5 A.M.

Content warning: self-harm, suicide

You told me theirs was one of the messiest rooms you’ve ever seen.

We paused, for a few precious seconds, watching the blinking red light on the dashboard, the only thing illuminating your face.

How are they? I asked, fearful of the answer. Slit wrists flashed in my mind, cold fingertips or a quiet, small, oozing bullet hole. They had told me they wanted to go quickly, when they went. It was never “if.”

I was always fearful of the answer.

They’re good, you had told me. Well, not good. Stable. Dull and lifeless and stable, for once.

Stable is a start, I guess. I’m glad they’re not so…volatile anymore. Like a lion crumpled in the corner of a ten-foot cage, the image of it crushed me. But at least I was on the other side of the bars now.

We sat for a moment once more, flashes of red illuminating years-old bruises long faded, the beatings, the hurt, the confusion. We both knew how the lion used to roar. Maybe you miss it. I know I do.

You told me you were sorry; that visiting them felt something like betrayal. And I told you I’m sorry you have to be the thing keeping them going. I know the weight of being the anchor. I don’t blame you for a moment.

They used to worship you. You were a god. Now you’re just a friend, and maybe that’s better. I was never either. I was prey. I was sustenance. I don’t know which position I’d rather be in: all-powerful or utterly helpless.

And without the engine purring, the cold crept up my limbs and towards my heart and the hazard light blinked in waiting and I told you there had been so many people like them and I had never asked to be a lion tamer. And it was cold. So incredibly, breathtakingly cold.

But the sky brightened, and we moved on, to lighter things, normal things, teenage things. But in the absence of the engine’s hum, the lion still purred in my mind.

In fact, the lion still roars.