Blind Fate

The next few days flew by for Lycoris as a haze of guilt, unanswered phone calls to Hayden, half-hearted work and horror at her own betrayal. She was so caught up in her own misery that she hardly noticed it was New Year’s Eve until about 11:30 that night when she heard already-drunken revelers parading down the street below her window. She hadn’t spoken to Jake since Hayden had appeared and caught them... Caught us doing what? Ly still wasn’t sure. She did, however, know in the depths of her heart that it had been wrong. She had betrayed her best friend.

She also hadn’t spoken to Hayden since she had packed herself onto that train and gone away with that terrible look on her face. Not that Ly hadn’t tried, of course. She had lost count of how many apologies and explanations she’d left on Den’s answering machine—both on her phone and at home. With a sigh and a frown, Ly picked up the phone again, ignoring the cacophonous crowd outside as she dialed the familiar number. This time, instead of Hayden’s light voice telling her to leave a message, a robotic tone came crackling through the earpiece, informing Ly that the user’s mailbox was full.

Hayden wasn’t even listening to the messages anymore.

Ly felt sick to her stomach. She’d been a fairly lonely child, without close friends to help her through what were the toughest years of her life, but in college she’d found Hayden. Hayden was sweet and happy and cheery where Lycoris was more reserved and polite—saving her quirky humor for a select few people. Hayden had always been there. Hayden loved her, and she loved Hayden. They were best friends. Until now, Ly would never have done anything that would hurt Hayden. She would do anything to take it back.

But she couldn’t. She could never take it back. There was no way to erase the look on Hayden’s face—the one that screamed ‘betrayal’. The look that would stick your nose in every wrong thing you’d ever done and make you feel how much you had ever hurt another human being. The guilt was overwhelming. Ly could think of nothing else. She had barely been able to talk to anyone, much less work or be social—the last was simply laughable. At the best of times she fell far short of the term ‘social butterfly’, but now? Lycoris could hardly bring herself to leave the house, instead sitting huddled on the couch, guilt slowly devouring her soul until she felt like a shell of herself. She felt hollow, as though if she spoke too loudly (or at all) that a listener would be able to hear a sound like a stone dropped down a well.

Lycoris lay down on her carpeted floor, arms and legs straight out, both feeling and acting a corpse. She lay there and hated herself. She lay there and wondered what she could have done differently. She lay there and told herself all the ways she should have acted, all the ways she could have fixed everything—but didn’t. Everything was wrong because there was something wrong in her that would hurt everyone she loved. There was something inside her that was selfish and impure. She had wanted Jake and refused to see how much she would hurt the people around her. She had a crush and would bulldoze everything in her path. Ly had lied to her best friend and aunt and even Jake, who was really an innocent bystander in her cruel games. Nothing would stand in her way, not even an eight year friendship. Ly decided, there and then, that she must not have a soul at all, to do what she had done. To choose to go after a man that she was fully aware Hayden was still entirely in love with, and to do so completely behind her back—she simply had to be soulless.

It was while Lycoris was lying there, half-heartedly musing about throwing herself off the Empire State Building, that there was a knock at the door. Her heart stopped and fell into her stomach, so much like a stone down a well. Her stomach even felt cold—filled with well-water.

Hayden? Ly hoped for a moment before knowing that it could only be some drunk neighbor that had gotten the wrong apartment. Den would never forgive her. She thought about getting up and answering the door—sending the intoxicated party on their way—before deciding that trying to sink into the floor was a more worthy cause. Lycoris was almost certain that her skin had begun to merge with the carpet when a second knock came. It was quieter, and somehow furtive. It sounded like someone who both desperately hoped she would come to the door, and was wishing they’d never knocked at all.

The sheer force of curiosity lifted Ly off of the beige carpet. She walked to the door and opened it, leaving the chain in place. She peeked out and snuck a glance at the person standing there before slamming the door shut.

She tried for a few seconds to calm her breathing before shakily taking the chain lock off the door and slowly creaking it open. Brown eyes met bleary blue. Neither said a word. Ly shuffled to the side and let Jake stagger into her apartment. He was clearly drunk—very drunk. She wasn’t sure how he’d even managed to get to her place in the state he was in. In fact, she didn’t remember even giving him her address. She pushed all of that out of her mind as she closed the door behind them and turned to face him. His eyes were unfocused, but beneath that was a look she was familiar with—she had seen it in the mirror the past two days. It was a Judas look.

Ly scurried to the kitchen and to get him a glass of water. Really, she just needed a minute to breathe. The look on his face was going to be the end of her. Seeing that he was as miserable as she was made her think that she was wrong before—she had a soul. It wouldn’t hurt if she didn’t. She was just gently murdering it, day by day. When she walked back into her living room, there was something else mixed with the look of a betrayer, beneath the intoxication. Ly handed him the glass of water, which he did not drink. He only met her gaze.

It was determination.