The Sapphire Express Read Online Free PDF

whispered to me every night that it wasn’t going away. I could still hear Annalise’s little footsteps on the hardwood floor, approaching fast. I could see her running to me with a book in her tiny hand—a book about forest animals. But then she disappeared again, and I opened my teary eyes and fell to the dusty floor. I wanted to go back in time and read that book to her again and again and again. I would have read it as many times as she would have wanted to and kicked that goddamn TV out of the window. I swear to God, I would have kicked it all the way to the dark side of the moon.
    I tried so hard, but I still lost everything. I was kissed by the devil, murdered by the evil, raped by the world—slaughtered like a confused calf and left to rot in a world where compassion lasted as long as the next news story. Everywhere I went, I could feel the hounds of hell walking next to me, whispering to me, laughing at me, saying that even in heaven, my daughter wasn’t safe. I was already dead inside, but the demons wanted to kill me more, put me in a cheap birch box, and dance on my grave with their grimy hoofs. They wanted to see more tears and more sorrow, and they mocked my pain, and they ridiculed me even if I was already lying on the ground bleeding. They were addicted to madness and pain, and they wanted me to join them, multiply with them. That is why they took my precious treasure, that’s why they tormented me so.
    Life after Annalise was a struggle of immense proportions, and the demons never left me alone. I wanted to die and save my baby from the cruel bastards, but the promises I had made to Eden and the hope of revenge kept me alive. Yet, when the night was at its darkest, and the dawn seemed so far away, I often thought about breaking all my promises and leaving the unfair world behind. I got so close, so very close, but the survival instincts built in me always talked me out of it. Goddamn romantics and eternal optimists. I could have easily subdued them with alcohol and drugs, but I felt that it would have been an unnatural, cowardly thing to do. If I wanted to kill myself, I was going to do it sober and without hiding behind some filthy man-made cocktail of cheap whiskey and disgusting pills. I wasn’t afraid of dying. Not one bit. I just wasn’t ready yet.
    The battle between all those different forces inside me was something that confused me greatly. It was just very strange to watch them fight in my body and to learn that I had so many conflicting thoughts in my own head. I had always believed that I was in total control of my emotions, feelings and decisions, but I wasn’t so sure anymore who made the final call. Was it my body or my mind? Which one would have won if I had decided to pull the trigger?
    Eden was dead inside, too, and she was crying, or on the verge of crying, most of the time she was awake. The thick dark veil of pain and hopelessness never dispersed, and its constant presence in our sad home was starting to strangle us so hard that it was almost impossible to remain sane. We could hardly breathe anymore, and we rarely exchanged full sentences with each other. Eden didn’t want to wake up in the morning, and she said that her eyelids couldn’t stay open because they had turned into lead. I was staring at the white clouds through the living room window for hours at a time, waiting for the winter rains to arrive and wash all the pain and sorrow away. Sometimes I intentionally forgot that Annalise was gone, and I walked into her room, only to break down violently like a fragile mud tower in a Valdivia earthquake. I could see my heart beating in my chest, and my whole body was shaking, hurting, dying, and rotting. I collapsed into a fetal position like a stabbed mental patient, and I screamed, and I fucking bawled. Eden was standing there in a white nightgown at the door, looking at me, witnessing a monster being born. Oh, my precious Annalise, what do I do now that I have no more tears