My Ex Wont Help Me Heal

The first wound appeared three days after Mara left.

Ethan woke with a sharp sting along his ribs, like something had split open in the night. He sat up, disoriented, sheets twisted around his legs, and pulled his shirt up.

A thin cut stretched across his side.

Clean.

Precise.

Too straight to be an accident.

“What the hell…”

He touched it lightly. It burned—fresh, tender, like it had just been made.

Ethan checked the bed. No blood on the sheets. No broken glass. No reason.

He laughed under his breath, though it came out strained.

“Probably scratched it in my sleep.”

That was the easiest explanation.

It always is.

Mara had been gone for seventy-two hours.

Not that he was counting.

The apartment still felt like her—her perfume lingering in the hallway, her coffee mug in the sink, her jacket still hanging by the door like she might come back for it.

She had left violently.

Not physically.

But close.

“You think you can just walk away?” she had said, voice low, trembling in a way that made his stomach twist.

“I’m done, Mara.”

“No,” she whispered. “You don’t get to be done with me.”

Ethan remembered the way her eyes had locked onto his.

Sharp.

Unblinking.

“You don’t just leave something you’ve carved into yourself.”

“I didn’t carve anything.”

Her smile then—

Wrong.

“You will.”

The second wound appeared on his shoulder.

He woke gasping this time, the pain immediate, hot. When he turned toward the mirror, he saw it.

A shallow puncture.

Perfectly placed.

Like something had pressed in, then pulled away.

His stomach dropped.

He knew that one.

“You ever wonder how easy it would be?” Mara had said once, tracing a finger along his shoulder while they lay in bed.

“Easy to do what?”

She smiled faintly.

“To make you feel something permanent.”

Ethan had laughed then.

Now he didn’t.

He started locking the doors.

Checking the windows.

Sleeping with the lights on.

But the wounds kept coming.

A thin slice along his thigh.

A bruise blooming across his collarbone.

A mark at the back of his neck he couldn’t even see without angling a mirror just right.

Each one familiar.

Each one something Mara had once described in passing, in those quiet moments when her voice turned soft and dangerous.

“Don’t say things like that,” he had told her.

“I’m just imagining,” she’d replied.

“You imagine too much.”

“I imagine what people deserve.”

Ethan stopped going to work.

Stopped answering calls.

His world shrank to the apartment and the growing map of injuries on his body.

He documented them at first—photos, timestamps, notes.

But the pattern didn’t make sense.

No break-ins. No signs of forced entry.

No one there.

Only him.

And yet—

Every morning, something new.

One night, he stayed awake.

Determined.

No sleep. No gaps. No lost time.

He sat on the couch with a knife in his hand—not to use, just to feel grounded. The TV played quietly in the background, some late-night show he couldn’t follow.

Hours passed.

Two. Three. Four.

His eyes burned, his head heavy, but he didn’t close them.

Couldn’t.

At 3:17 a.m., the lights flickered.

Ethan froze.

The TV screen glitched, image stretching, distorting—

Then went black.

The apartment fell into silence.

“Hello?”

His voice sounded small.

Wrong.

Something shifted behind him.

Soft.

Barely there.

Ethan’s grip tightened on the knife.

He turned slowly.

The hallway stood empty.

But the air felt… crowded.

Like someone had just moved through it.

“Stop,” he said. “Just—stop.”

Nothing answered.

But the silence pressed closer.

He didn’t remember falling asleep.

That was the worst part.

One moment he was sitting upright, staring into the dark—

The next, he was waking on the floor.

The knife lay a few feet away.

His hand throbbed.

Ethan lifted it slowly.

A fresh cut ran across his palm.

Deep.

Deliberate.

His breath hitched.

“No…”

That one—

He knew that one too.

“You hold onto things too tightly,” Mara had said once, prying something from his grip during an argument.

“Maybe I should fix that.”

Ethan stumbled to the bathroom, heart racing.

The mirror showed everything at once.

The cuts.

The bruises.

The marks layering over each other like a history he couldn’t erase.

He gripped the sink.

“I’m not doing this,” he whispered.

“I’m not.”

But something felt wrong.

Not just the wounds.

Him.

He leaned closer to the mirror.

There—

Faint.

Along the side of his neck.

A shape.

Not a cut.

Not a bruise.

Words.

Barely visible beneath the skin.

Ethan wiped at it, breath shaking.

The letters darkened.

Surfacing.

Like something rising.

STILL MINE

He staggered back, slamming into the wall.

“No.”

The lights flickered again.

This time, they didn’t come back right away.

In the darkness, something moved.

Not outside.

Not in the hallway.

Behind him.

Ethan’s breath hitched.

“Don’t—”

A hand brushed his shoulder.

Cold.

Familiar.

“You’re healing,” Mara’s voice whispered.

Right against his ear.

Ethan spun around.

No one.

Nothing.

The lights snapped back on.

The apartment was empty.

Silent.

But his shoulder burned.

Slowly, trembling, he lifted his shirt.

A fresh mark had appeared.

Not a cut.

Not a bruise.

A handprint.

Faint.

Pressing inward.

Like something was holding him in place.

Days blurred after that.

Ethan stopped trying to stay awake.

Stopped trying to understand.

The wounds came whether he resisted or not.

But they changed.

They grew more precise.

More intentional.

No longer random reminders of old threats.

Now they felt like messages.

Corrections.

Each one placed exactly where Mara used to touch him.

Where she used to hold him.

Where she used to whisper—

“You belong to me.”

He stopped looking in mirrors.

Until he couldn’t avoid it anymore.

One morning, he woke unable to move.

Not restrained.

Just… held.

Pinned by something invisible.

His chest rose in shallow breaths.

His body felt wrong.

Heavy.

Split.

Ethan forced his eyes open.

The bedroom door stood ajar.

Beyond it, the hallway stretched into shadow.

And in that shadow—

A figure.

Watching.

Still.

Familiar.

“Mara,” he rasped.

The figure didn’t move.

Didn’t need to.

“You left,” her voice echoed, not from the hallway, but from inside him.

From beneath his skin.

“You said you were done.”

Ethan’s eyes filled with tears.

“I am.”

A pause.

Then—

“No.”

Pain tore through his side.

Ethan gasped.

A new wound split open across his ribs—deeper than the others.

Final.

“You don’t get to heal,” she whispered.

His body arched as the pain spread.

“You don’t get to move on.”

His vision blurred.

The figure in the doorway stepped forward—

And for a moment, just a moment—

He saw her clearly.

Not whole.

Not solid.

But there.

Pieces of her flickering in the air around him.

Hands.

Eyes.

A mouth curved into that same terrible smile.

“You don’t get to leave what you survived,” she said softly.

Ethan tried to scream.

But no sound came out.

Because something inside him was tightening.

Closing.

Sealing.

Not healing—

Locking.

“You carry me now,” Mara whispered.

And as the pain settled into something permanent, something deeper than flesh—

Ethan realized the truth.

The wounds weren’t appearing.

They were being remembered.

Reopened.

From somewhere inside him.

And they weren’t going to stop.

Because Mara wasn’t outside his apartment.

She wasn’t breaking in.

She wasn’t coming back.

She had never left.

And she wasn’t going to let him forget her long enough to heal.