Beneath the Ashes

Do you know the feeling of drowning and burning at the same time?

To be eaten away from within?

Of not being able to wash your blood-drowned hands, no matter how hard you scrub?

Of deceiving?

Of killing?

Of being haunted?

Of suffocating under your own guilt?

Dreaming the same nightmare every night, reliving every pathetic moment of the worst decision of your life over and over again like a punishment from God?

That’s how I feel every night when I wake up in a cold sweat in my silk sheets that feel like soft clouds covering me and keeping me warm, even though I deserve to freeze to death.

Walking along the long halls of my big, lonely house like a ghost. A house I could only afford — or rather, acquired — through the blood money of a stranger who had done nothing to me, someone I didn’t even know.

I didn’t even know his name, his age, or the reason he was supposed to be killed.

If there is even a good reason for killing somebody.

There was only a photo of him and an address on the back. A photo that I still keep to this day.

Every time I catch even a spark of happiness, I look at the image of the stranger whose life I took to punish myself. To remind myself that I don’t deserve anything like joy because I denied him every kind of feeling that comes with being alive.

Sometimes I wonder what would have become of him if I hadn’t let him turn to ashes and dust.

The thought eats me up. I can hardly stand it, but I know that’s the very least I deserve.

The first few months after the fire were the worst. I didn’t get a wink of sleep.

I drowned my thoughts in gin, vodka, sometimes whiskey.

Anything that made me stop thinking about what I had done.

But no matter how much I drank or how many drugs I took, I never got drunk enough to forget. I never got wasted enough to simply let go.

I’ve tried pretty much every intoxicating substance to numb myself, but he’s still inside me. Burned into my soul.

Like a bruise that will never heal properly.

I even tried to kill myself more than once, but I was saved every damn time before I could even feel the miserable end I deserve.

Sometimes it feels like I’m being eaten and skinned from the inside out, and I know that I deserve even worse than what my head is doing to me by playing these tricks on my fragile self. Every single day, it feels like I see him everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

It feels like his spirit is tormenting me.

Mocking me. Punishing me.

Burning me from the inside.

Every night when I close my eyes, I see it all again as if time stood still after that night.

Forcing me to face the mistake I can’t undo, no matter how desperately I wish I could.

Every time I have to watch myself light the match, watching the villa burn down while he slept inside.

I can still feel how desperately I hoped he would wake up and escape the flames, but he didn’t.

I can still hear myself screaming and crying as I watched the flames devour every fragment of it until the estate was left with nothing but ash, smoke, and dust.

Every time I have to watch how I met up with the person who hired me, who manipulated me into this by knowing my greatest weakness and using it against me.

I have to watch myself accept the money while suppressing the urge to vomit that night.

Every time I try so desperately to change the outcome of this memory, but my dream just won’t let me. Not even once.

You don’t know how frustrating it feels every time I try to stop myself from lighting it.

Every time I run into the burning flames to save him — even if it’s only in a dream — I get pulled out, as if I’m forced to watch the flames devour every bit of that giant estate over and over again.

The money I got was only meant for my mother’s medical expenses, which is pathetically sad because it was a useless and wasteful act.

Nothing worth selling my soul for, which I did anyway — and for what?

For my mother to die on the exact same night.

Just a bitter, ironic twist of fate.