21 8.0: Yellow Lights and Cigarette Tips (1/2)
~ hold me like my words do when i have no one else to ~
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Listen I'm scared.
I don't understand what's happening and I'm not sure I want to. Listen, Mother, I'm sorry for hurting you, but you have to listen, you have to know that I'm not quite sure if I'm breathing right. Listen, listen closely Jake, listen to me trying to understand, listen to me and forgive me, Jake. Jake listen to my heart sing I love you in the french you sucked at. Listen to me, tell me you hear me, tell me you can help me out because I can't seem to understand what's happening and wait, I can't see. I can't see I can't
I open my eyes and 'feel' something heavy hugging me and suffocating me. I open my eyes to find darkness welcoming me back with open arms. I open my eyes and wish I hadn't because now is the time to figure out what the hell is happening to me.
I look around with the name of a friendly, dead soul on my tongue's tip, but I find no soul around me. There's no hint of light penetrating this heavy blanket of blackness. There's no hope, no Tobias, no Benji and that immediately triggers my anxiety.
I turn three-sixty degrees on the spot and take in gulps of something (air? nitrogen? vacuum?). I'm belatedly all alone with my thoughts. I scoff in disbelief and shake my head when I realize that Sierra's phone isn't on me but is with Tobias. Tobias who either ran away from me and my wild, complicated problems the instant we arrived here, or the one whom I left in another dimension.
I go with the former because he was obviously touching my shoulder when we were leaning against each other to stare at the phone and Benji was sniffing his ankles. So we were all touching each other.
I sigh heavily and wonder if my 'heart' has been pumping mercury instead of blood because it has been so heavy to carry around with all the shit that has been happening. And I suddenly don't know what to do with my limp hands that are suddenly very interested in clawing my heart out of my chest, in hopes of eternal relief.
I force my hands off of my chest and up my throat where there must be some words hanging there with broken wings and spines, trapped there and waiting for a release that won't happen any time soon. And I wonder if this is the bitter aftertaste of heartbreak; rust and dust.
I look around, again and again, refusing to believe that I'm utterly alone now. I curl the fingers I can't see into fists and then flex them, hoping that it'll somehow release the tension building up inside of me.
So not only did I fail at getting rid of my worldly anxiety, I seem to have carried it to my grave and given it access to my doomed eternity. And I wonder if my hands are shaking, if my ribcage is rattling with the effort of carrying my soul around, and if my knees are breaking- because I feel absolutely nothing. And maybe, I think, God didn't want to distract my brain from its sickness by noticing all those physical repercussions. Maybe He wants my brain to solely focus on its own fucked-up-ness, not my body's.
Which is, needless to say, much more difficult in the absence of these distractions.
My mind wanders to Sierra, our memories when we were younger, when we were besties, when we'd hold hands in fourth grade, in Math class because I hated it. When we'd help each other out and do all the cringey best friend things that you see in movies.
And no matter how much she seems to hate me, my mind insists on going back to all the good memories we had together. And it's funny how my brain seems to be programmed like that, like it's almost incapable of believing that game's over, that it's time to hate her and let her go.
And I don't know what to do with all of that grief. Should I be curled up and crying myself to more death and dying? Because all I can 'feel', are sharp ice shards in the corner of my stony eyes. All I can feel is Sierra's cold, cold betrayal- and I remember Tobias' words, 'warmth is for the living'. All I can feel is the touch of death. Maybe Sierra is as cold as I am, as dead as I am.
And all I can think about is I want more. More hidden truths, broken hearts and false facades. I want to understand more because maybe it's better to be dead with the full, naked truth than with none of it.
And maybe God is listening for this one time.
...
Tobias' absence shouldn't matter to me much, considering how irritatingly intrusive he is, but it oddly does.
Getting transferred from one dimension to the other is like having a lucid dream you just woke up from. You'd be consciously very aware of the fuckery that's happening, completely paralyzed, preparing yourself for the darkness that will elevate and the scene that will roll right in front of you.
And this time I'm standing in a silent, dark street under a streetlight that does very little to illuminate the area. I look heavenward to find a pathetic crescent hanging with invisible, holy strings in a black, boring sky, which, according to me, should feel quite ashamed of doing so little to help me assess my surroundings.
I can't tell if it's cold or warm. I can't tell if someone is breathing behind, and I can't tell if I should be here at all as I listen to the quiet but audible buzzing of the lamp above me and bathe in its flickering, yellow light.
The stench of cigarette smoke answers my queries and I turn to find a familiar feminine figure standing by the streetlight that's a few feet away from me. I stare at her visible, streetlight-illuminated curves and know that this body belongs to no-one but Sierra.
She turns on the spot and faces me with a grimace. She's a black painting with a white spot for a pale face in her jet black hair held back by a headband, black tank top, black leather jacket and pants and black combat boots. The only contrasting asset is the orange tip of the lit cigarette that she's holding between her rings-clad right middle and index fingers.
Her eyes are narrowed, sharp and perfectly eye-lined. She looks like she might murder someone and that thought doesn't really surprise me.
I am about to approach her when someone walks right through me- the person she's apparently mad at. I absently touch my chest and head before I stare at the slouched back of a tall guy in a grey beanie, a brown leather jacket and denim pants. His hands are shoved in his pockets and his jays are undone.
It doesn't take me much to realize it's Joshua. My ex-boyfriend meeting my ex-best friend in the middle of the night, in an abandoned street, a day or so after my death. What could be cooking up?
I walk to the streetlamp Sierra's leaning against as she drops her cigarette and crushes it a little too violently with her boot's sole. She straightens up and glares at Joshua who's looking at her in immense disbelief and...disgust?
But all I can think about is how Tobias is right, how that, yes, yes, Judas- sorry, my bad- Joshua is playing 'DevilsPlay' too. Because why else would they meet up?
”What the hell, Sierra?” He whispers furiously, blowing out a heavy breath and pulling off his beanie to ruffle his hair nest that looks too dark in this poor light.
”Me?” Sierra replies hotly. ”What the hell is wrong with me?” She blinks at him and scoffs. ”What the fuck is wrong with you?” She assumes a threatening stance but Joshua doesn't as much as flinch.
”Yeah?” He breathes through his nose and quickly lifts his brows. ”Don't you think you took it way too far with this? Don't you think it has turned fucking ugly?” He does little to mask his rage.
Sierra narrows her eyes at him before she lifts her arms. ”Look who the fuck has shown up and has the fucking nerve to talk-” She tilts her head with an evil scowl. ”You don't fucking mistaken yourself as a saint, do you? You haven't filled your head with such notions, have you?”
Joshua is breathing hard, his jaws and fists clenched, with waves of hatred coming off him. ”I don't-” He says, lowering his unwavering gaze to hers. ”And I haven't-” He subtly tilts his head, looks back at me, and I almost can't find my throat cause why the hell am I not 'breathing'. ”But she's dead, Sierra-” He leans closer to her with a sneer as she crosses her arms in front of her chest and presses her plump, pale lips into a thin line. ”Because you've taken it way too far.”
”You fucking used my first name!” She explodes. ”You knew what the hell that could mean and you did it-”
”Well, I'm glad that grabbed your attention cause nothing seems to do anymore-” He says indifferently. ”Even your best friend's suicide-” He enunciates.
”You're gonna blame it all on me, huh?” She says impossibly calmly. ”Oh, honey, you have it coming-”
”You have no idea what I did. So I will not entertain you with your crap-” He snaps. ”I will not have you call me in the middle of the night, threatening me-”
”You broke the fucking rules-!” Sierra yells at him, her anger reeling and reeling around us.