Zoya's POV – Chapter One
I wake up, but I don't return.
My eyes open because that's what eyes do. Out of habit. Out of reflex. A cruel biological function that no longer serves me.
The room is cold. The ceiling is the same—white, silent, humming. Watching.
I think it's the only thing that still looks at me.
I don't feel anything. Not even dread. Just… that gnawing ache of existing without wanting to.
This is what limbo feels like. Neither alive, nor dead. Just suspended in a body that forgot how to care.
The nurses come in. They always come. The same way rats return to a carcass.
Their voices are flat, expressions void. Nothing about them resembles kindness. Not even mercy.
They don't greet me. They don't ask me how I am.
They hand me a paper cup—two white pills, one yellow, one pink. I don't ask questions. I never do. I let the chemicals slide down my throat without water, without resistance.
Some of them are for sleep. Others are for silence.
None of them are for healing.
I move to the vanity. I don't know why. There's no one here to see me.
No one that matters.
But still…
Black dress. Red lips. Like clockwork.
The same black dress, the same red lipstick. Every day.
Not fashion. Not routine.
A funeral.
Because the last memory I have that belongs to me is his funeral.
I remember the black veil, the cold wind, the silence that fell like a curse over my body.
I remember how heavy my limbs felt, how light he looked in that casket.
How perfect.
Like he was finally free.
Like he escaped.
He looked more alive dead than I ever did breathing.
And now, every morning, I prepare for his funeral again.
Every morning, I rise like the widow I became and never moved on from.
Black around my eyes. Red on my lips.
Red like the blood I couldn't wash off my hands.
Red like the roses I left on his grave.
They took him.
And they left me.
That's what hurts the most.
No one should have to bury the only person who ever looked at them like they were real.
No one should be left behind with this much silence.
They take me outside next. Fresh air, they say.
Wellness, they say.
Fuck them.
There is no wellness here.
Just bodies on benches and ghosts in gowns.
They walk me like a dog. Like I'm a thing to be managed, observed, sedated.
I don't talk. I barely blink.
But I feel everything, still.
Especially the cold.
I love the cold.
It creeps into my skin and reminds me that I still have one.
That I haven't fully rotted.
Some mornings, it rains. I don't move. I let it soak through my dress, down my spine, into my bones.
I welcome it.
I want it to freeze me still.
I want it to slow my blood until I stop being anything at all.
There's this one bench. Mine. I sit on it like a mourner, like a statue carved in grief.
Sometimes I stare at the dead trees and wonder if they're luckier than me.
They get to rot in peace.
I think a lot, when I'm alone. But nothing good ever comes from it.
Because sometimes, the silence turns.
Sometimes, it howls.
It starts with a whisper.
A flicker of memory.
A smell I can't place.
The shape of his hand in mine.
And then I break.
I scream. Loud. Violent. Unhinged.
I scream like I'm vomiting up every piece of pain I swallowed to survive.
Like maybe if I scream hard enough, death will come back and fix its mistake.
The nurses come running.
They don't flinch. They don't cry.
They hold me down like an animal and inject sleep into my veins.
And sleep…
God, I worship sleep.
It's the only time I'm not here.
The only time my mind unhooks from this ruined body and floats.
In sleep, he's still warm beside me.
In sleep, I don't remember the sound of dirt falling on a coffin.
In sleep, I don't exist.
And that's the closest I've felt to peace in years.
But night always returns.
That's when she comes.
The violent one. The nurse with fists instead of hands.
She hates me. I think she wants me to feel.
But I don't.
She slaps me across the face. I blink.
She yanks my hair. I sigh.
She digs her nails into my arms. I close my eyes.
No reaction.
Nothing for her to feed on.
She wants a show, but I'm a theater of silence.
And when she's tired—when her violence starts to falter—
That's when I give her what she came for.
I start to scream.
And scream.
And scream.
Not out of pain.
Out of spite.
Out of the rage I buried beneath his gravestone.
She leaves. Always.
They can drug my body, but they can't silence the grief that's colonized my soul.
After she's gone, I crawl into bed like I'm slipping into a grave.
The sheets cold. The pillow damp. The air thick.
The dress still clings to me, soaked in rain and sweat and something older than both.
The lipstick's smeared now. I look like a corpse with a memory.
It suits me.
My makeup is not vanity. It's mourning.
It's a scream in red and black.
It's war paint for a battle I lost long ago.
I remember him.
And I remember failing him.
And that's enough to wear this grief forever.
People talk about "getting better."
As if grief is a flu.
As if pain is something that passes.
They don't understand.
Grief doesn't go.
It settles. It seeps.
It eats everything you used to be and then asks why you're so empty.
I don't want to heal.
I don't want to feel joy again.
I don't even want answers.
I just want silence.
Real, permanent silence.
But I'm still here.
Still breathing.
Still waking up.
And that's the cruelest thing of all.