Page 81 of Once Upon a Fable

Why now?

Why had my chosen amnesia faltered?

Her.

That’s why.

I didn’t move as the sun cast me in heat, drying my sweat and burning my exposed skin. I wanted to forget the past few days. I wished I could erase any and all moments where a girl had trespassed, offered herself to me, and then successfully ripped open my carefully patched-up wounds.

Damn her.

Screw every person who ever existed.

I didn’t need anyone.

I didn’twantanyone.

And I definitely don’t want her.

Forgetfulness was the only way I could survive. I fucking refused to live in fear of what was inside my head. Not for anyone.

Releasing a tattered breath, I sat up and picked a piece of long grass. Chewing the sweet tartness from the stem, I scowled at the mansion before me. At the ivy dripping from the roof, at the flowers growing in the gutters, at the stonework that had once housed sex and screams and now echoed with its crimes.

She’s still in there.

I dropped my stare to the ground, trying to see through soil and concrete to the prisoner who’d made me touch myself.

I thought I could do this. That I could give in to sex after hiding from it for so long and not stir up the hornet’s nest inside my fragmented mind.

Fucking stupid really.

I should know better.

And you know what you need to do then, right?

I couldn’t keep her.

Sex for me would forever be tainted. It was better for everyone if I abstained for the rest of my life. If I had to choose between pleasure and insanity or celibacy and forgetfulness, then I would choose a blank memory each time.

In a couple of years, all of this nonsense would be forgotten. I wouldn’t remember a girl with strength in her arms and seduction in her eyes. I wouldn’t recall her name or how her tongue felt on my cock.

She would be yet another hollow void inside me, keeping me safe from my past.

Get it over with.

Pushing to my feet, I curled my hands.

No more procrastinating.

Today was her last day. No more favors. No more surviving.

I’m done.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

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WHEN THE DOOR OPENED, I knew something had changed.