[spoiler]
I
Warm fingertips fell on my cheek, delicately caressing my freshly formed stubble, soft as the pillowcase behind my head, as comfortable as a pillow. I feel myself smile, delight set into my chest as though it was being tickled with love and joy. The glow of the sun bore into my eyelids, and I welcomed the morning as she often kissed me awake so sweetly. Suddenly there was a pillow was over my mouth, suffocating me, pressure invaded my lungs and smothered over my face. The pureness of complete joy froze instantly, evaporating before complete terror overcame me. My screams were as muffled as my breaths, my strong arms flailed aimlessly, searching for the source, for the one who was holding the pillow over my mouth, denying my right to air. She was waiting for me to go limp, to give me CPR, like my life was a high-stakes game that she was destined to win, every time.
Yes, she was sick, but somehow these nightmares were getting more and more real. Still, I heard myself screaming, begging for air, powerless, helpless. I awoke. My bright eyes opened and my torso swept alertly up, the covers fell to my lap, leaving my skin bare, sleek and chilled with the disgusting sweat of true horror, the kind that stays with you long after your torment is gone.
To wash off the repulsive stink, I jump in the shower and lather up every inch of my body from head to toe. My dark hair, which hung around my ears in a very modern style, soaked up the soap and was rinsed out by the showerhead. I half-heartedly closed my eyes and tilted my face up to the showerhead, as though praying to the water’s divinity to baptize me here and now, to cleanse me of my sins. The cold water dripped down to my chin, waterfalling past the arcs and curves of my muscle, and splattering on the slippery floor in the uneven patterns of my movement.
Soap, hot water first, then cold, had cleansed me past the layers of my skin. Yet, the memories still haunted in my mind, and caused a jittery ache to my heart.. Elizabeth would never let me be free, not even in my dreams. My hand reached for the knob I knew was there and hesitated out of irrational trepidation to complete my reach. Fear for what I might find in its place. I open my eyes to absolve my fear and complete the twist. The water stopped. I was alone in my silence. Frigid with fear and devoid of much else. My morning would be hollow, yet I’d fill myself with tasteless coffee and thoughts full of remorse.
I didn’t shave, because I couldn’t think about the razors being that close to my neck. The blood drooling out of me if I’d nicked myself. My day was over before it even started. I opened the fogged up mirror, which hid my medicine cabinet, a lifetime of pill bottles came overflowing out. I always perched them far from the edge and somehow, they all rolled out like a landslide every morning, as though they were as on-edge as I was.
They all hid behind my tainted reflection, these were the skeletons in my closet. The doc said they were for PTSD, depression, chronic pain from that injury when she’d torn a ligament in my shoulder that had never quite healed right but it had been an ‘accident’ and well, the last bottle had been for insomnia. Those ones, sure, they put me out, but it was an unsettling slumber, like the one I’d just endured. No amount of pills would free me from the prison she’d set in my mind, the well-placed trapdoors, the immovable cadavers, the untrust I built my walls on to keep everyone out.
Fact is, no one believes a guy when he’s been abused. And if they do, they say “You should’ve settled it, smack her around and show her who’s boss,” or they silently judge you for being weak enough to take it for as long as I did.
I’d deteriorated into a blurred mess of who I used to be and I was only twenty-eight. I thought about her, Eliza, I thought she’d been the love of my life, she was charming, romantic, and actually had a brain for a change, unlike any of the other girls I’d met in the past. But here I was, a silhouette without essence, one who’s darkness was filled with more shadowed memories than the motivation to create new ones. I didn’t blame her, not for this, but I did resent her. The thought of her brings a piercing bitterness to my tongue, I recoil as the image of her face flashes in my mind as obtrusive as the sun’s beaming light through my kitchen window.
I had been eaten alive and like a seagull, she’d tossed away the shell of a man, and well, now I was doomed to live out my sufferable life in this burdening ache. Suffering had become my religion. Part of me begged for this all to be over, six feet under, she couldn’t touch me, but then, I’d leave no legacy. I was an only child and my parents had died young, an unfortunate plane crash in ‘08. I thought Eliza had been a great way to start my future, I’d landed a great job with a big business, even made it on Wall Street, but that was when things got freaky.
I’d been working late every night to secure my job and she’d accuse me of sleeping with prostitutes like I was some bigshot in the latest Dicaprio movie, I assured her my job was far from that much fun, and she’d taken it the wrong way. It was our first fight, she’d yelled so loud it blasted my eardrums and from that day, the fighting never really stopped. Even now, I grappled with my mind, trying to set it free by soothing it with the lies that she was locked away forever, that she couldn’t get a hold of me. I’d moved two thousand miles, changed my last name and filed a restraining order, still, she was Sherlock level smart, and if she ever escaped, I knew it wouldn’t be long.
One of these days I’d wake up and there really would be a pillow over my face.
II
Surprisingly, the day had gone well, I commuted to work, though, it was nothing like my last two jobs, which reaped grand rewards and placed everything on the line. I had liked that thrill, but she’d worn it out of me. I grabbed coffee at lunch with a girl, she was delightful, pretty, but behind her smile, I saw all the traits Eliza had, it became a trail of breadcrumbs I had to follow in my mind, leading me to the wicked witch’s house of caramelized-cards. It was hard to think this girl wanted nothing more than a coffee, the way she sized me up physically with her piercing gaze. She saw through my suit as though it was invisible, she saw the scrawny, weak man I was and deemed me inadequate, before we’d even ordered. The judgement was tangible in her eyes, behind the lines of her smile.
I’d had enough of this. After work I went to the store and dropped three hundred on an old, well-polished revolver. It was steel with a wooden handle. I’d purchased a holster, and they’d told me to take the concealed-permit class if I was going to walk around with it. Frankly, I didn’t know what I was going to do with it yet, but I was done being driven insane by my own thoughts. I needed to seize my life back.
I thought about it. Yes, that, I’d thought about it before too, overdosing on pills, but that never seemed like my way to go out. Plus, like I said, my parents were dead and watching over me. I’d prayed to God, asked him for redemption, asked him for my mind to be cleaned. Even went to confession and spilled my guts to the priest. Take a guess if it had been any help, while I hold this gun in my hand and get in my car, driving along the coastline, searching for the end of the horizon.
There were six bullets in rung, one in the chamber, I hadn’t cocked it. There was no threat. I was challenging myself to be strong, driving down roads I didn’t remember, passing by beautiful babes and tanned surfer dudes. California was great, even if you could just hit the beach once a week, it’d change your way of thinking, so they told me, so they’d told me.
How do you live with a life you don’t want anymore? How do you promise yourself things will be different when every morning they wake up the same? You tell yourself you’re here for a reason, that someone somewhere down the line will love you as much as you should love yourself every day. You wade in the ocean of denial until a tsunami of reality hits you, threatens to drown you, and then somehow, you’re breathing enough to know you got out alive, barely.
Well, here’s how. You change it. You tell yourself you have a choice, the ultimate choice. The one that resides in your doubt and darkness, dwells even in your moments of kindness and light, and you promise yourself if things ever get bad enough, that you’ll just end it, and be reincarnated as a bird or someshit. But the thing is, you never have the balls to do it, because it is a dishonor to the resources the world has poured into you, a dishonor to the good memories, the smiles you’ve shared with your buddies from college, the cheers at the bar when your football team wins the superbowl and you brag to all the losers, and they buy you a beer from the bet you’d both shaken on.
They’d mean nothing, no other individual had the same view as you. There are eight billion people in the world, and if you stood them all along the coastlines of the world, they’d each see a different perspective. You’d hop from person to person, seeing the beauty and wounds they’d endured in their lives. Cancer, paralyzed from the waist down, allergic to every food in the book and fearful of every bite you took being your last. Then you can go back to your own perspective, and realize, your choice hasn’t won you anything. So why would you choose self-pity over self-worth?
Why did I choose it every goddamn time?
The answer was simple, because I really was worthless, but if it was gonna be her or me, do you know who I’d choose? Self preservation was a special kind of curse and it had won in glory-less victory every time. My foot eased into a touch to the breaks and I took the revolver in my hand. Its potential, its emancipating beauty radiating in the setting California sun. I could see my blurred hand in the stainless steel reflection of the thing. Funny, it looked just like the mirror when it was sprayed with mist.
Yes, I sure thought about it. Every fucking day, but never again.
III
Miles and miles of dark pavement sprawled behind me, I looked, for the first time, in a long time, at the trees and unfurling road before me. It had been over a day and I still hadn’t taken my meds, Hell, I hadn’t even slept, but insomniacs like me thrive in the sort of element that deprives them not of sleepless hours, but of days. It was the first time in a long time, that I felt excitement thrill my body instead of fear. The first time ever, I’d gone this far for a woman. Ha!
Still, the delivery wouldn’t exactly be roses, now would it? All the mirrors in my car angled behind me, never settling on my face, but choosing random stray bits of my features to reshape with a slight curve. My car drove with a lovely hum, she was silver and had taken me all the way here. The only girl I still loved was this baby, but after this, I can’t be sure I’d be driving her for a while. This was fine, she wasn’t destined for commutes anyway.
The sun rose again on the tree-laden horizon and I felt my face crack with a smile in return to its warmth. I passed a road sign which read, “Welcome to New York” and just underneath it, a deer had fallen in the face of car or truck likely going eighty miles per hour. It never made it to the other side, but it had died trying. I felt the crunch of bone and gore splatter on my car’s undercarriage as I drove over it with two thuds.
Maybe after this, finally, I’d get a good night’s sleep.
[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Not sure I want to end it there but it feels like his intent was pretty finalized, though I don't imagine it happening like the story might lead the reader to believe. Overall, surprised about how well I feel it turned out. I usually go overboard on short stories. What do you think?
[/spoiler]
I
Warm fingertips fell on my cheek, delicately caressing my freshly formed stubble, soft as the pillowcase behind my head, as comfortable as a pillow. I feel myself smile, delight set into my chest as though it was being tickled with love and joy. The glow of the sun bore into my eyelids, and I welcomed the morning as she often kissed me awake so sweetly. Suddenly there was a pillow was over my mouth, suffocating me, pressure invaded my lungs and smothered over my face. The pureness of complete joy froze instantly, evaporating before complete terror overcame me. My screams were as muffled as my breaths, my strong arms flailed aimlessly, searching for the source, for the one who was holding the pillow over my mouth, denying my right to air. She was waiting for me to go limp, to give me CPR, like my life was a high-stakes game that she was destined to win, every time.
Yes, she was sick, but somehow these nightmares were getting more and more real. Still, I heard myself screaming, begging for air, powerless, helpless. I awoke. My bright eyes opened and my torso swept alertly up, the covers fell to my lap, leaving my skin bare, sleek and chilled with the disgusting sweat of true horror, the kind that stays with you long after your torment is gone.
To wash off the repulsive stink, I jump in the shower and lather up every inch of my body from head to toe. My dark hair, which hung around my ears in a very modern style, soaked up the soap and was rinsed out by the showerhead. I half-heartedly closed my eyes and tilted my face up to the showerhead, as though praying to the water’s divinity to baptize me here and now, to cleanse me of my sins. The cold water dripped down to my chin, waterfalling past the arcs and curves of my muscle, and splattering on the slippery floor in the uneven patterns of my movement.
Soap, hot water first, then cold, had cleansed me past the layers of my skin. Yet, the memories still haunted in my mind, and caused a jittery ache to my heart.. Elizabeth would never let me be free, not even in my dreams. My hand reached for the knob I knew was there and hesitated out of irrational trepidation to complete my reach. Fear for what I might find in its place. I open my eyes to absolve my fear and complete the twist. The water stopped. I was alone in my silence. Frigid with fear and devoid of much else. My morning would be hollow, yet I’d fill myself with tasteless coffee and thoughts full of remorse.
I didn’t shave, because I couldn’t think about the razors being that close to my neck. The blood drooling out of me if I’d nicked myself. My day was over before it even started. I opened the fogged up mirror, which hid my medicine cabinet, a lifetime of pill bottles came overflowing out. I always perched them far from the edge and somehow, they all rolled out like a landslide every morning, as though they were as on-edge as I was.
They all hid behind my tainted reflection, these were the skeletons in my closet. The doc said they were for PTSD, depression, chronic pain from that injury when she’d torn a ligament in my shoulder that had never quite healed right but it had been an ‘accident’ and well, the last bottle had been for insomnia. Those ones, sure, they put me out, but it was an unsettling slumber, like the one I’d just endured. No amount of pills would free me from the prison she’d set in my mind, the well-placed trapdoors, the immovable cadavers, the untrust I built my walls on to keep everyone out.
Fact is, no one believes a guy when he’s been abused. And if they do, they say “You should’ve settled it, smack her around and show her who’s boss,” or they silently judge you for being weak enough to take it for as long as I did.
I’d deteriorated into a blurred mess of who I used to be and I was only twenty-eight. I thought about her, Eliza, I thought she’d been the love of my life, she was charming, romantic, and actually had a brain for a change, unlike any of the other girls I’d met in the past. But here I was, a silhouette without essence, one who’s darkness was filled with more shadowed memories than the motivation to create new ones. I didn’t blame her, not for this, but I did resent her. The thought of her brings a piercing bitterness to my tongue, I recoil as the image of her face flashes in my mind as obtrusive as the sun’s beaming light through my kitchen window.
I had been eaten alive and like a seagull, she’d tossed away the shell of a man, and well, now I was doomed to live out my sufferable life in this burdening ache. Suffering had become my religion. Part of me begged for this all to be over, six feet under, she couldn’t touch me, but then, I’d leave no legacy. I was an only child and my parents had died young, an unfortunate plane crash in ‘08. I thought Eliza had been a great way to start my future, I’d landed a great job with a big business, even made it on Wall Street, but that was when things got freaky.
I’d been working late every night to secure my job and she’d accuse me of sleeping with prostitutes like I was some bigshot in the latest Dicaprio movie, I assured her my job was far from that much fun, and she’d taken it the wrong way. It was our first fight, she’d yelled so loud it blasted my eardrums and from that day, the fighting never really stopped. Even now, I grappled with my mind, trying to set it free by soothing it with the lies that she was locked away forever, that she couldn’t get a hold of me. I’d moved two thousand miles, changed my last name and filed a restraining order, still, she was Sherlock level smart, and if she ever escaped, I knew it wouldn’t be long.
One of these days I’d wake up and there really would be a pillow over my face.
II
Surprisingly, the day had gone well, I commuted to work, though, it was nothing like my last two jobs, which reaped grand rewards and placed everything on the line. I had liked that thrill, but she’d worn it out of me. I grabbed coffee at lunch with a girl, she was delightful, pretty, but behind her smile, I saw all the traits Eliza had, it became a trail of breadcrumbs I had to follow in my mind, leading me to the wicked witch’s house of caramelized-cards. It was hard to think this girl wanted nothing more than a coffee, the way she sized me up physically with her piercing gaze. She saw through my suit as though it was invisible, she saw the scrawny, weak man I was and deemed me inadequate, before we’d even ordered. The judgement was tangible in her eyes, behind the lines of her smile.
I’d had enough of this. After work I went to the store and dropped three hundred on an old, well-polished revolver. It was steel with a wooden handle. I’d purchased a holster, and they’d told me to take the concealed-permit class if I was going to walk around with it. Frankly, I didn’t know what I was going to do with it yet, but I was done being driven insane by my own thoughts. I needed to seize my life back.
I thought about it. Yes, that, I’d thought about it before too, overdosing on pills, but that never seemed like my way to go out. Plus, like I said, my parents were dead and watching over me. I’d prayed to God, asked him for redemption, asked him for my mind to be cleaned. Even went to confession and spilled my guts to the priest. Take a guess if it had been any help, while I hold this gun in my hand and get in my car, driving along the coastline, searching for the end of the horizon.
There were six bullets in rung, one in the chamber, I hadn’t cocked it. There was no threat. I was challenging myself to be strong, driving down roads I didn’t remember, passing by beautiful babes and tanned surfer dudes. California was great, even if you could just hit the beach once a week, it’d change your way of thinking, so they told me, so they’d told me.
How do you live with a life you don’t want anymore? How do you promise yourself things will be different when every morning they wake up the same? You tell yourself you’re here for a reason, that someone somewhere down the line will love you as much as you should love yourself every day. You wade in the ocean of denial until a tsunami of reality hits you, threatens to drown you, and then somehow, you’re breathing enough to know you got out alive, barely.
Well, here’s how. You change it. You tell yourself you have a choice, the ultimate choice. The one that resides in your doubt and darkness, dwells even in your moments of kindness and light, and you promise yourself if things ever get bad enough, that you’ll just end it, and be reincarnated as a bird or someshit. But the thing is, you never have the balls to do it, because it is a dishonor to the resources the world has poured into you, a dishonor to the good memories, the smiles you’ve shared with your buddies from college, the cheers at the bar when your football team wins the superbowl and you brag to all the losers, and they buy you a beer from the bet you’d both shaken on.
They’d mean nothing, no other individual had the same view as you. There are eight billion people in the world, and if you stood them all along the coastlines of the world, they’d each see a different perspective. You’d hop from person to person, seeing the beauty and wounds they’d endured in their lives. Cancer, paralyzed from the waist down, allergic to every food in the book and fearful of every bite you took being your last. Then you can go back to your own perspective, and realize, your choice hasn’t won you anything. So why would you choose self-pity over self-worth?
Why did I choose it every goddamn time?
The answer was simple, because I really was worthless, but if it was gonna be her or me, do you know who I’d choose? Self preservation was a special kind of curse and it had won in glory-less victory every time. My foot eased into a touch to the breaks and I took the revolver in my hand. Its potential, its emancipating beauty radiating in the setting California sun. I could see my blurred hand in the stainless steel reflection of the thing. Funny, it looked just like the mirror when it was sprayed with mist.
Yes, I sure thought about it. Every fucking day, but never again.
III
Miles and miles of dark pavement sprawled behind me, I looked, for the first time, in a long time, at the trees and unfurling road before me. It had been over a day and I still hadn’t taken my meds, Hell, I hadn’t even slept, but insomniacs like me thrive in the sort of element that deprives them not of sleepless hours, but of days. It was the first time in a long time, that I felt excitement thrill my body instead of fear. The first time ever, I’d gone this far for a woman. Ha!
Still, the delivery wouldn’t exactly be roses, now would it? All the mirrors in my car angled behind me, never settling on my face, but choosing random stray bits of my features to reshape with a slight curve. My car drove with a lovely hum, she was silver and had taken me all the way here. The only girl I still loved was this baby, but after this, I can’t be sure I’d be driving her for a while. This was fine, she wasn’t destined for commutes anyway.
The sun rose again on the tree-laden horizon and I felt my face crack with a smile in return to its warmth. I passed a road sign which read, “Welcome to New York” and just underneath it, a deer had fallen in the face of car or truck likely going eighty miles per hour. It never made it to the other side, but it had died trying. I felt the crunch of bone and gore splatter on my car’s undercarriage as I drove over it with two thuds.
Maybe after this, finally, I’d get a good night’s sleep.
[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Not sure I want to end it there but it feels like his intent was pretty finalized, though I don't imagine it happening like the story might lead the reader to believe. Overall, surprised about how well I feel it turned out. I usually go overboard on short stories. What do you think?
[/spoiler]
![[Image: -Gildarts-fairy-tail-35651033-300-180.gif]](http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/35600000/-Gildarts-fairy-tail-35651033-300-180.gif)
"I have never met a strong person with an easy past." -Atticus