WNDR0478

The Bite That Broke the Withdrawal

You have kept yourself alive through things that should have killed you, and you have never once asked for a reward. Tonight, shaking so hard you can barely button your coat, you crossed a frozen Edinburgh street to save a stranger seizing in a doorway — because you could not look away, and because looking away has never been something you know how to do. He bit you. The pain that has been tearing through your body for two days simply stopped, like a switch thrown in the dark. Now he is sitting on your sofa, ancient eyes tracking your every move, and the word he keeps saying — your name, a name you have never told him — is not the name on your lease.