Name
by Noll
My name is not Mrs. Cassadine. That’s just what everyone calls me. Except him. Stavros calls me Lasha. It’s supposed to be a term of endearment. But it’s not. It’s just another thing he does to control me. Takes away my real name and gives me another.
It doesn’t even sound strange to my ear any more. Mrs. Cassadine. Lasha. I don’t cringe when I hear them, I answer.
I have to go and change. Helena doesn’t like this dress. She said I look like a peasant.
“Mrs. Cassadine.”
That must be me. I am wearing her clothes.
My shoes click on the tiled floors. Stavros ‘requested’ that I wear heels. So I’m wearing them.
I entered a new world a new life, but I’m still me, I am still Laura, even if I don’t act like her, or dress like her or feel like her.
Can’t I be this new woman and still wear my name?
He calls me by my right name. He says it in my ear as we come. He calls me Laura. He reminds me that I’m still me.
And I am doing the thing I would never do.
He wore the ring, he stood at the top of the stairs and he called me Lasha. I thought I was hallucinating, that he had come back to life. But it wasn’t him.
That word showed me, more than the ring. Lasha. It told me how much he had changed, how cruel he could be. There was a time when he wasn’t capable of doing a thing like that.
Still, he can’t make it sound the way Stavros did. It doesn’t have that cloying promise of a touch, the sticky cling of a spider web. Stefan says it hatefully, and I hate it. He only says it to hurt me and remind me. I won’t be reminded.
He calls me that all the time now. Lasha. There is less hate in it now. There is a thickness to his voice. Sometimes the sound of his voice goes through me, and he could say anything. Even that name. But I’m not her and I can’t feel like her. She’ll unmake me again. I’ll unravel.
He is digging inside my memories trying to pry out the past. I fight him, but I don’t really blame him. No one wants to be forgotten, pushed aside as if they never existed.
He fights me. He wants to be real to me again. But he calls me the wrong name. I won’t be her. I won’t be Lasha. I won’t be Mrs. Cassadine again.
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