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Untitled work.	Sep 30, 09 @ 4:48am
Someone once asked me what it was like to die. I remember looking him right in the eyes, with tiny white wisps of smoke dissipating into the air between our noses. I was either really tired, or really high, because his pupils dilated and shrank over and over, rippling the spring green of his eyes like lake water. “I don’t remember.” He didn’t like my answer. He also didn’t like me smoking. He took my cigarette and put it out in my Ocean Water slushie. “Lilith.” “Daemon.” I wasn’t paying attention to his glares. I was mentally tracing the line of his hair, one of his bangs falling just perfectly to lead my eye to line of his brow, to his jaw, his chin, his throat, the dark blue veins that bunched in the almost invisible throb of his pulse. “Lilith.” I jumped when he said my name again, eyes snapping up to his. I watched the living ripple in his eyes. “What, Daemon? What do you want me to say?” “I just need to know what you saw.” “I don’t remember. I don’t remember any of it. I don’t even remember how I got there.” Daemon rubbed his face with both hands, setting his sunglasses on the table. I looked in the reflection of the lenses and felt the sting of envy in my chest. He was immaculate; a tan, frustrated statue. And I… Well, I was a Picasso that had seen much better days. The left side of my lip was swollen and dark, a long cut from the corner of my right eye to almost my chin line. There was a band aid holding together the gash in my forehead and my right eye had started to bruise inward from the cut. I should’ve known I looked this bad when my slushie was free. I’m not sure how long I stared at myself before he spoke. “It’s really not as bad as it looks to you, I’m sure.” “I look like I was beaten half to death.” “Technically, you were beaten whole to death.” “I’m not dead, Daemon.” “Not anymore.” We exchanged cold glares and I picked up my slushie to take a sip. His hand covered mine to stop me. Right. My cigarette. “I wish I could help you.” I said softly, laying my head on the table. My stomach turned slightly with the head rush that licked at my frontal lobe. “You just have to think.” His voice was softer. The accidental confrontation with my reflection seemed to have softened him. I closed my eyes and exhaled. “You make it sound easy.” Turns out, It was. When I woke up I was facedown against the dashboard. I tasted blood and dirt and I heard rain. So much rain. With hands braced against the glove compartment, I lifted myself up and looked around. The car was nose down in a cement drainage ditch. The engine was peeking through the radio console and the windshield was sparkling on the stone in front of me. I watched the rain wash it away. I didn’t look in the seat beside me at the mass curled awkwardly around the steering wheel. I unbuckled my seat belt and hooked my hand into the dented hinges of the hood. Pulling, I managed to get free and jerk forward. I rolled down the hood and slammed into the cement. I screamed. So much blood, so much pain. I curled into a ball on the hood of the car and laid my gashed arm out for the rain to wash over. I should have been cold, but I wasn’t. I knew I was swallowing enough blood to make me throw up, but I didn’t. I let the cold afternoon rain soak my clothes and wash me clean. When my eyes closed to sleep, I knew I was dead. Six days, thirteen hours, and twenty-two minutes later, I woke up in the bed of a small clinic in a nearby town. The tube down my throat kept me from talking and the nurses and doctor over me assured me I was fine. They just needed to know my name to contact family and make sure they knew I was safe. I shook my head no. Not no as in ‘No, fuck you’. No as in, ‘I don’t know’. I didn’t know my name. But I knew a name, and a number. Daemon. When they left me to let me sleep I started to work. The tube was the first thing to go, followed by the ridiculous amount of liquefied food that I vomited up shortly after. I pulled the IV out of my arm and chewed on the rubber hose that made my tourniquet while I removed my catheter. The last was the worst. The hose slid from my teeth I was clenching so hard and I chipped a tooth by my own force. That was almost as bad. I found clothes. They weren’t mine, but from the girl in the bed beside me. Someone had brought her a whole bag of clothes. I found jeans and a shirt. I didn’t think about shoes until I was already outside. The people who saw me on the street stared at me. It made me wonder if I had ‘escaped hospital patient’ tattooed on my forehead. When I found a payphone, I dialed the number I knew. His voice hit my ear. “hello?” “Daemon.” I heard him stop breathing. I could hear something in the background. It sounded like water. Like rain. “Lilith?” Lilith was my name. “I need you to come get me.” “You’re supposed to be dead.” “Please.” Daemon had circled the table and was holding my face in his hands by the time my eyes opened back up. They must’ve been dilated or unfocused or something because Daemon slowly put six inches of space between our faces. “I died in the car accident.” I sounded so sure. Daemon nodded. “The driver was the man who took me from town. Someone ran us off the road by accident… and saved me.” Daemon just watched as everything registered. I felt a hot tear fall free from my eyelashes and roll down my face. I pressed my hand to my mouth. “Fuck, Daemon.” “What?” “I stole some girl’s clothes.” Daemon finally realized that keeping me in public might have been a bad idea. He slid out of his hooded sweatshirt and draped it over me. I clutched to him like he could put the warmth back in my fingertips or stop my eyes from watering. He kept one arm around me and the other on the arm holding onto him. If I decided to fall, he could catch me without face-to-cement contact. The sudden realization that I was a walking corpse turned me paranoid. I refused to look up at anyone. I watched Daemon’s feet lead us toward his apartment. I don’t remember when the warm cement turned to dark red Ferber carpet or when the floors arched into stairs. The hallway carpet was blue with gold triangles like ugly argyle socks. The kind a dad would wear. Did I have a dad? He sat me on a couch that squeaked under my weight and settled on the side of the coffee table in front of me. He sounded worried when he said my name. I let him say it twice more before I smiled slightly. He caught my Beetlejuice reference like a pro. “This is the part where you tell me it’s show time, or walk out of a tiny strip club.” I smiled wider, I might’ve shown teeth. I pushed my hand through my hair and wiped my tear-streaked face. “How could I have just forgotten such a big chunk?” “You didn’t forget me.” “You’re it, though. You’re all that there was when I woke up. I knew your name and I knew what number to dial.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense.” I looked him straight in the face. “Are we a thing?” The look of embarrassment, confusion, disgust, and slight lust was slightly pleasing. I was already looking forward to his answer. “We were. Once.” “Why aren’t we anymore?” “We broke up after I cheated on you with this dame from our favorite diner.” My heart sank slightly, but my eyebrow arched. “Did you just say ‘Dame’?” “I tend to talk like a nineteen fifties’ reject. You do it too.” “But we’re still friends? We still talk?” Daemon nodded. “It took a few months, almost half a year, for us to sit down and talk things out and be able to be friends. I deserved what happened, I made a stupid mistake. But we’ve been inseparable ever since.” He swallowed. “Until you disappeared.” I sat up too fast when he said it. My head swam and my Ocean Water slushie defied every means of gravity and shot up my throat. Twenty seconds later it was a tie-dye splash on his shirt. I also saw red. Blood, probably. Instead of being disgusted, he had had the mindset to grab my hair and hold it back. He stood slowly, the end of his shirt turned up to keep from dripping. “I’m going to shower.” “Good idea. You got something on your shirt. Can I borrow your toothbrush?” He got the shower running and tucked himself inside of it before he let me brush my teeth. After I did, I moved around his room and snooped through his stuff. He wore boxers. Silky ones, brief-y ones, Scooby doo ones… I moved to his sock drawer and lifted a brow. “No way.” In almost perfect match to the carpet outside his door was a line of argyle socks. He opened the door and I turned to look at him, lifting a brow. He held up a hand. “Don’t even. Every guy can strut around in socks, but only when you can put on argyle socks and your Nikes can you be a true baller.” “I feel like we might’ve had this conversation before.” I shut the drawer and leaned back against it with my arms crossed. “I think you’ve had that prepared.” “Let’s just say I have to defend my socks pretty often.” “I can see why, gramps.” He glared at me as he opened his underwear drawer and collected clothes. He made sure to tug on his socks with only his towel before strutting back into the bathroom. “You can not tell me this isn’t awesome.” I fell back on his bed. “Pretty sure I can.” My eyes swung up to the ceiling and my head canted. There was collage of pictures, all of them of space. Stars, planets, solar systems. Holding them up were small plastic stars and sticky tack. I remembered. “Lil, are you home?” “Yes’ir, getting dressed.” I tugged on a pair of his boxers and pulled off my work socks, throwing open the bedroom door. He stood in the doorway holding up a magazine cut out. A beautiful illustration of the milky way, almost a foot long and so heavy with detail you’d think the stars were going to twinkle off the page. I bounced happily in place. “It’s gorgeous! Where’d you find it?” “Astronomy magazine at the college. It was a pull-out poster, so I pulled it out and you can post it.” I took it from him and ran across the room to jump on the bed. Head tipped back and turning in circles on the blankets I clicked my tongue. “Where?” “To the right of the Dippers?” “No. The Mars/Sun alignment is there.” “Below that.” I followed the invisible pointer of his finger and found the blank space. Smoothing the paper against the eggshell ceiling I took the small stars he hands up to me and tacked it into place. I spread my arms and fell back. Not onto the bed, onto him. “What do you think?” “We’re building quite a universe here.” He said with a nod, swaying back and forth with his arms around my middle. I tipped my head over my shoulder to look at him. “You know all that’s missing?” He shook his head. “What?” I put my hand on my stomach and he looked down to it. His eyes slowly got wider until he looked back at me. “You mean it?” “Sure do.” I wasn’t sure how long he stood over me before he spoke, dragging me out of my memory. “I never got around to taking it down.” He said somewhat bashfully. “Don’t.” I said, sitting up slowly to look at him. I watched him for a second, trying to think of a way to word my question. “Have you added to it?” That wasn’t what I was supposed to say. Maybe I still had head trauma. He shook his head slowly. “No, it didn’t seem right.” I watched him look up toward it. I followed his gaze. There was one piece of paper that was rougher than the others, like it was tore quickly from a page that wasn’t supposed to be torn. It looked like something from a children’s book. A mommy star and a daddy star had their arms around a baby star wrapped in a blanket the same color as the sky behind them. The image tied a knot in my throat and I looked back down to him. “Were we going to have a baby?” His head looked like it should have snapped off his neck with how fast he turned to look at me. “Do you remember?” “Sort of.” He swallowed. “We… talked about it. But about a month after was when I…” “Let’s say you went on vacation. Particularly from your sanity.” He flinched. “A month after we talked about having a baby I went on vacation. I told you about it two days later and you packed and left.” It was like I was watching it played out on a movie screen. I was so frustrated and it was so hard to differentiate my stuff from his. I had no shorts or pajamas, I always wore his. I threw them all on the floor from my drawers and just put my clothes in the suitcase. But not everything would fit. Fuck my life, not everything would fit. I couldn’t come back a second time, I wouldn’t. I dropped to the floor Indian-style and rocked back and forth, sobbing. I put my hands on my stomach and dropped my head to cry more. One tear fell and dropped on the silver ring on my finger. I ripped it off so hard my own nails scratched open my finger. By the time he got back I was gone. I had managed to get all of my stuff in one try, and in the center of the bed I had left the silver ring on top of a pregnancy test box. I couldn’t remember the result. My hand went to my stomach as I sat in front of him now. I shook my head, fresh tears on my face. I laughed, and it was bitter. “It’s like I’m having to live all of this again.” I croaked. He moved slowly, cautiously, but when I didn’t pull away he sat beside me and pulled me into his arms. I punched him once in the chest, but fell against him in desperate need. “I hate you.” I cried against his skin. “I know.” I fell asleep against him at some point, and he put me to bed. I remember holding on to his shirt when he tried to leave and he carefully laid beside me. “Sleep.” His voice echoed a thousand times in my head, temporary filling the space where my memories should have been. “I’ll be here when you wake up.” I dreamt I woke up with nothing but a note of paper beside me that said I lied. When I picked it up, it burst into flames. Dropping it on the bed, I tried to slap it out and it turned into a half dozen tiny pink pachyderms. When I actually woke I padded into our bathroom and peed. I used his toothbrush to brush my teeth and used my fingers as a comb to my hair. Pulling it back, I moved slowly to the kitchen and found my favorite mug in the back of the cabinet. I dropped a vanilla chai tea bag into the coffee maker and sat my cup impatiently underneath. It was only until the coffee started dripping that I realized everything I had just done. “It’s automatic.” He said softly from the kitchen counter. “Your body still remembers.” I turned to look at him. “So do I.” I said almost breathlessly. I knew everything about our house, well, his house. But I knew my apartment was bare and lifeless. I had never gotten settled there, I never could. Eight months and I never even completely unpacked. I slid down the counter to the floor as my head spun. My name was Lillith Avery Thompson. My foster parents were Anne Marie and Michael Thompson. I was adopted out of a girl’s home when I was twelve, a place I had been for five years after my mother, a single mother, had died of leukemia. So. I didn’t have a dad. Not a real dad. Just Michael. We sat on the floor in the kitchen for a while and talked about me. I didn’t even have questions to ask anymore, not really. I just needed to say everything I remembered out loud. It was scary at first, waking up knowing everything you had forgotten days before. But now it was painful, excruciatingly so. In my ribs. I was laughing so hard I thought I would vomit. “No, no.” Daemon slurred, lying on the floor in front of me holding his stomach. “When we first moved in here, you tried to sock skate on this floor.” I busted up laughing again. I literally couldn’t breathe anymore, just laugh. “I-I-I slipped and k-k-kicked in one of the cabinets when I hit the fl-fl-floor.” My only peace came from the fact that he looked to be in as much pain as I did. We recalled every memory we had together, even the bad ones, but somehow we kept smiling. At some point, he fetched strawberry banana yogurt to eat on between stories. I picked at mine. “Why did you do it?” “Do what?” “Cheat on me.” He exhaled, taking a bite. “You’ve never asked me that before.” I shrugged. “Near death experiences make you curious.” “I think I felt trapped, and I was drunk. We were talking about having a baby, which I want to, but when that girl started hitting on me I thought it’d be like a last hurrah.” He puffed his cheeks up and then passed the air through his lips. “It’s not a very good reason.” I shook my head slowly. “No. It’s not… But I understand.” “Now let me ask you something.” He said, lifting his head to watch me as I licked my spoon clean. “Where did you go when you disappeared?” It was my turn to sigh. “I drove for almost two days without sleeping.” I nodded as I said it, confirming facts and dates in my head. “All the way to the Seattle border, and then back. I wanted to go to Seattle and start over. Find a nice little apartment and fill it with lots of things and tons of stuff.” I nodded again. I felt like a bobble head stuck on the front of an off road ATV. “But I couldn’t. Because Seattle was supposed to be our place. When we finally got the money to leave here and go somewhere new, we were supposed to go to Seattle.” I shrugged. “When I came back, I walked in on three guys robbing my apartment.” Not that it was hard. The boxes I lived out of were labeled with their contents and the few worth-stealing items I owned were on display on empty tables. “One of them had a gun, and told me if I yelled he’d shoot me right there.” The yogurt in front of me was suddenly less appetizing. Surely reliving a traumatic experience couldn’t take the joy out of strawberry banana yogurt. “So… I didn’t. I watched them take everything except what was in my car. But before the last one left, he made me take him outside to my car and we got in. He said he was going to drive us somewhere and kill me where no one could find me.” My hand was shaking. I put down my spoon. “He played with the radio, turned on the air. He even buckled up his seat belt and watched the speed limit. When we passed the city limits I knew I was going to die.” He hadn’t spoken since I started. I had forgotten he was in the room. “But it started raining.” I nodded, watching a rain drop fall and hit the floor beside my yogurt. No, not a rain drop. A tear. “Yeah, and some sedan sped up to try and pass us. I remember him mumbling how stupid the person was. And then they lost control, and they hit us.” In the silence that settled into the cracks and crevices of our apartment I could hear the rain falling outside again. I swallowed some. “How did you know I was dead, or why did you think?” “They found your car.. And.. The guy. And he had a gun in his floorboard.” Daemon exhaled. “Your seat was covered in blood, and your body was gone by the time anyone from the city got to the scene.” He nodded then, something I had been doing long enough for my neck to ache. I watched his eyes. Did I look that haunted when I talked? “They said he probably shot you and was leaving town with your car when he was hit.” “How long… Did you think?” “Almost a week, you were presumed dead. But with the rain and the damage to your car, they said you could’ve been gone since the day you disappeared from your place.” Daemon pushed his yogurt away. “One more question, and we can push this away and never talk about it again.” I sat back against the cabinets, pulling my knees to my chest. There was a lot of space between us this way. It felt like too much. “Shoot.” He looked me right in the eyes and I watched the wheels turn as he tried to form his question. “Why me?” He finally asked. I smiled slightly. “Good question.” I surprised myself with the answer. “When you had to go into Seattle for business right after we moved in here together I told you I was scared to leave the apartment. You thought I was kidding and told me people were going to come take me and all of my silk panties.” He snorted, struggling to keep his face. I threw my spoon at him. “But I was serious! I was still adjusting and you already had to go. I was scared. Then you told me, ‘If something happens and you ever need to find your way back home-’.” “I’ll be your guiding star back to where you belong.” Daemon finished, his eyes wide. “I can’t… believe you remember that.” “But I do, and I did… and even when I wasn’t sure where home was, or who I was. I knew that I had a guide who could bring it all back.” I looked back up to him from the bashful glances at my feet. He was crying, and I knew I was too. This was the highly climatic moment that could make or break any blockbuster film. He opened his mouth to talk and I held my hand up. “ONE condition.” He smirked slowly, sitting back. “Shoot.” “We don’t put any more stars on the ceiling here.” His smirk faded some. “Why not?” “I want to save them for the house in Seattle. The house we’ll go find soon. Deal?” “Deal.”
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Non-story blogging.	Jul 1, 09 @ 3:09am
Goes here. And I'll link back to my stories here in tandem. Tada!
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Mirror.	Jun 9, 09 @ 3:26am
“Are you kidding me?” “Why would you deny it so adamantly if it wasn’t true?” “That doesn’t make an ounce of fucking sense. Am I supposed to admit to it if I didn’t do it?” “Well no, of course not. But you denying it like this makes you look guilty.” “I didn’t say a damn thing to your little friend, Cassidy.” “Well she says you did, and you say you didn’t. Who am I supposed to trust?” “If you really have to ask that question, I think you should leave.” They stared each down for a moment, both of them tense, bodies shifting some. She picked up her jacket off the side of the couch and turned quietly, heading right for the door. He watched her go, offering no attempt to stop her. When the door closed he exhaled so hard his lungs could collapse. He rubbed his face with both hands, pressing the heels into his eyes. Turning, he hooked his fingers into the back of his desk chair, dragging it across the small living area to the body length mirror posted up against the wall. He settled into it, leaning back with his arms crossed. He waited. It took no time at all for those two glowing green little orbs to appear, tilting curiously. Her details followed; button nose, midnight hair, arched brows, sweet pink lips. Her flesh was softly pale, dotted with freckles, never exposed to the sun before. She was sitting cross-legged on her little bench, her chin in her hand and her elbow connected with her knee. Her hair was pulled back into a ridiculously perky ponytail due to its length. She was only in black boy short underwear and a dark pink shirt. Her lips curled softly, apologetically. But he was already smiling. “Aht’ namas.” She sighed gently. “Justin. Are you alright?” “Of course I’m alright.” Her eyes drifted toward the door and he exhaled. “Don’t worry about that.” “It’s hard not to.” “For me?” “That’s why I do worry.” He sighed some. Stubborn. He had discovered her for the first time when he stood in the mirror to examine himself. His dark flesh was made darker and decorated with collections of designed ink. Symbols, shapes, people, names. He loved it. All of it. But as he stared at the small script on his chest, he saw two curious green orbs appear. He wiped at his chest, then at the mirror. They flickered, but didn’t disappear. She blinked again, covering her mouth as she giggled. He looked everywhere for the source for almost three days before she spoke timidly. “What does that one mean? The one on your chest?” She touched her own chest where the mark lay. Her head canted. As startled as he should have been, he was charmed by the sweet, quiet lilt of her voice. “It’s Hebrew.” “What does it say?” “Yahweh.” She nodded some. He watched in fascination as her profile became visible behind the supposedly solid glass of the mirror. He pulled it away from the wall, circled it, and put it back. She was still there, in better view now. She smiled to him, dimples denting her cheeks. He was fascinated with her, and he couldn’t help himself. She was the same. She appeared anytime he called, sat and watch while he worked or designed, called out her ideas of criticisms. She hardly ever criticized him. She wore almost the same thing every day. She explained she didn’t enjoy pants, and she had no reason to wear them anyway. He asked her where she went when she wasn’t haunting the other side of his mirror. She shrugged. She wasn’t sure. Where she went was where she was until she appeared again. He came home each day and called to her. She watched as he worked, cleaned, played, cooked. They talked for hours each day. Sometimes he hardly sat still, others he perched before her and didn’t move for hours. Every once in a while she would seem full of energy. She’d dance and do turns and flips in her infinite space, disappearing from sight and reappearing with a giggle. She became his reason for waking up each day, and the reason he worked as hard as he did. The girl in the mirror. “…And that’s pretty much the whole story.” He removed his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. After ranting off the cause of the argument, he felt tired. She watched him with soft eyes. “That’s a silly thing to get upset about.” “I think so too.” “And to accuse you of it, rather than just asking…” “Mhm.” She sighed, stretching out along her bench. “Girls are stupid.” He had to smile. “Technically, you’re a girl.” “No, I’m a reflection.” “Not my reflection.” “Well… No.” “Then you’re a reflection of…” “A girl.” She mewed, defeated. He watched her. The way her chest rose and fell, the way the pulse in her leg where it crossed the other made it sway slightly. Up and down, up and down. “Ath’namas.” “Hm?” “Have you ever come out?” She turned her head to look at him. “No… I don’t know how. I don’t think I can.” He leaned forward slightly, watching her. “But you’ve never tried.” “I don’t know how.” “That doesn’t mean you can’t do it.” She sat up with a sigh, shifting nervously on her seat some. She slowly stuck her foot out, pressing her toes to the glass. They smushed against it. He had to laugh. He stuck his own foot up against hers, his toes a little longer. She smirked, forcing herself to stand. She tried her hands, knees, elbows, shoulders. She lightly touched the glass, bum rushed it, slid against it. Nothing. After an almost an hour of watching her awkward dance she plopped back down. Though they had had laughs, her eyes were sad. “See? I can’t.” He stood then, moving against the glass. He put his forehead to it. “Sure you can.” She stood, standing on her tip toes to press her forehead against his. She put her hands to the glass and he put his hands to hers. “We’ve waited all this time… what’s another day?” It broke his heart to hear it, her voice just above a whisper. “Too long.” He answered. “Another day is just too long.” She felt the warmth against her forehead then, a physical warmth she had never known before. His fingers moved slightly to slide through hers and she felt herself pulled forward. She stepped out with one foot, and then the other as he stepped back. The glass rippled like a silver pool before settling, simply a reflection of the room around it. She felt like she had forgotten to breathe. They stood in quiet awe for a minute before she swallowed, her words warm on his lips. “You’re real.” He pressed his forehead to hers, lips barely dancing across her own. “So are you.” She met his lips in a sweet exchange, her hands squeezing his and her toes barely overlapping his own. When they finally broke the embrace her eyes rolled up to his gently, her voice still shaky. “Does this mean I have to wear pants?”
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Untitled.	Apr 27, 09 @ 12:37am
“Are you okay?” “Un.” “Are you oh kay?” “I…” Eyes roll. “You’re naked.” “So are you.” Looking down, I realize that I am indeed naked. But that’s… okay. “Who are you?” “Who am I?” My head hurts. I lift my hands to rub my face and realize I’m also in silky white gloves. “I thought I was naked.” “Were you?” “You’re not helping.” “Who am I?” Eyes focus. Taking her in. Perfect curves, chocolate curls, honey brown eyes. Dark lashes, pink eyeshadow, pinker lips. “You’re crying.” “Who am I?” I can’t remember. I know her. Seeing her cry hurts. Without touching her I know what the pink scar on her hip feels like. Without kissing her I know what her pink gloss tastes like. I reach out, brushing the curl from her eye and the tear from her lash. My gloves are gone. “Please, stop crying.” “Who am I?” Guilt. Sharp and radiating right into my chest. By left ear bubbles and feels thick, fluid filled. I touch my face. I’m crying. “Why are we crying?” “We’re crying.” “I’m aware. Why?” “Who am I.” “I DON’T KNOW.” Frustration. My head falls back against the grass. The ground is hard, too hard to be grass. “Where are we?” “Same place we’ve been.” “You’re being cryptic.” “You know who I am.” My chest hurts. My body jerks slightly, it hurts more. “Who am I?” “Why does my chest hurt?” She leans over me, her curls frame my face just so. I lift my hand to touch her face, a tear drops from her face onto my cheek. “You’re so cold.” Guilt. My chest swells with it. “Oh god. Aslyn.” “Wake up, Syn.” “I’m not asleep.” “Please, Syn.” “Aslyn, I’m not asleep.” Her face never changes, soft, tears dripping. Her voice gets louder. “Syn, please. Come on. Syn. SYN.” Slamming into your own body is like being in a car being smashed from both sides. You want to move, you want to get away, but you’ve nowhere to go. That also happens to be what a seizure feels like. “She’s back.” “Roll her onto her side.” “Why?” I feel the burn of the bile in my throat seconds before the contents of my stomach evacuate onto Aalen’s shoes. “C-cold.” Who said that? “I know, Syn, I know. We’re trying to find a blanket.” Oh. I did. My eyes open some when they roll me back onto my back. I can feel my body twitching and jerking in soft spasms. They pull my eyelids back and shine a light into them. Someone gets a weak slap to the chest. “Shhh.” “Aslyn.” “That’s right, I’m here.” “What happened?” I feel like I’m trying to slur out my words in a foreign tongue. “You OD’d.” Guilt. Dull and weak in my aching chest. Whoever was doing CPR was too rough. My sternum is bruised. “I’m sorry.” “Shhh.” Was I really naked? A soft shift of my body gave me a tug of fabric. No. Good. I tried to open my eyes again. Four head. Four people who could have potentially seen me naked. Crisis averted. Stomach turning. “Side.” I gasped. Two sets of hands roll me over and pull my hair back just in time to empty what’s left of my guilt-swallowed soul into a wastebasket. No. Not my blue wastebasket. It’s my favorite. Bastards. When they roll me back onto my back, something pops. I barely remember groaning before black explodes across my vision. “Syn…” I snort as I wake, instantly aware of it. My hand goes to my nose as she laughs. We’re in swim suits. The sand is crawling up my butt crack. “How long have we been here?” “Long enough for you to get a burn.” Looking down, I see the white flesh of my stomach and chest tinging a light pink. “You didn’t wake me.” “You were tired.” I turn my eyes back to her and she smiles down at me. “You’ve been working too hard.” “I’m fine.” “I wish you wouldn’t take those pills.” Lifting my hand out of the sand, the orange pill bottle in my hand rattles happily. “I need these.” “You’ve been working too hard.” “So I’ve heard.” “Aalen!” “It’s just another seizure. I think it’s over.” “is she going to vomit again?” “No.” I croak from the bed. There’s nothing left to vomit. My side hurts. “I’m cold.” “We can’t put anymore blankets on you, Syn.” “Where am I?” “Ballin General.” When did we move? I try to open my eyes, but the lights are too bright. I lift my hand to try and block them out, I feel her hand grab mine. The cheap lime green polish on my nails is chipping. I’m a slob. I bring her hand down to mine and kiss it. “I’m sorry.” “It’s okay now, baby girl. Just stay awake…. Syn… Stay awake. Please don’t go back to sleep. Syn? Syn!” Syn! Syn! Syn! Syn! I open my eyes, pushing myself off the hard wood of the court. My head ached where it hit the floor. Jennifer pulls me up. “Awesome save.” I’m on the volleyball court. I lean down to pull my kneepad back into place. I stand to rub my head. The pain is sharp. When I pull my hand away my finger looks dark. Blood? I was bleeding? I turn when my name is called and jog back onto the court. It’s all robotic. My mind is so foggy, but I’m so awake, so alive. I see her there, watching. She was smiling before, but now she looks worried. I wipe my hand on my shorts. I’ll finish this for her. To see her smile. Time… stands still. The ball is in the air, just spinning. It’s hard to blink. The ball turns into a pill. A little spinning, twirling pill. I stand straight then, dropping my hands from the bumping position. I feel something hot and thick sliding down my neck from my ponytail. It all makes sense, something clicks. “I didn’t OD.” “I think she’s back.” “She’s stable.” “Syn?” “..Azh.. Layn..” “Why does she sound like that?” “She just woke up?” “Medical opinion, asshole.” “…She just woke up?” The lights are lower now. “She called you an asshole.” “I heard, Syn.” “That’s pretty funny.” But that’s not what’s important. I force my eyes open and try to sit up. “Wait, wait.. No.. something. Something is different.” “Syn, lay back. Your body just feels weird.” “No. It doesn’t.” Why doesn’t anyone listen to me? “It does. Because you kept taking those stupid pills.” The harshness of her voice shuts everyone up. I turn my head to look at her. Black bags are under her bloodshot eyes. She in sweatpants and a long sleeves shirt that curves to her body. She looks so bright in the off-white room. She’s never looked at me like that. “It wasn’t the pills.” She raises her hands in exasperation. “Of course it’s not the pills. It’s never the pills. You’ve been acting fucking stupid for a week. But no, it’s not the fucking pills.” The guilt in my chest turns to hurt when she puts her back to me. A week. “When was my volleyball game?” “Last week.” Aalen finally says, his voice careful as he watched his sister. He was also halfway holding me up. He looked different in his doctor’s coat. “I hit my head.” I say, looking from him back to Aslyn. “My head bled.” “Yeah?” Jennifer perks up some. “I remember you had a stain on your jersey. Was it blood?” “I don’t remember the last week.” Aalen’s brow furrows, I can almost hear it. He laid me back and had Jennifer help roll me. I never stopped staring as Aslyn. She glanced back, then away. I felt Aalen playing in my hair and shivered some. I tried to stay still, but white hot pain shot through my body. I don’t remember screaming, but I could hear it echo. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Aalen said over and over, Jennifer hushing me and petting my hair. “What is it?” Jennifer asked, smiling softly as she bent in front of me. “Keep your eyes open.” She said softly. Aalen rubbed his face. “She has a serious skull fracture. A concussion. Her blood should have built up and clotted and killed her days ago?” “Why didn’t it?” Not that I wasn’t thankful, I was just curious. “The pills you’ve been taking to get through classes… they act like.. Blood thinners. When you finally slowed down to sleep, and laid back, your blood started pooling in the back of your head. It caused your fit and almost exactly mimicked the symptoms of an overdose.” Aslyn turned slowly from the window. I can barely see her over Jennifer’s ponytail, but the look on her face is that of seeing a ghost. I don’t feel guilty anymore. “We need to get you into surgery.” “Are you going to have to shave my head?” “Sure. I can shave it in a lightning bolt pattern, if it helps.” I smiled. I smiled for what had to be the first time in a week. “It does help.”
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Surviving Gwendolyn. (Updated and Lengthened)	Nov 30, 08 @ 8:25am
I’ve never experienced loss before now. How does a person live for twenty years without knowing death? I’ll tell you what it feels like the first time. Like you’re falling. Like you’re free-falling a thousand miles toward an ocean made of broken glass and lit cigarettes. You know it’s going to hurt when you get there, but for now you’re just enjoying the wind on your face. Gravity doesn’t exist here, and you can turn your head to look down toward your fate. It looks painful, but at least you’re not there yet. “Gwen? Gwenny? Are you there? Come on, baby, say something.” I feel my body slam down into the glass and cigarette sea. It hurts, but it doesn’t kill me. That’d be too easy. My knees are bruised. Now that my eyes have focused I can see that I’m on the floor. I must’ve fallen. I can hear the plastic of the phone crack and rattle under my grip. If I don’t relent my death hold on the phone soon, it’ll shatter. We wouldn’t want that. “I’m here.” The voice that said it is thick with emotion and raw with tears. It takes me a full minute to realize that it’s mine. I sound horrible. If my legs were working, I’d go get one of those cough drops that tasted like menthol and honey. “I’m so sorry you had to hear this over the phone, Gwen… No one else knew where you were.” “Yeah, it’s okay… Thanks for calling.” “Wait, do you need someone to come over? I could come spend the ni-” The phone clicks off before she can finish. I’m almost positive I’m the one that hung up. I’ll apologize later. I love Emily. We’ve been best friends since our junior year in high school. She was the first kid in school to meet my two moms and not be the least bit uncomfortable. That made her an instant keeper. Enough of a keeper that she could call and tell me that one of my two moms was dead, and not endanger our friendship. The drive to the hospital is a vague memory. I changed out of my date clothes into a pair of black carpenter pants and a long sleeved grey sweater. I remember stepping into flip flops and staring at myself in the mirror for a long time. Was this appropriate hospital-attire? Did I need to sterilize my clothing? How do you even do that? I figured if I was out of code a nurse would beat me to the ground or call security to do it for her. When I got to the hospital, all I had to say what that I was Olivia Chamberlain’s daughter. A nurse told me exactly where to go. No sterilization required at the morgue. My living mother was banged up from the crash, but was on her feet. She was tall and lean, with large almond eyes and thin lips. Her hair was naturally dark, a stark contrast to my white blond. When I saw her, I broke out into a run. She heard my flip flops and turned just in time to catch me against her body. There were no words then. I listened to her lungs flex and heave as she cried, and I listened to myself cry with her. I dropped my keys on the linoleum and my legs went next. She slid down to the floor as I did and held me against her. She was rocking me. I haven’t been rocked since I was too short to see over the swell of her breasts. She ran her hands through my hair and kissed me over and over, whispering five words over and over against my hair. We’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. I let her whisper it. I wanted to believe it, I really did. But I didn’t. What was okay about this? Any of this? When I woke up this morning, I had two parents. Olivia and Marley Chamberlain. When I went to work, I had two parents. When I got home, I had two parents. When I got dressed to go out, I had two parents. But when I came home, I only had one. I hate math. I hate numbers and circumstance and equations. Some universe-wide equation took my mother away. What did we ever do to numbers to make them turn on us? Frankenumeral. “Gwenny…” I looked up to Marley and nodded once to let her know I heard her. “Come on, stand up.” She hoisted me to my feet like I weighed nothing and I finally straightened myself. My keys were still on the floor. I suddenly couldn’t remember if I drove here. Marley cupped my face and made me look at her. She swallowed and stroked my face softly. “I’m so sorry, baby. She tried to hold on, she did. She held my hand.” Stop it. “We talked about you, about you when you were little, about how beautiful you are.” Stop talking. “She told me to tell you she loves you, and that she knows you’ll be okay. We’ll both be okay.” Stop. It. All I could think about was death. I could smell it mixed with formaldehyde in the hallway. I could feel it prickling up my arms and up my spine, a constant reminder of why I was here. The walls mocked me and the light glared at me. I didn’t want to be here as much as they wanted me. “Why Mom?” My mouth acted before my brain could think. I lifted my eyes up to Marley’s. “Why did it have to be mom, Marley?” My voice shook and broke and my lungs wheezed for air. I think I’m hyperventilating. “Anyone but my Mom. Anyone but my fucking Mom.” I instantly felt guilt for saying it. Expressing guilt for “Mom” is harder when there’s two of them. I think she understood. She pulled me back against her and let me soak her shirt with tears and smear my mascara across it like a bad modern art piece. “Mrs. Chamberlain?” The man asked softly, respectfully. I’d probably like him if he hadn’t come out the room containing my dead mother. “Yeah.” Marley replied softly. “We’re going to need you and your daughter to make a positive identification on the body.” She’s not just a body, of that I’m positive. Marley nodded, hugging me close into her body. He nodded to a window and there was suddenly a steel table with a sheet draped over it. My heart stopped beating. I could remember times when Olivia could sneak up on me without a sound, but that surely wasn’t a talent she was allowed to keep in death. The man nodded to a woman standing over the table and she folded the sheet back delicately. I found myself examining her long fingers. They were delicately graceful and a little bony. I wondered how many sheets she’d peeled back in her life. Olivia’s eyes were open and glazed blue as she stared at the ceiling. Her lips were pressed together in almost a grimace against the deep cut that ripped open the right side of her face. There was blood dried in the dirty blond roots of her hair. The part of her chest that I could see was coated in black and blue bruises. She would hate to be in this condition if she was alive. “That’s her.” Marley croaked, turning away and hiding her face in my hair. I swallowed the fat stone in my throat and slipped my arms back around her but I couldn’t pull my eyes away until those delicate fingers replaced the sheet and the curtain closed. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” “Yeah. Me too.” 2 It took almost two hours in the hospital waiting room to convince Marley that I was okay. She was driving up to see Olivia’s parents. I had class in the morning. The drive back was much slower than the first. Too slow. I felt the gravel of the road reach up and wrap itself around my tires, trying to stop me from getting home. I was almost home when my car betrayed me. I took a U-Turn on the north pike and sped back toward town. I went down the West End highway and slammed my brakes on the corner of West and Third. The portion of the road where the accident happened was still roped off in yellow tape. I could see people in black jackets taking pictures of the bloodstained road. The battered remains of Olivia’s Scion was sitting on the back of a tow truck with another car at least ten years its senior. My hands wrung the steering wheel like I could squeeze a few drops of understanding from it. Just a lick of sense. I jumped out of my skin when there was a soft knock on the window. I rolled it down and lifted my eyes to his. “Ma’am, this is still an active scene. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to go on your way.” Ma’am. I wasn’t a ma’am. My mother was a ma’am. “What happened?” I don’t know if it was the shake in my voice or the word “desperation” written across my forehead, but the cop cleared his throat and nodded across the street. “Ah… the smaller vehicle jumped the barrier and hit the Scion. The smaller car rolled and the Scion slammed into a pole, when caused it to flip on the roof.” My entire body was shaking. “Why did the car jump the.. Barrier?” “He was drunk. Almost three times the legal limit.” “Did he die?” “He got pretty beat up, but he’ll be out of the hospital and into the county jail in a few days.” I could feel him eyeing me now, eyeing my shakes. “Did you… see the accident? Are you a witness?” I shook my head. “Are you related to someone involved?” I nodded then, the stone in my throat growing fat and swollen. His tone changed completely and he reached in, gently laying his hand over one of mine. I guess he figured out which one. “If you need… I can have one of the deputies drive you home, or to a friend’s house.” His hand was warm on mine. I left my hand under his and used the other to tug my sleeve and wipe the hot tears off my face. I cleared my throat. “No, no thank-you.” I offered him the weakest, most bullshit smile he’d ever seen. He smiled back and gently took his hand. “Go on home, then.” I nodded in my silent agreement, hitting the button to roll my window back up. The streets didn’t fight me as I drove home, I had seen what they had to offer. When I got home I found it difficult to step inside. I stood in the doorway of my apartment, toying with my keys. The soft jingling was calming in the stark silence. I needed alcohol. Lots of fucking alcohol. Emily didn’t hesitate to come over when I called. It was 2 AM when we cracked open the six back of red bulls and the full bottle of vodka. It was 2:43 AM when I fell back against the couch and watched the ceiling sway and spin. There were still two Red Bulls left, but the vodka bottle in my hand was empty. “Gwen…” Emily slurred from the carpet. I grunted. I was still breathing, just very warm. Very fuzzy. I like warm and fuzzy. Drinking vodka straight was like sipping pure fire, but it spread to the ends of my fingers and toes and purred in my veins like a happy kitten. The vodka is a happy kitten, I am a happy kitten. I, am vodka. I woke in my bed what felt like years later. But the glaring green numbers on my alarm clock said it had been ten hours. The soft snoring to my back told me Emily was still here. I was no longer in the mood for company. I slid out of bed as quietly as possible and found my bathroom in the swaying halls of my apartment. I stripped, peed, and stepped into the shower. I turned on the cold water and howled like an angry cat, the sudden nipple-icing cold dragging me out of my post-vodka slur of existence. As I dressed and made myself a glass of orange juice, reality slipped back into my apartment. I didn’t realize I’d dropped the orange juice until it soaked my feet. “Oh, Gwendolyn.” I froze. My eyes pulled open so wide I thought they’d drop into my empty glass. I could hear Olivia moving around, grabbing the paper towels and groaning as she bent down on her bad knee to start cleaning up. “Maybe you can wring out these towels and get yourself a glass of sense this morning.” I felt my lips curling softly as my eyes fluttered against my tears. “I’ve got a pocket full of dollars and cents, momma.” “Mhmm. I’m sure you do, smartass.” I laughed then, my hand tight around the glass. “Sorry, Olivia. Let me help you.” When I turned, the paper towels were still on the roll. The orange juice was in a thick puddle on the floor. No one was cleaning it up, no one was joking with me. “Were you talking to someone?” Emily groaned as she shuffled out of the bedroom, rubbing her eyes and her face. “No…” I heard myself say. I was screaming inside of my own head, but my lips wouldn’t form the desperate words. Emily’s eyes focused and she frowned. “What happened, honey? There’s juice all over.” That’s only because no one here to clean it up. 3 Emily left my apartment an hour before my second class. I slept through my first and made a phone call to a classmate to ask her to email me the notes. My routine for class was almost calming. I straightened my hair and pulled it back, I pulled on jeans and a plaid face belt with a black short sleeve button up with slightly poofy sleeves. I made sure my laptop and my books were in my bag before shoulders in and stepping into my ballet flats. Trigonometry at three, and then dance at six thirty. I got in the car and plugged my MP3 player into the stereo, turning it up. A thick, slow concerto exploded from my speakers. My foot tapped against the floorboard. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. And move, two three, four. Twirl, two three four. My body ached to stretch and move with the rhythms my muscles knew too well. Only my seatbelt kept me confined to my driver’s seat. “This is my favorite piece.” Olivia said with a sigh. I felt the muscles that had been aching to dance tie into thick knots under my skin. “I like the part right in the middle, where the music changes and you do that spin that seems to go on forever. I guess that’s why they put your hair up in that tight little bun, so you don’t put out your own eye with it.” She laughed. That laugh was like the keys of a piano being pressed by drops of rain. It was a sound to make angels burn green with jealousy and make the Gods fall in love. My spine shuddered and the muscle in my neck forced me to turn and look. The seat was empty, but I could still hear her laughter ringing along with the notes of the music. Each time my feet left the floor I expected them to land on the waters of my glass shard and cigarette ocean. The movements that used to make my heart sing make my stomach turn and churn. The two hour dance class lasts five years. The door banged angrily against the wall as I slam through it to the changing room. Everyone else talks and laughs cheerfully. I hate all of them. I change out of my shorts and leotard back into my jeans and top. I just want to go home and drown my anger in alcohol. Lots of alcohol. I ignore every smile on my way out, throwing my bag on my shoulder. I can hear their smiles form whispers. What’s wrong with her? They wonder. She doesn’t have a boyfriend, so it’s not a break up. Oh, the whispers of a big city. One of the glories about living in a big city is that dozens of people die everyday. It’ll take a while for the news to spread that one of the dozen from yesterday’s body count was my mother. “Gwen.” My mind tells me to keep walking, but my feet stop and turn. My dance teacher is a sweet older woman with silver streaked through her dark chocolate colored hair. “Gwen, are you okay? You seemed really stiff today, that’s not like you.” It comes to me that I’m glaring at her. The muscles in my face are taut and tight, the lids are narrowed over my eyes. I clear my throat and robotically relax my face. “I’m fine.” “No troubles at home, in your classes?” She probed some. Home. I feel my eyes water some. Marley would be coming back today, with her family in tow. We’d have to start planning the funeral. “Um…” My throat is suddenly tight. My emotions chew their way out of my lock-and-key cages and run wild behind my eyes. I hear someone say it, unsure if it’s me. “My mother passed away yesterday.” Her big brown eyes soften sweetly and she presses the tips of her fingers to the wrinkles in her lips. “Oh, Gwen.” I hate her for saying it like that. Like I was the one that died. I don’t want her to feel sorry for me, or pity me. I feel my body tighten up as she crosses the hallway and wraps her arms around me. Her body is so bony and thin. She’s the envy of every McDonalds-loving person over forty. I can feel the bottom of her rib cage press into mine and I try to stay tense. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” My loss. When the words hit the air of the hallway and sink in, they dive straight into my chest and stab into my heart. I see the tears drop onto the sleeves of her shirt before I realize they are mine. Grief is a very out of body experience. 4 Marley came back into town with her family after about four days of their visit. My dance instructor went to the Dean and got me a week off for grieving. I went to two classes before I decided I liked the idea. I hadn’t been sober since. Not until today. I had made sure to drain the gin and mixers last night with Emily. I told her not to let me go buy more. Somehow, she managed to stop me. When I drove to Marley’s my hair was in its soft mess of curls. I was in pinstripe black jeans and a black button up. I tried not to chew my glittery nails. My canvas shoes plopped happily on the pavement as I approached the door and I was suddenly a little conscious of my weight. Was there such thing as a liquor belly? I checked my breath before knocking and letting myself in. “Mom?” I was bowled over by a mess of golden curls and pink lace. I felt the first real smile tug at my lips. “Hey Jules.” “Pick me up!” Juliet Adonis Chamberlain squeaked, wrapped around my long set of Dancer’s legs. I obeyed, scooping her up like the forty-something pound princess weighed nothing. She beamed. “You’re here!” “I sure am. Where’s Nana and Pawpaw? And Marley?” “Kit-cheeeen.” “Point the way, princess.” She did, making sure to give my hair a tug if I turned the wrong way. Finally after a handful of hair was lost in her tiny fingers, I came face-to-face with my family for the first time. Marley’s bruises and cuts had started to heal into that sick looking faded yellow colour. She was smiling some, but her eyes held the same haunted look that I was sure looked back at her when she saw me. Jules seemed to get the hint, wriggling out of my arms and skipping into the kitchen toward a plate of cookies. Marley smiled slowly. “Hey baby. Come on, you can help me cut up fruit for the salad.” Routine. Normality. Fruit salad. These are things to heal a shattered soul. I nodded, stopping to kiss my grandparents and sliding onto the stool beside my mother. There was no talk of a funeral. No talk of the one person missing from the equation. We talked about school, and dance, and Broadway. We talked about TV, the presidential election, and the weather. And over dinner we discussed absent family members, and listened to Jules babble to her ‘Invisible Friend’. When Pawpaw put Jules to bed, a thick somber feeling swallowed the house. We sat around the long coffee table, sipping a tart cinnamon tea. I stared down into the dark liquid and felt the chair shift. Marley sat on the arm, looping her arm around my shoulders. She kissed my hair. “Aunt Liana says Hi, and asked for you to call her when you stopped being so successful.” I smiled, leaning and kissing her knee. “It’ll be a while.” “Did you let anyone at school know what was going on?” I nodded, sighing and rubbing my face. “I got a week off for a grieving period. They’ll need a phone call from you if you want me off for longer.” “Let’s see how this week goes, hm?” I nodded again. I slowly looked up to my grandparents. They were smiling softly, but I saw that soft, haunted look there too. I could feel the walls all of us had put up. The fear we were all harboring. It took awhile, but the conversation turned to arrangements. Where we would bury her, when, what we would bury her in. At some point I excused myself and climbed the stairs. I tiptoed past Juliet’s room and closed myself into the master bedroom. I flicker on the light and leaned back against the door. I remembered climbing up onto the bed and jumping on it on Christmas mornings. I remembered time outs in the rocking chair by the window. I remembered coming home to cry about my first boyfriend. I remembered getting fitted for my prom dress. “Oh, I remember the prom dress.” Olivia said with a sigh. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the door beside me. “We had to synch the waist so many times I thought your ribs would crack. You were a tiny thing, then. A late bloomer.” My lips curled and I nodded. “My corsage was too big for my wrist.” “Your everything was too big for your everything, bumble-bee.” I swallowed hard and took a risk. “I miss you, Mom.” “I know, Gwendolyn.” It hurt the deepest part of my heart to hear her say it. When I turned to tell her so, she was gone. But I had seen what she was wearing. When Marley found me I had the soft blue dress out of the closet and on the bed. I swallowed. “This.” I barely said. “She would like this.”
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