. Figure out why.”
“I don’t want to die,” I whisper. “Then don’t.”
“I don’t know how to live either.” “No one does.”
“How did you live after losing Rosemary?” I’d always thought it was beautiful, his grief. A living reminder of a love lost too soon.
“I didn’t.” I scoff, “So, you’re dead?”
“They say I’m dead on the inside.” “They call me cursed. I wonder which is worse?”
“Thank you. I owe you for this,”
But it’s nice to be alive
and not okay. To have someone to talk to, to know there is someone out there who knows I’m battling for every breath.
“I had to learn how not to live for the trauma and loss. I’m living in spite of it. Don’t let him win.”
Death still has a way of sweeping the rug out from under you every time.
It’s selfish when you take it at face value, cruel to some, but when aren’t people selfish with the people they love?
Death isn’t the enemy. It’s time.
“You’ve always been good at that.” His toothless smile appears. “Knowing.”
All of Thatcher’s feelings are tied up in Lyra. He doesn’t have any left for the rest of us. Alistair: Shut the fuck up. There he is. Daddy Caldwell to the rescue.
We are who we are. No matter where we go or how we change, there will always be this knotted, twisted string tangling each of us together. What we found in each other as kids is something we refuse to ever let go of.
They are brothers to me. Each of them. Thicker than any blood.
I’ve always believed love is like water, the way it flows between bodies and souls. You can’t stop the flow of it because one pathway is closed off. It just finds another exit.
I’m not finished with you four. Time to come home, boys.
Two years before this fucking town had to come back from the dead? It wasn’t happy with its pound of flesh. It wanted to eat us whole.
That I’m not schizophrenic; I’ve never been. I kept quiet to protect Rosemary. Words wouldn’t form after I was released from the ward because I never wanted him to hate himself for not believing me sooner, for taking me to that doctor.
There isn’t a single person in this world who will look out for you better than yourself.
Unknown: Did you miss me?
What version of her did I see the night she called me? And what makes Coraline Whittaker cursed?
I’m a killer, but I was also raised to respect women’s boundaries.
