Page 2 of Insidious

I still dream about you.

Something inside me folds into itself and dies. But there is this buffer between what should be pain and myself—a thick wall of ice, numbing everything.

Amelie screams again—a wet, exhausted cry—and I jolt because I have been holding her too tightly. My hands shake as I look down. It feels like holding an alien being.

I close the laptop, but it’s too late. The words are carved somewhere behind my ribs. At some point, I will take them out and allow myself to bleed.

Isaac wasn’t supposed to be talking to her after we had that talk about boundaries. He isn’t supposed to be missing her. And he definitely isn’t supposed to be telling her she is right, that he does miss his old life. That he still dreams about her. How can my husband dream about her when he said everything about their brief marriage was a mistake?

The numbness creeps over my skin like a cold, settling mist.

I scoop Amelie up, tuck her against me, and sway. She quietens, but sniffles escape, soft hiccups into my shoulder. She likes it when I dance.

“It’s okay,” I whisper, though my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. “It’s okay, my little robin.”

But I don’t feel okay. I am crying, but it feels like I am outside, looking in.I feel … drained. Flat. Someone has pressed a hand to my chest and scooped out everything inside. Empty. A husk of nothingness.

He should be here.

He should see me drowning.

He should care.

Instead, he’s telling another woman his life would be better without all this. Without us.

Maybe his life can be better without me.

I settle Amelie back down into her baby carrier, still rocking her gently with one hand. She is dozing, and I walk towards the bathroom.

The tiles are cold under my feet.

The mirror catches my reflection—pale skin, unbrushed hair, shadows under my eyes like bruises.

Haggard. That’s how I look.

I open the cabinet.

The old sleeping pills sit at the back, the bottle a little sticky where the label has come off. The doctor prescribed them two years ago when I couldn’t sleep. I never took them then—told Isaac sleeping pills are for pussies. I should have thrown them away when they expired … but I didn’t.

My fingers close around the bottle without a plan. I feel like I am outside, watching this woman as she tips them onto the counter and watches the reflection in the mirror. They scatter, white and small, like tiny flower petals. Daisy petals. I arrange them, without thinking, into a circle; petals around an invisible centre. It looks stupidly pretty.

Unlike me.

I don’t realize I am crying until tears splatter on the counter.

Amelie sniffles again from the next room.

I close my eyes.

It feels like a part of me detaches from the rest of my body as the walls seem to wobble before they steady. Just … distance. Like watching myself through frosted glass.

I take one pill and put it on my tongue with shaking fingers. It doesn’t dissolve. I hold it there and look at myself in the mirror, my tongue out, then swallow it dry. It goes down easily.

Then another follows it.

And another.

A slow, heavy warmth unfurls in my throat. My hands are light but clumsy. Panic cuts through the fog.