Casa Rossa

February 12, 2017

I feel I owe you another apology.

Not for the silence this time, but for the things I’ve done to reach this place (or rather how I afforded it). I told myself that chasing her justified anything, that love is worth more than honor. But even now, with her hair pin burning cold in my palm, I’m not sure I believe that anymore. I know my actions might have already crossed several lines of decency, both moral and legal. This place… the island… it's as if the salt in the air is eating away not only at my skin, but my sense of right and wrong.

I needed to get here. I needed to see what this hotel held. And since the tides don't answer to empty pockets, I... procured funds. Let's leave it at that. You know the sort of things one can do when desperation sharpens its teeth. If I return, perhaps I will confess it all with a trembling laugh. But I doubt I will return.

Corsica is silent. The winter here doesn’t scream like in Finistère, it really whispers. It gets inside your bones like mold. The locals glance sideways. They don’t ask questions, but their eyes say you shouldn’t be here.

I arrived at the hotel under a storm. Not metaphorical. Rain was chewing the tiles off the roof. The receptionist was a specter, some old woman who looked like she’d been carved from driftwood. She gave me the key without a word, and for a second, I thought she was blind. The Casa Rossa stands like an exhausted dream, something built for beauty and forgotten by time. Red stucco peeling like burned flesh, windows that stare blankly into the sea.

Room 3. Red door. Window facing the sea.

I left my things untouched and sat on the bed. The mattress sighed under me like a dying thing. I told myself I’d rest. Just for a moment. Just until the rain stopped. But the room rejects me. The bed creaks in ways that don't match my weight. The walls seem to pulse ever so slightly with the rhythm of distant waves. There's a scent under the must, not mold (and believe me, when I was in London I really learned what mold smells like), but something floral... artificial... as if someone tried to hide a rot with perfume.

I thought I could ignore it, shut my eyes, and drift.

But then, under the thin pillow, I found it.

Her brooch.

You remember it, don’t you? The one shaped like a flower, all cheap silver and fake aquamarine, the one she used to pin her hair when the wind turned wild. I stared at it for an eternity. I didn’t dare touch it at first. My fingers hovered as if I expected it to vanish, like a mirage. But it didn’t. It was too precious to touch any of Leonore's belongings, especially her brooch. You know very well that we, earthly entities, should not over-interact with the beyond.

It was cold.

Too cold.

I held it and the world tilted.

I tried to sleep.

That was my mistake.

What happened next didn’t feel like a dream. Not in the usual sense. Dreams belong to you. They twist your memories, yes, but they grow from your own soil.

This... this was someone else’s dream. Someone dead. Someone drowning. I could feel their thoughts oozing into mine like salt through cracked skin.

I was no longer in my body. I was near it. Watching it breathe. Watching it twitch. My limbs moved, but not with me. I blinked, and the world responded with delay. I spoke a name (hers, I think) and the sound that came out wasn't mine. A gargle, a breath stolen from the sea itself.

The room was darker than before. Not pitch black, but wet. The walls leaked. From every crack, water wept. My feet were ankle-deep in it. The mattress floated slightly, bobbing with each breath I took.

And in the mirror I saw her. But not the her I chased.

This one didn’t smile.

She mouthed something I couldn't hear. Her eyes had no whites. Her skin was slick, pale, veined like marble left in a storm. She held the brooch. My brooch. Her brooch. I couldn’t tell anymore.

Then I felt it.

Inside me.

Not emotion. Not fear.

Foreignness.

Like my body had become a rental. Like I was a ghost inside my own chest. I didn’t belong in this flesh anymore. The smell of the perfume, that wrong sweetness, clung to my lungs like a parasite. I tried to scream. But all I could do was choke.

Choke on salt.

Choke on memory.

Choke on her name.

I awoke face-down on the floor, the brooch cutting into my palm. The room dry again. No water. No reflection.

But the smell remains.

And I know — I know — she was here. Or something that wears her memory like a mask.

Tomorrow, I’ll return to the lobby. There’s something carved into the wooden post by the stairs. I saw it briefly: a name, half-erased. It wasn’t mine. But it felt like mine. It might’ve been hers. I must know.

For now, I will keep writing. These letters may be the only proof that I haven’t fully dissolved.

Not yet.

But the ocean waits. And I... I hear it again tonight. Singing.

Not her voice anymore.

Mine.

Tomorrow I will go down to the reception. I'll ask for her. It doesn't matter if they look at me like I'm crazy, if the old lady at the desk plays blind again. It doesn't matter if there's no registration, if room 3 was never rented. I won't leave. If she died here, if her voice rotted within these walls, I want the sea itself to tell me. And if there is no answer... then I will do what she could not. I will stay. I will dissolve. Casa Rossa will be my coffin. And the brush, the nail.