unmei no akai ito

They always told me that the emptiness was chemical, not my fault. I just wasn’t born with all the right pieces in my brain so if I had to take a pill just for a little hit of dopamine, it was nothing to feel ashamed of.

But I was never empty. Sometimes it felt like I just had far too much.

It was always more like there was hole inside my head, swallowing every single nice memory and good thought I’d ever had up until all that was left were all the painful, sharp bad things.

Maybe there were just never many good moments, just a lot of silence and me acting as a messenger between father and mother holed up on opposite sides of the house. We didn't listen to music, or eat together often. There was a family photo on the mantle that I don’t even remember taking part in but I was there, hair combed back, smiling dead-eyed at the camera.

And I couldn't ever stop thinking about the bad things.

All the other kids didn’t seem to have the same problem. I just figured they were born with all the right pieces. They knew the right things to say without having to think about it. Being kind was so easy for them. Something about that made me want to break them, take them and all their perfect warmth and snap them in half with just my hands. Shake them until there was as many broken pieces in them as I had.

With every person I leave behind, my hands have always come away bloody.

I pause at the tree line as my heart finally stops.

There’s not enough blood in me anymore to keep it beating. I can barely feel anything any more, all that pain, it’s just an echo. All that I drank is left behind me on the path, pieces of Finn, Jack and Two.

It's just me again. I always end up like this.

A tear slips down my cheek and I wipe it away, fingers coming away red. ”No,” I say firmly. I’m not going to fucking cry over any of this, I don’t want to. I keep moving, legs weak, it’s hard to even lift my foot high enough to get over the little dunes of sand at the top of the beach so I have to go slowly.

I pass the spot where Izzy and I built our fire, ashy wood still where we left it.

Another bloody tear slips down my cheek and I stop to wipe it angrily but then another one is falling, another and my vision is going a gentle shade of red. My body numbs as it shuts down but my limbs somehow still move, pulling me along until I finally hit the shoreline of the lake.

I feel it's whisper before I hear it, see the way the water begins to churn at my approach before I think to fear it. It's unintelligible, the sound, not fully formed yet but I know how stupid this is, that I'm giving up my life by moving forward anyway.

But I'm dead already. It's just hatred that keeps me going.

I fall to my knees at the water’s edge, palms flat against the ground, head low even as I try to hold it up. Tears drip steadily down my face to land between my hands. I watch as they drop and make these dark little circles in the sand and I try to forget the look on Izzy’s face as she drove her sword through my chest.

I don’t say anything for a long time, the pain in my body, in my head, making it hard to think.

A gentle breeze pulls at my hair, matted with my own blood. The whispering is louder now, coaxing again, like last time. So many voices at once, pulling at me, I should be afraid. I should get away. My body screams at me to crawl backwards, that I'm laying my head in the mouth of a lion.

After a moment, I curl my hand tightly into a fist against the sand and hold it there, raising my head to look at the lake and the smoke forming in front of me.

”You were right,” I say, stony faced, ”She betrayed me.”

But saying it out loud splits my voice in two and splinters my mask. It falls away, pulling the grim line of my mouth into a shaky grin. My fist rises and falls back into the sand, once, twice, like I can quell my hurt that way.

”We both knew it was gonna happen,” I say, ”Since you seem to know everything maybe you can tell me.”

I break fully, tears pouring down my cheeks now, dripping down my chin into my shirt. My body shakes from the effort of holding itself up, I'm beyond the point of help now. Maybe I always have been. Even the anger is falling away from me, leaving me alone with all my hurt.

"Why am I so disposable?"

Water, where it wasn't before, runs over my fingers like the brush of a hand against the back of them. My fist unfurls at its touch and water fills my palm. Smoke comes with it, slowly forming into a hand.

The sting is muted, biting down like last time as the lake presses its fingers into my skin, using me to form itself. I give the last dredges of myself so freely. There's little left of me to guard anyway.

poor, poor akira

I sit there, watching as the smoke forms back into the shape of a person. This time there's more, the idea of hair, the feeling of eyes on me where there never was last time, as if now all its energy can be focused on its shape alone instead of hurting Izzy and me.

i am happy you returned. 

I wanted it to be.

Even though its already taken form from me, the lake doesn't stop running water over my hand and I don't pull it out of the tide. I just let myself sink slowly, sand pushing up between my fingers. Makes sense that the only thing I could connect with in the end is a monster.

happier to have been proven right.

The water inches up slowly past my wrist, to wrap around my knees.

I keep my eyes on smoke and the way it moves, rocking slowly back and forth, wisps of black vapour falling away from it, stolen by the wind.

I know it's telling the truth because I've ridden the euphoria of being right more often than any other drug, but I like that. The lake is honest in its own way.

Maybe that's why I came back.

Maybe, inexplicably, I just wanted to see the lake again.

Tears still roll slowly down my cheeks. I don't cry very often so I don't think I know how to turn them off, or if there'd even be a point to it now. My body is long dead, I will be soon too. It doesn't matter what I do now.

I can feel my death coming, words trapped heavy in my mouth; I don't know how to explain the feeling. There'd be little point. Until you're dying, you'll never understand what it feels like anyway.

When you blink, shut your eyes to sleep at night, you know without thinking about it that they'll open again. It's like breathing. 

If I shut my eyes now, I don't think I'll be able to open them ever again.

This is it.

I'm kneeling in the surf now, pale skin looking dirty under the lake water mixing with the black sand beach. Blood washes off my body, cleaned away by the lake. Its shadow whispers things at me, achingly painful things that I can't help but nod my head slowly to. "Yeah," I whisper, struggling to hold onto the rage I had only moments ago.

The tide washes over my legs, taking my offering with it.

"Abandoned us?" I echo, words sliding together. I like that it said 'us' because it's always just been me.

"We're the same?"

It's harder to think now. I'm struggling to remember how I even got here. Izzy's sword in my chest feels like a vague dream, something that I'm no longer part of. There was the library and Jack was there, then that girl. 

They cut me up, pulling pieces off me. Killed me.

Hands form out of the shadow in front of me, palms upturned, fingers unfurled loosely above them. I remember this, smoky hands in the water like lotus flowers blooming on the waves. I'd never seen anything so hauntingly beautiful. It asked me for help, wordlessly. I reached down and I pulled the shape of a person out, I couldn't bear not to.

I don't regret that.

I place my hands in the lake's, fingers curling over where its palm connects to its wrists and like last time, there's enough substance there for me to hold. The smoke is cool beneath my touch, comforting, and I would be happy if we could just stay like this.

All that hurt I feel, it's not just mine anymore. The lake has it too now, its hold on our feelings as unconfined as the water slowly moving up my waist. My anger almost pales in comparison, every emotion I have left within me seems to drain from me at the lake's touch, swallowed by its vastness.

I can feel so much pain in the expanse, raw and jagged, anger overwhelming my senses until rage flows back in with the tide, filling me again.

I understand now why I was born so empty, I needed to be.

I tug gently on the lake's hands, trembling with anger. I'm fading so fast now but there's still a firmness in my tone and I'm still so stubborn. "I won't let them hurt you anymore," I whisper fiercely, "Never again."

Don't know if I'm talking to the lake or to myself. It doesn't matter, I don't think there's a difference anymore between us, I don't know that there ever was. 

"They'll suffer for what they did, we'll make them."

But the promise is empty.

I won't last that long. I can't feel the sand beneath my knees, the breeze through my hair, anything anymore except for the lake's fingers pressed against my wrists, palm against palm.

Beating.

I know now that I didn't really come here for answers. I think I just wanted someone to hold me as I died.

Then never let me go.