Although she has battled them for months, waited for them to sink back into the buried places from which they crawled, she can’t deny their dark logic any longer. She has heard them for too long. She has seen too much of her life through their charcoal veil.

I know, she tells them. I hate myself for it.

Blaze slips through her veins like hot oil, lit by a spark of deep self-loathing, and spreads its wicked heat, a consumptive force she both fears and desires. Her body doesn’t feel built for this force either, as if her skin is too thin to hold the molten energy searing against it.

She sits up in the bath. Pulls away the Band-Aid from her palm. Scrapes at the scab with her nails, digging them deeper into the wound. She focuses on the pain—torn, itchy, inflamed. This pain she can handle. This pain she knows she deserves.

But it isn’t enough. Blaze burns, burns, burns. A few seconds and it will burn her alive.

This fire can only be met with fire. She reaches for the candle. Holds her breath and hovers her palm over the flame. Squeezes her eyes tightly as it bites into her lifeline. She doesn’t wince.

She knows she doesn’t deserve to wince.

She doesn’t scream.

She knows she doesn’t deserve to scream.

All she deserves is pain.

Blaze retreats somewhat, fire waiting within coals. She stares into her blistered palm. Her head is dizzy from the pain. Her sluggish thoughts reach for Sunil.

I know I failed you, Bear. And I’m sorry. I should have been a better sister to you. I should have watched over you more closely.

She cries.

I tried to keep things together here, look after everyone, but I failed at that too. Now nothing’s the same. You wouldn’t recognize us. Everything we were left with you. But I promise you I tried.

She weeps.

Losing you is the wound that never heals. It’s bigger than me, Sunil. It’s everywhere. It’s everything. And this thing that’s happening to me, whatever it is, it’s bigger than me too. I’m sinking. I can feel it. But I don’t know how to stop it.

She sobs.

I would have traded places with you.

…The wrong one got sick.

The wrong one died.…

Violently, she sobs.

Enough.

I know I’m not enough.

But enough.

Please, dear God, enough.

After a little while, her sobbing peters to weeping, her weeping to crying, and her crying to staring at the tepid bathwater.

We will always be here to remind you, Gloom tells her. You will always feel this way.