The Darkness I Carry

Chapter 22: No One Leaves Clean

By morning, the rain had stopped. But the silence it left behind was louder than the storm.

Leah sat cross legged on the motel bed, still in the same clothes from the night before, her hands resting in her lap. The knife lay beside her on the sheets like a sleeping pet, its polished blade gleaming faintly in the dim light. Caleb had gone out said something about coffee, about needing air, but she hadn't listened. She knew where he really was.

He was deciding.

Whether to stay.

Whether to run.

Whether to tell someone.

She wouldn't stop him. Not yet.

But if he made the wrong choice No, when.

The thought didn't bring her anger or sadness. Just inevitability. As if it had always been leading to this moment, to this slow unraveling. He didn't understand the weight of the decision he was carrying, but Leah did. She could feel the way it pressed against him, the way he was suffocating under it. His every breath was a countdown, and there was no escaping the inevitable.

The motel TV buzzed with static. She hadn't turned it on. The static had turned itself on, sometime around dawn. Just started buzzing all by itself, like some broken ghost trying to speak. It didn't make sense. It didn't need to.

The universe had a way of mocking her. Of taking something simple, something small, and twisting it into something absurd. And so the TV buzzed, because there was nothing else to do. She could almost hear it laughing at her, at the absurdity of it all. How far she had fallen. How far they all had.

Her eyes drifted to the window. The neon sign outside was finally dead, a blank red void where the glowing letters had once read "VACANCY." The vacancy light ironically still flickered, as if stubbornly trying to convince itself that there was still room for someone. Someone like her. Always a space for the monsters.

She reached over and touched the knife. Not to pick it up. Just to feel its cold edge, to remind herself that she was real. That this was all still happening. The slick metal beneath her fingers was a truth she could touch, something constant, something solid. She needed that. Because nothing else about her life had ever been solid. Nothing else had ever stayed in place long enough for her to hold it.

The door opened.

Caleb stepped inside, hair wet, shirt clinging to him. He held two coffees, one in each hand. He hesitated. Then offered one.

Leah didn't take it.

"Someone saw you last night," he said quietly, his voice tight, as though the words weighed more than they should.

Leah blinked, the words slow to register. "Who?"

"A woman across the street. Walked her dog past the alley right after you left. Saw the body." He let the sentence hang in the air, thick with unspoken things.

Leah's mouth didn't move. But her fingers curled tighter around the knife, her grip almost protective. "Did she see you?"

"She didn't see you," he added quickly. "But she saw something. Cops are already canvassing the area."

Leah tilted her head, the motion slow and deliberate. "And you talked to them?"

He didn't flinch. His gaze held steady, unwavering. "No. I walked past. Heard enough. Came back."

"Why?" she asked, her voice cold as the room around them.

"Because I'm not ready to give up on you," he said. His words were heavy, unspoken emotions trapped behind them. "Not yet."

That made her laugh sharp, humorless, a sound that didn't reach her eyes. "You keep talking like I'm a project," she said. "Like I'm broken but fixable. Like I just need the right glue."

"I don't think you're broken," he said, his voice firm, but there was a quiet sadness in it. "I think you're choosing this. That's what terrifies me."

Leah stood now, her frame still and deliberate, like a predator sizing up its prey. She stepped toward him slowly, her movements measured, each step like a question that she already knew the answer to.

"You're right," she said, her voice low, cutting through the air like the edge of a blade. "It is a choice."

She moved past him, brushing his shoulder with the ghost of a touch, and opened the nightstand drawer. She pulled out a folded newspaper and tossed it onto the bed between them. It landed with a soft thud, the front page crinkling slightly as it settled.

The grainy photo of a girl no older than Leah caught Caleb's attention. Her eyes were wide with that fake innocence, her smile frozen and stiff, like it had been stapled to her face. Beneath it, the headline:

"Fourth Disappearance in Two Months: Is a Serial Killer Targeting Teenage Girls?"

Caleb stared at it for a long moment, then back at Leah. His expression was unreadable, but his voice shook with a quiet disbelief. "Why are you showing me this?"

"Because she's not the last," Leah said. Her voice was flat, without a trace of sympathy. "They'll keep looking for a man. A predator. Something they can name and hunt."

Her gaze drifted back to him, and in it, he saw something that he hadn't seen before: a deep, cold well of darkness. The emptiness that lived inside her was staring back at him, and it was endless.

"But I'm not that easy," she said, her words biting. "I don't leave patterns. I don't leave traces. I choose who matters. Who vanishes. Who screams."

Caleb looked like he might vomit. Or cry. Or both. His stomach churned with something he couldn't name, something worse than fear. Something that tasted like defeat.

"You want to leave?" she asked, her voice suddenly cold. "You should. You really should."

But he didn't move. He stayed rooted to the spot, the weight of the situation pushing down on him, suffocating him.

Instead, he sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, holding the coffee in both hands like it was the only warmth left in the world. Like it was all he had to hold onto anymore.

"You said something yesterday," he began, his voice hesitant, as if the words were climbing up his throat, unwilling to leave. "About the part of you that might still feel something. That it's hiding."

Leah turned her face away from him, her jaw tightening. She wasn't sure she could hear this. Not now. Not from him.

"I was tired," she said flatly, her tone dismissive. "Don't read into it."

But Caleb didn't let it go. He pressed on, like a man trying to break through a wall, his words cracking with the effort. "But I do. I think that part of you is scared. Scared of being seen. Of being real again."

Leah was at the window now, watching the world wake up through the haze of fog outside. A dog barked, a car sputtered to life, and everything felt too normal. Too clean. She wanted to scream at it. She wanted to burn it all away.

"No one's clean," she said quietly, her voice low and almost mournful. "Not even you."

He said nothing, but the silence between them felt like the heaviest thing in the world.

She turned back to him, finally meeting his gaze with a cold look that could have frozen the air around them. "You want to help me?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "Then stop looking for the girl in the mirror. She's gone."

She moved toward him again, leaned down, and whispered in his ear, her words like a death sentence. "If you want to survive this," she said, "you need to love the monster."

Then she was gone out the door, into the morning fog, leaving the motel room colder than it had ever been. Caleb sat there, still holding the coffee, still unsure of how much longer he could keep following her. Still wondering if this was the day he'd finally stop.

But deep down, he already knew the answer. Not today.