I'm Broken

“That’s my ride,” he said. And then he just left her. Left her waiting in front of the Primatech Paper van. In the middle of an argument. While in the apartment across the street, a killer was being born. He hopped into a taxi and just rode off into the sunset. He wasn’t a hero, though.

She marched across the street and found herself standing at his door for the third time this week. Knowing he wouldn’t answer, she fried the lock and entered. The apartment reeked of blood. He had closed the windows, making everything darker and grayer.

She saw the cold ziti sitting on the table, uneaten. She walked into the living room, keeping her eyes ahead as not to see Trevor’s corpse, but she caught it out of the corner of her eye. She squinted, trying to purge the image from her mind but only managed to burn it into her brain. She didn’t actually get a very good look, but her brain was more than willing to supply the gruesome details.

“Gabriel,” she called, her voice weaker than she thought.

The voice that answered barely sounded like his. It was hoarse and deep, “I told you to go away.”

She was busy searching for the origin of the voice when, suddenly, he was there. Elle found herself flung against the far wall by invisible hands. There was her Gabriel, his glasses gone and his hair slicked back with sweat.

“I came back to apologize,” she said, very calmly for someone being held against a wall by a murderer.

“You’re too late. The hunger, it’s too strong.”

From this vantage point, Elle couldn’t help but see Trevor’s body. His eyes were cold and glazed over. His head just stopped a few inches above his eyes. His brain was gone, and so was the top of his head. She saw Gabriel lift his hand and felt a sharp pain on her forehead. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered, staring into his eyes, a mountain of sadness in her face.

And then she fell to the floor. He scrambled backwards until he collided with the far wall and cowered down. Elle knew she should race out of the apartment. Any sane person would. Instead, she approached him, knelt beside him, touched his shoulder, as if he hadn’t killed two people, hadn’t just tried to kill her.

“I’m broken,” he spoke, “Then you came and I was fixed. And then you broke me again.”

“I know,” she said softly, her voice cracking. “But I’m broken, too. I-I pretended to be normal, and… and I was normal. With you, I was normal.” She took hold of his hand.

His words were detached. “It’s too strong. I can’t stop myself.” His hand remained limp in hers.

She squeezed his hand. “Yes, you can. You did stop. You stopped for me.”

“It wasn’t real. It was an illusion.” He let his hand slide out of hers.

“I know. I know it was an illusion, but I liked the illusion. I liked it, too. I pretended to be like the ladies on TV and I wore pretty dresses and I said the flirty things and I smiled like a real girl and I brought you pie and I made ziti and it was all so normal.”

“I’m not normal. I’m special. You wanted me to be special.”

“You were special.”

“I’m not special. There’re a lot of people like me. They’re special, too. And I want to take their specialness.”

“Not special because of the powers,” she replied, “I see people with powers everyday. Dozens of them. You are special because you stopped being broken. I wanted to believe that you could just stop being broken, and then it would mean that I could stop being broken. That I wouldn’t hurt people and giggle about it. That I wouldn’t call people locked in cells ‘my toys.’ The only thing in the world that was important to me wouldn’t be pleasing my Daddy. I wouldn’t spend fifteen years in the same building. I could just be Elle and we could go to street theater. I don’t even know what street theater is. We could have gone and I could see what street theater is.”

“You have to leave now.”

“I don’t want to leave. I want to be unbroken.”

In his scary voice again, he told her, “Leave or I will break you. I will rip off your head and I will take your brain and I will steal your sparks. And I will cry because I got blood all over your pretty hair and your pretty face. And then there won’t be any more Gabriel. Not ever. There’s no Gabriel without his angel with the broken watch.”

Elle got up and began to walk towards the door. “Gabriel, if you ever see me again, tell me about us. I’m going back to my Daddy and he’s probably going to make me forget. He’s going to break my brain and put it back together with scotch tape.”

His head was resting on his blood-covered hands, but he lifted his head to look at her. It left a line of blood across his forehead.

She finished, “Come back to me and I’ll bring back Gabriel. I promise.”