ABOUT: Yet another sad story about crazy people, prompted by some inspiration from Explodingdog. Check that place out, it's good stuff. I read a condensed version (for time's sake) of this story at an art's night in high school, and had people I'd barely ever talked to coming up to me to talk about how great it was. So, it must not be all bad, right? Click here for more stories.
Twentyfourseven
It's 4 a.m. on a Sunday, and I'm drunk. Ok, so I'm not quite drunk. More like tipsy, and slightly hung over from yesterday. There's just something awful about Sunday mornings. Maybe it's the aftermath of all the Saturday hullabaloo. Or maybe it's knowing that Monday morning means going to work, and going to work means facing the world again. Either way, I hate Sunday mornings. That’s why I was starting the day off with some vodka and orange juice, and some painkillers. Drugs make me feel good.
You might wonder why anyone would be up so ridiculously early on a Sunday. And maybe I shouldn't have even been awake right then; but it wasn't that it was early, it was late. I hadn't gone to sleep yet. Sometimes I just stay up really late being bored, and boredom is not a burden anyone should bear - especially not anyone like me. See, there's something strange going on in my brain. I don't know what it is, but I rather like it, if only for the fact that it's the only thing I can really ever hold onto. The constant white noise in my head keeps me company. This hole I've dug in the world is mine forever, to hide in as I see fit and only emerge when necessary. Besides, insanity is just a really great way of managing expectations.
So I just sat at the tiny kitchen table, staring through the open archway into the living room where the TV was mumbling quietly. I would have been out with some friends, but I don't have many. I can't find any other insomniacs to spend my time with. I stuffed another spoonful of cornflakes into my mouth and chewed them rather discontentedly. I guess I never was a cornflake girl. The news mumbles something about rain in New York, and I rather wished that I lived there instead of in this sad little apartment.
You see, all we are is bugs in a jar, crawling around desperately in our own little glass worlds. We can see everything on the outside, but we just can't seem to get through the invisible wall to the outside. It makes me wish I could fly, so I could rise above everyone and leave this little world and see what else there is out there.
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I know a boy. He has anti-matter for a voice. It spills out from between his wiry lips in a black wave that swallows me whole. He touched me once, and I was never the same. I don't know what happened, but he was the only one that could make me feel that way.
He loved me, but that was too much pressure for me. I didn't want to be special, I just wanted to be myself. I wanted to be unique, just like everyone else. I cried about it, and then he broke my heart. Oh, was that your heart? I apologize. Then my tears froze. There's only so much crying one can do.
What is wrong with me? Why has everything been taken away from me? One day, God looked down and said, "she's happy! this will never do" and took everything I cared about away. That boy still comes around, knocking on my apartment door and spending evenings on my sofa, but it's not the same. I want to be with him. I want everything.
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That Sunday was the first time he'd come around in a while. Long after I'd cleared the table of my mushy cornflake breakfast, put the vodka away, and turned off the news, he'd come knocking on my door. When I pulled it open, he suddenly presented me with a handful of flowers.
"I thought some daisies would cheer you up," he said as I took them from him and allowed him to step inside.
I smiled slightly and made my way into the kitchen as Christopher settled himself on the maroon sofa. I didn't smile often. It's too painful to smile when your heart is rebelling against every vital action the rest of your body is taking. I placed the daises in a glass full of water and settled them by the window.
I returned to the living room, taking a seat on the sofa beside him. I felt the butterflies in my stomach beginning to have a field day. To him, I look alive, but I'm actually dying inside. With a slight smile, he asks if I'm feeling all right today. I can almost see the black endless mass pouring out of his mouth.
"Yes," I said, "but I didn't sleep last night."
His smile turns downward, his thin lower lip poking out slightly as he attempts to display sympathy for me. It's a good thing I don't really exist, or else the superficiality of it all might have bothered me. He clasped his hands together, the clap echoing off the bare walls of the apartment, and told me I should be happy because things are going so well.
It was at that precise moment that I began to wish I were a rock. I kept up the conversation, but that's a hard thing to do when you don't feel like you should. I glanced up at one point, out the window and into the sky.
"The stars are awake," I said.
Christopher smiled, and we walked out of my apartment, up to the roof, and laid down on our backs to stare at the sky.
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Conversation on the roof was scarce. We saw a shooting star streak across the darkness, bright white and glimmering. But I was too spent to make a wish. I am in love with the sky. The stars, mostly. If only I could reach them. Then, I'd pluck the brightest ones from the sky and place them in the jar. I'd give the jar to Christopher and say, "here, these stars are for you." And when he asked how I got them, I'd tell him, "just trust me, I'm a professional."
Right now, I'm crying inside. Christopher and I are watching the stars together. Just like we always used to do. Just like we've always done, forever. It was only then that I understood; I wasn't alone. We're separate together, but I want to change. I can make him love me again, if he doesn't still. It's all a matter of motivation. And what's stopping that motivation? The fact that it hurts. And the fact that trying to be with him is like trying to dance without legs.
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We went back inside and sat on my sofa once again. It wasn't late, but there wasn't much on TV. We managed to find an old B-list horror flick, and settled on that. As we sat there watching a man in a large fish suit savagely attack a number of young women, Christopher moved over on the couch. He moved from his side, to the middle. This made me rather uncomfortable. I'm not comfortable anywhere, really, but now I was definitely uncomfortable.
"You shouldn't get that close to me," I told him quietly.
"Why not?"
"There's not enough room for you here."
It made sense to me, but it might have sounded strange to him. However, his position on the couch did not change. We watched the rest of the movie in silence, but once it was over, we talked for a bit. My eyelids were growing increasingly heavy and my senses were slowly spiraling downward.
"You should go to sleep," he told me. "In the morning, things will be better. I'll hang around until you fall asleep, if you want."
"That would be nice," I said. At that point I was too sleepy to argue.
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In my dream, I was falling from the great blue sky. I fell slowly past a large gray pillar, on the top of which stood Christopher. As I passed it, I grabbed onto the ledge with one hand and hung there. I looked up at Christopher who was staring down at me and holding onto a rope.
"Send down the rope, I can't hold on any longer," I called up to him, clinging desperately to the ledge with both hands now.
He just stared down at me, rather perplexed.
"You can't hold onto the rope, it's going to hurt your hands," he replied.
"You can't hurt me," I said, my voice surprisingly cheerful. "I'm invulnerable."
Still, Christopher refused to send down the rope. My fingers slipped off the ledge and I continued to fall. Above me, he was growing smaller and smaller as he just watched me fall, the rope still hanging from his hands.
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I woke up with a start, and immediately looked over at the clock. It was 7:48 a.m., and an infomercial for a new revolutionary cleaning product was buzzing over the TV. I grabbed the remote and pressed the power button. In the empty silence, I turned to my left to see Christopher asleep at that end of the couch. He glowed in the darkness. Looking at him was like staring into the sun.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray…
He deserves happiness. I don't think I can give that to him. I love when I wake up and you are beside me. I always loved you at all the wrong times.
Ok, stop. This isn't my life.
I don't spend all my time pining away for him. This is all just a one-way road to disaster, and I think I'm lost.
He stirred slightly, opening his bright blue eyes and stretching. If I could be anything, I'd be a cloud. During the day I could float through the sky and feel like I was swimming through his eyes. At night, I could collect the brightest stars, and send them down to earth for him to hold. Christopher stood up from the sofa, seeming to be somewhat puzzled. He looked over at me and laughed a bit.
"I must have fallen asleep when you did," he stated.
"I guess so," I responded, standing as well.
He stepped towards me, wrapping his arms around my body and pulling me close to him. It definitely did not feel right, but it felt wrong in a good way. He smelled like a musky vanilla, just like he always did, and his disheveled brown hair was soft against my cheek. He pulled away, holding onto my wrists with his guitar-player hands.
If you opened up your heart just a little, do you think I could squeeze in? I'm very small, it wouldn't take much.
"I had lots of fun last night. I have to go to work today, but I'll talk to you later," he said.
I forced a smile and said goodbye. I watched him walk through my living room and out the apartment door. He was gone, but it was too late. All he had to do was just touch me once, like he used to, and I was all done. That one harmless hug had opened up a whole new can of worms.
"I love you," I said softly as the door shut behind him.
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So, I want to be a romantic failure. I want to be one of those tragic poets who's so distraught about their lost loves that they become ludicrously famous and die at an early age of suicide or drug overdose. I changed my clothes, and went into the bathroom to look in the mirror.
"And what shape am I today?" I said to no one in particular.
The person I saw in the mirror was a stranger. She had a thin face, and wiry hair that fell in dark waves down to her shoulders. Her eyes were murky brown and breath-takingly empty. I couldn't recognize myself anymore. Is that really me?
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I'm walking down the street, and I'm listening to sad songs in my head. The world feels like it is covered with snail slime, and everything is moving in slow motion. But, Jesus, we're all on speed and struggling so hard to get through the slime. Why do we even bother? Everything is so mucked up and slowed down that it's useless to struggle against it. God is not here. I'm not really here, either. Sometimes I wonder if I repeat that enough, it will come true. Am I invisible yet?
You know, I never used to cry. I used to be sort of happy, actually. Sometimes, it is not as bad as it seems. But sometimes, it's worse. Are you broken? Welcome to my world. Here, broken things stay broken. You can put them back together and tape them, but they'll always be broken and they'll never be the same. I'm not crazy; I'm just broken. And everyone else is really boring.
I sometimes wonder what my soul would taste like. It feels like people have often felt the need to gnaw on it. But then I remember that I once traded my soul to a girl for Boardwalk in a game of Monopoly. I have to stop doing that, picking myself apart and all. But why try and dismantle a girl that was never assembled in the first place? Maybe I'm not broken. Maybe I was just never put together properly to begin with.
I want to have someone that can make me a home. I'd like someone to care whether I come home or not. I want someone to give me something to cry about, somebody to dance with. Come, waste your time with me. Sometimes, I like to think about forever. Forever is, well, a very long time; and I'm going to change the world. I just want somebody to be there with me when it happens. Don't you want to waste your life with me?
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So I was thinking of slitting my wrists the other day. I sat at the kitchen table, tapping my pocketknife limply against the polished wood tabletop. Doesn't being alive scare you? Because the dead don't die. The dead don't die, so I took the gleaming edge of the blade to my wrist and slid it across in one fluid motion. I switched the knife to the other hand and sliced into the flesh of my opposite wrist. Now, as the warm red began to seep from my wounds, I smiled. This was it. The end of my life as a potato.
I'm sad for two reasons. You're there. I'm here. I wish you knew what I meant to say. If I didn't do this, eventually you'd find me, crying, crunched compactly into a ball in the corner of the room all sad and depressed-like. I'm sorry, I'm lost. If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. I can't, my wrists hurt. This is fun! It's good, clean fun for good, clean children. Look Ma, no hands!
For a moment I thought about calling someone. The police maybe. Or Christopher. I was beginning to feel dizzy and weak. But I was dead, and dead people can't use phones. Part of me died yesterday anyway, with Christopher. That was the day the world went away.
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I lay on the kitchen floor, the tile cool beneath my body. I watched as the blood trickled out of my veins into the puddle on the floor, swirling around into pretty patterns. I was growing more and more sleepy by the minute, despite the fact that the cuts in my wrists were shallow and bleeding slowly. I had picked up the phone off its cradle on the wall and dialed Christopher's number. But when he answered, all I could force out was "when I get this way, I need your eyes to guide me through." I don't know what I meant, but it put Christopher into a bit of a panic, and all I could think of were his eyes and the sky. I couldn't talk anymore, I just dropped the phone to the floor and lie down.
I remembered my dream, the one where I was falling from the sky and Christopher had the chance to save me but didn't. That's what it felt like now. I felt like I was falling through his eyes, through the sky. He would probably come through the door at any moment, rope in hand with the ability to save me. But it would be too late. I'd already be gone. Even from the floor, I could see the clear glass of water and the daisies sticking out of it in front of the window.
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Christopher came through the door and scrambled to the kitchen. If only I had died sooner. Missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me. He looked down at the crimson puddle with a strange look on his face.
Don't worry, it's just my blood. I wondered if my words were coming out of my mouth at that point. I heard them in my head but he didn't seem to be having any sort of reaction to them.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, wrapping strips of cloth tightly around my wrists. They were white and soft, and as I looked up at Christopher I realized he was shirtless and staring down at my bleeding wrists.
"Only when you look at it," I whispered.
I was pulled up into Christopher's lap and held tightly. He fell oddly silent after my last comment and I wondered if I had said it out loud at all.
"Why did you wait so long?" he asked finally. Still no acknowledgement of my prior statement.
"Because it feels real."
I couldn't remember the last time anything had felt so real. My wrists were stinging, the blood was sticky on my hands and arms, and Christopher was holding me tightly. That was all I could think of.
"All I need is for you to tell me it's ok, and then I can go," I tried to tell him, but I think only the first part of the sentence actually came out of my mouth.
"You just don't get it," he said to me before dialing some numbers into the phone.
Christopher grasped the phone in both hands, my blood covering them and the phone. His anti-matter voice sucked up everything around me as he frantically spoke into the phone. I don't know what he was saying, but his voice was all I could hear and it made me smile.
"And you don't know what's inside," I finally responded, but I don't know if he was listening.
"I don't think you understand why I need you." The black void was pouring over me now, and my head turned to see the phone lying on the floor. "I just want you. Only you!" he shouted.
But all I could see was black. The anti-matter spurted from his tear-stained lips and consumed me. I was falling again. Not from the blue sky, but from the starless night sky. I wondered where all the stars were, if Christopher had collected them all in a jar to keep forever. Somewhere in the darkness were the words "I love you, I love you, I love you," repeated endlessly by a voice oddly similar to the one which belonged to Christopher.