Devil | A Solomons

THIRTY TWO - NIGHTMARES

Over a  month and a half had passed since the night at The Eden Club. Irina had felt her life slowly slipping back into a darkness so blinding it was hard to see the light, even with the warm summer sun burning on her skin on her way to work every morning.

It happened gradually, but each day felt longer and darker, more painfully dull than the last. Though for Irina, it wasn't an alien feeling, it was a deceivingly familiar one that she was unfortunately used to. Her life seemed empty again, her business filling a void until the end of the day came and she would walk home alone, sit and eat dinner alone, and sleep alone.

Though her life had seemingly returned to the way it was before, Irina felt an aching pain inside her chest in her every waking moment, a throbbing, twisting pain that yanked and pulled on her heart with chains wrapped in thorns, cutting her over and over again every time she took a breath.

Her life had been dark before, but knowing now how bright her world could be with someone injecting colour through love, the atmosphere seemed soul-crushingly heavy. Everywhere she looked there were happy couples, women smiling holding their man's arm, sharing kisses by the canal at sunset, clinking champagne glasses together over a dinner table. It had been given to her and ripped away in the blink of an eye, leaving her broken and bruised in the cruelest way.

Every time Irina caught sight of her reflection in the mirror, she became more disassociated with the woman she saw staring back at her. Unable to recognise the person behind the frown and the tired eyes, it was hard for her to come to terms with the loss of personality and spirit that she knew she once held, only now, she struggled to remember what happiness felt like, let alone how it looked.

She kept the letter from Luca on her bedside table, reading it every night before she fell asleep and every morning when she awoke, his words being the only thing that gave her the strength to get out of bed.

The lies about Luca had hurt her, but the truth had hurt her even more. The thought of looking into his deep brown eyes and having his hand resting on her cheek as he whispered to her 'I love you', was incessantly inescapable for Irina, all of the fantasies and what ifs toying with her mind all day, every day.

It had broken her heart in a way that Irina thought she'd never feel. Knowing that there was a man once walking the earth that would've given her his everything, that would've loved her until he had nothing left, was torture. It seemed like the world had a twisted way of dangling everything Irina wanted on a string in front of her face, yanking it away just before she reached out to grab it.

She had lived her life thinking she was always one step ahead of everyone else, but it seemed as though she was really one step behind the universe.

Thomas had tried for the first week to get in touch with Irina, but as soon as it reached the eighth day and she still showed no signs of interest, he gave up. Irina didn't care, she never wanted to see his face again. She understood his reasoning for keeping the letter from her, but it still wasn't fair, and the way she had negatively judged herself every day since Luca's death warranted no excuse that he could ever give her. She had lost herself, and a huge part of it was his fault.

Irina had heard nothing from Alfie Solomons since she saw him at The Eden Club. She remembered his speech word for word, the way Thomas was wrapped in a stunned silence as he listened to another man proclaim his love for the woman he thought he had securely in his grasp. She noticed the flicker of jealousy in his eyes, as well as the flash of deep-rooted, ungodly pain and regret that drowned in Alfie's gaze.

Alfie was in love with with her, but he had told her when it was too late. There was a time when Irina would've been reduced down to a mess of tears at a confession of love from Alfie, though as time had unfortunately progressed, the tears that Irina shed were not those of happiness, but of sorrow.