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Monica woke.
…Today.
She sat up in bed, her limbs heavy and her chest light. Distantly, she knew that there was a storm of emotions inside of her, pain and relief and the same wretched despair that had been her constant companion since Huey turned away from her at the theater—but today it all seemed to balance itself out and she didn’t have to feel anything. She was free to simply think of what she had to do and the actions it would take to carry it out. Reaching for the object hidden under her pillow, she took a deep breath—
“Hey, Moni-Moni!”
—and blew it out again as suddenly all of her emotions crashed onto her at once, choking her. She trembled, and she hated it. She looked towards the sound of Elmer’s voice, and she hated him, too.
“Get out of my room,” she demanded, her voice cold. She wasn’t sure what her face was doing.
He was grinning his same accursed grin, leaning against the door as if he belonged there. He must have been in here since before she woke up. “I just wanted to stop by today—”
“Get out,” she said again, louder, hoping to cut him short before he could—
“—to wish you a happy Huey’s Birthday.”
She flew at him, pinning him against the wall with her forearm and pressing the tip of her knife to his throat. It wasn’t her stiletto; it was one of her brother’s steak knives, serrated and clumsy. But it would do the trick.
Elmer’s eyes dipped down to the knife, and his smile went strange, wry instead of cheerful. But it certainly wasn’t alarmed. “So you did get your hands on one of those. Your brother’s been trying to keep them away from you, you know.”
She knew. Her meals came to her cut up into neat, bite-sized pieces; or when they didn’t, they were accompanied by one of Esperanza’s stricter maids, who made sure the knives were still on the plate when they left. Most of the time, anyway.
“Eva is kind,” she said, not lowering the blade, “and forgetful.”
“Heh! You’re right, she is. So I guess you chatted her up and slipped the knife down your sleeve while she was distracted?” His smile looked genuinely amused. “That sounds like you, Moni-Moni.”
She could have protested that she wasn’t Moni-Moni, she wasn’t Monica without Huey to ground her. She meant to say it every time Elmer came by, but she never found the chance in all his pointless chatter. And now she had something else to say, and after today it wouldn’t matter.
“I’m only going to tell you one more time, Elmer: get out of my room.”
“I will! I will, I promise.” Still grinning. She didn’t believe him for a second. “There’s just something I have to ask you first.”
She knew what the question was, just as surely as he knew the answer to it. She dug the tip of the knife into his throat, wishing she believed that it would stop him.
But of course, it didn’t.
Looking into her eyes, he asked, “Are you planning to kill yourself today?”
She felt her face become a mask as a drop of blood trickled down Elmer’s neck, seeping into his cravat.
“Why does the answer to that question matter to you?”
“Because I want to see you to smile,” he said simply.
“I don’t smile for you.” Once, she might have, but now she had been reduced to this. “You know that Monica Campanella only smiles for one man.”
“The man whose birthday you want to celebrate by killing yourself?”
“Yes,” she snarled, refusing to be deterred by his needling.
He still didn’t seem to care about the knife biting into his throat. “Right. Sorry, dumb question. My real question—I guess it’s more of a statement. I was just thinking, that’s a weird way to celebrate Huey’s birthday.”
“He doesn’t care!”
The words tore out of her throat, and the pitch of her voice was all wrong, and why wasn’t she stabbing Elmer—oh. Oh, because (—he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care—) she wanted to turn the knife on herself instead, so badly that she was shaking.
But of course Elmer chose now to whisk it out of her hand. Her stomach plunged with helplessness, but she couldn’t (—he turned away, he thinks you betrayed him, he despises you—) remember the motions to take it back.
“I’ll find another way,” she told him. Just as soon as she could pull herself back together.
“I believe you, Monica.” He twirled the knife between his fingers. “Hear me out first, though, okay?”
“Get out of here,” she said one more time, and she knew he wasn’t going to listen. “Why do you care what happens to me?”
“I told you, it’s because I want to see your smile.” His smile was back, cheeky and unflinching. “So, logically, if killing yourself is going to make you smile, if that’s what’s really going to make you happy, I say go for it.”
“Then give me the knife.”
“I’m not done yet.”
He winked, and then walked around her to sit on her mess of a bed. Leaning back on one hand, he waved the knife about with the other. “There’s just one thing I’d need your help with in that case, and that’s figuring out how I’d make Huey smile again after I told him you were dead.”
Huey.
The inside of her head went white at the mention of his name, and she struggled to regain control. Her voice sounded distant when she spoke. “How to make… H-Huey… smile? Just tell him… I killed myself. I’m sure that will make him smile. He’ll laugh, he’ll be—s-ss-so relieved—”
Her stomach wrenched painfully. The first thoughts that pushed their way through the haze of her confusion were an inescapable litany of I need to die, I need to die, and she saw no reason to resist the urge. She could bite through her tongue, couldn’t she? She could end it now, and Elmer wouldn’t be able to stop her, and Huey would be happy, wasn’t that what she wanted, for Huey to be happy? Or was she more selfish than that—
Elmer only cocked his head to the side as if oblivious to the thoughts swirling in her head.
“You think so? I dunno about that.”
“You weren’t there!” And how dare he cast doubt on this, on this which she knew more certainly than anything she’d ever known, on this thought which would be the last thing she ever knew of Huey? “You didn’t see the way he turned away, without—without even l-looking at me… He’d rather die than face me again!”
“You’re right that I wasn’t there. But Moni-Moni?”
“Don’t call me that—”
“I’ve seen him more recently than you have.”
His words froze her. Angry, petty jealousy welled in her chest, and at the same time a despicable shred of hope cracked through the wall around her heart.
“I can’t tell you what he’s up to. If he wanted you to know, he’d come find you. And, well, if you really wanted to know, you could always go find him, too. But listen, okay, Monica? I really don’t think he’d smile if I told him you’d killed yourself. He might try and pretend, but you know how I feel about fake smiles. I don’t want to see that. It’s just gonna get on my nerves.”
Huey’s face rose to her mind, despite all of her best efforts to keep it away. The image of Elmer telling him forced itself on her, and first she saw him with a grim smile (“Good.”), genuine and full of hatred; but then she saw horror instead, replaced quickly by a smirk that couldn’t stay in place, that kept slipping, she saw his hands tremble—
“You’re lying,” she whispered.
“I’m not lying,” came Elmer’s answer, and it shocked her back into reality because no, no he couldn’t say that, that meant it had to be true—she made herself focus on his face, and he was watching her. Waiting. There was sincerity in his face. She shook her head, back and forth, back and forth, her eyes closing again.
“You’re lying,” she repeated, because she couldn’t let herself believe what he was saying.
“I’m not lying,” Elmer said in the same easy tone, and Monica cringed.
You don’t have the right to be saved by that, said something in her, the part of her that was yearning to hold the knife again. Do you think you have the right to keep living, just to spare him a few moments of pain before he decides to forget you? You ought to be dead. You want to be dead.
Her mouth moved on its own. “Y-you think… it would hurt him?”
“I think it would leave him empty, like something he expected to be there suddenly vanished.”
Monica opened her eyes again to look at his face, searching for any sign of deception. There was none. When he saw her looking, he grinned.
“So that’s why I need your help coming up with something that would make him smile. Something you can leave behind for him. Any ideas?”
“…No.”
“Aw, come on, can’t you at least do that much for him?”
“Stop it.”
It was no use.
“You know I can’t do it, don’t you… Elmer?”
Yes, he knew. He didn’t look surprised at all. Monica reached for the Mask Maker and felt his serenity settle over her face and voice, to hide the storm churning inside her. It would have to do.
“Do you even understand how cruel you are?” she asked.
“That’s not fair.” Elmer grinned back at her. “You know I’m only cruel if I think it’ll get me a smile.”
“I’m not going to smile for you.”
She’d never felt further from smiling. Everything inside her was in shambles, everything inside her was pathetic, and she was clinging to the thought of a man who despised her to avoid escaping into a welcome oblivion. She still wanted to die, needed to die; but Elmer had taken her weapon away from her, and then her resolve.
She stepped forward and took him by the arm, dragging him off her bed, not caring when he lost his balance and stumbled. She thought of taking the knife back, but didn’t have the energy to fight for it if he refused to hand it over. She didn’t have the energy to do anything but get back into bed and pull the blankets up around her. It felt absurd that her chest still moved to inhale and exhale.
Elmer watched her the whole time, so she said: “I’ll live, but I won’t smile. Consider that my revenge for your cruelty.”
“Noted!” But he was still grinning. “Mind if I stick around for a while?”
“…Do what you please,” she said, and she turned her back on him and hoped that sleep would come for her soon.
*
“Hey, happy belated!”
“What do you want, Elmer.”
“I just came by to help you celebrate! I’m sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday. I was hanging out with Monica.”
“……”
“What do you think she did all day?”
“……”
“C’mon, I won’t tell you if you’re not even gonna try to guess.”
“……. I don’t care.”
A sigh. “Alright. That aside, then. Her birthday’s coming up, too, and I know just what you could get her. After so long not seeing you, just think how surprised she’d be if you showed up on her doorstep with a big ol’ bow wrapped around you…”
A year later
Monica woke, again.
She was long since used to her windowless room and the rocking motion of the ship, though neither helped with the nausea that plagued her. She sat up gingerly, mentally reviewing the careful tally of days she had been keeping, and then nodded to herself.
Today, she thought, bittersweet.
The child growing inside her was still, as unresponsive as the Dormentaire guards who brought her meals to her. The only person who ever engaged with her was Carla; but she visited rarely, and was clipped and reserved even then. On most days, this didn’t matter to her. She’d grown accustomed to the solitude, too. When felt like she would go mad if she didn’t speak, she spoke to the child, and that eased enough of the pressure that her thoughts quieted again.
But today she found herself thinking of the past year of her life, of the isolation and despair that had given way to a bliss she never could have imagined. For a few precious months, she had smiled as brightly as she could so that Elmer would know how glad she was that he hadn’t let her kill herself.
And now… this. She had thought it would all end, when she turned herself in. She still didn’t understand why they hadn’t killed her, had no idea how long they intended to keep her here. Maybe this, a living death, was to be her punishment. Maybe it was fitting. When she thought of it that way, she could almost accept it, but today, oh, today—
She thought of Huey’s shy smile, of what love looked like in his eyes, of what his hand felt like around hers. She longed for his arms around her, but all she could do was clutch her own stomach instead.
“It’s your father’s birthday, baby.” Tears filled her eyes and she held onto her child as they spilled over onto her cheeks.
“I wish we could see him…”