Dahi

“She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“My arms broke free from my control. My left hand reached for his face, his hair, to wind my fingers in it.
My right hand was faster, was not mine.
Melanie's fist punched his jaw, knocked his face away from mine with a blunt, low sound. Flesh against flesh, hard and angry.
The force of it was not enough to move him far, but he scrambled away from me the instant our lips were no longer connected, gaping with horrorstruck eyes at my horrorstruck expression.
I stared down at the still-clenched fist, as repulsed as if I'd found a scorpion growing on the end of my arm. A gasp of revulsion choked its way out of my throat. I grabbed the right wrist with my left hand, desperate to keep Melanie from using my body for violence again.
I glanced up at Jared. He was staring at the fist I restrained, too, the horror fading, surprise taking its place. In that second, his expression was entirely defenseless. I could easily read his thoughts as they moved across his unlocked face.
This was not what he had expected. And he's had expectations; that was plain to see. This had been a test. A test he'd thought he was prepared to evaluate. But he'd been surprised.
Did that mean pass or fail?
The pain in my chest was not a surprise. I already knew that a breaking heart was more than an exaggeration.
In a flight-or-fight situation, I never had a choice; it would always be flight for me. Because Jared was between me and the darkness of the tunnel exit, I wheeled and threw myself into the box-packed hole.
I was sobbing because it had been a test, and, stupid, stupid, stupid, emotional creature that I was, I wanted it to be real.
Melanie was writhing in agony inside me, and it was hard to make sense of the double pain. I felt as thought I was dying because it wasn't real; she felt as though she was dying because, to her, it had felt real enough. In all that she'd lost since the end of the world, so long ago, she'd never before felt betrayed.
'No one's betrayed you, stupid,' I railed at her.
'How could he? How?' she ranted, ignoring me.
We sobbed beyond control.
One word snapped us back from the edge of hysteria.
From the mouth of the hole, Jared's low, rough voice - broken and strangely childlike - asked, "Mel?"

"Mel?" he asked again, the hope he didn't want to feel colouring his tone.
My breath caught in another sob, an aftershock.
"You know that was for you, Mel. You know that. Not for h- it. You know I wasn't kissing it."
"If you're in there, Mel..." He paused.
Melanie hated the "if". A sob burst up through my lungs and I gasped for air.
"I love you," Jared said. "Even if you're not there, if you can't hear me, I love you.”
― Stephenie Meyer, The Host

“But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.”
― Edgar Alan Poe, Berenice

“The difference between my darkness and your darkness is that I can look at my own badness in the face and accept its existence while you are busy covering your mirror with a white linen sheet. The difference between my sins and your sins is that when I sin I know I'm sinning while you have actually fallen prey to your own fabricated illusions. I am a siren, a mermaid; I know that I am beautiful while basking on the ocean's waves and I know that I can eat flesh and bones at the bottom of the sea. You are a white witch, a wizard; your spells are manipulations and your cauldron from hell yet you wrap yourself in white and wear a silver wig.”
― C. JoyBell C.