D i s c o n n e c t e d {Rave}
Apr 2, 2014 22:31:51 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2014 22:31:51 GMT -5
Brady Mullingar I can hear them talking from behind the door again; I can hear the insults falling from their lips. They don’t think I’m smart enough to figure out that they are talking about me, but I’ve always known. After all these years they’ve never bothered to check behind the door for a curious ear. And they call me the stupid one. But there I am again, waiting at the edge of that room with my ear to the door. They always talk about the same things, like “what are we going to do about him?” and things of the sort. I never stay around to listen to what their proposed answers are. I never have the guts to throw open the door and stand up for myself, no, I just walk away. I creep away from the door taking care not to bump against it, and as soon as I’m in the clear, I dash for the front door. The words still swarm in my head, and no matter where I run they follow. They’ve followed me from the front step to the edge of the district and back again. No matter how long I run or how tired I make myself, they’re always there. Today’s no different. I can cover my ears and shake my head and cry out but no one hears. No one else understands what it’s like to drown in your own thoughts, to strangle in the noose of words that’s wrapped around my neck. There’s got to be a way to free myself from it, but it always seems as if the knife I use is too dull. It never quite cuts through the thick ropes that bind me, and of course, no one’s offered help of any sort. There is never such a thing as silence. There’s always something ticking or rustling or speaking. It’s never quiet in my own head, and most days, I just want it to stop. I want to stop hearing the things said about me behind closed doors and in seemingly empty hallways over and over again. I just can’t quite make it stop. Even at night, when all thoughts are supposed to stop and you’re supposed to be able to be at peace, I find myself tossing and turning, struggling to get away from the one thing that stays with me wherever I go. People ask me why I always look tired, and no one’s ever seemed to catch the fact I’ve said “I couldn’t sleep” every time. You think someone would care, or even bother to ask if something in particular was wrong, but they didn’t. Besides, even if they did, what was I supposed to say? I couldn’t sleep because I was watching the hands on the clock (tick, tick, tick). I was listening to the voice in my head tell me how stupid I was (shut up, shut up, shut up). I was thinking about the closed doors I listened behind and the way the whispers on the other side sounded (we just won’t worry about it now, he’ll figure it out on his own). But I’ve never figured out what I was doing wrong, and I still don’t know. Of course, I’ve never asked, because then they would know I’ve been listening in, and that would lead to sets of questions I didn’t want to answer. So I never answered them, instead I left the house and went somewhere for the day, and used my time to make up a story about how I was with a friend or why I was gone. They never questioned it, and I guess they really believed I actually had a couple of friends that didn’t mind spending time with me. They did ask me once why my friends never came around, and I made up something along the lines of how busy they were at the time, and my parents just wrote it off. I guess they didn’t want to push my luck. They would ask me the same questions when I got back this evening, and I would give them the same answers I did every single day. I tried to go somewhere different most of the time, so if my parents happened to be around they wouldn’t be met with answers of “Oh, Brady’s been hanging around here by himself a lot.” So today, I went to an area I had never gone before, as it had always been off-putting. The crumbling stone and worn brick buildings had never been one that radiated hospitality, but today it seemed alright. I didn’t like going in buildings that I didn’t recognize (I’m not the adventurous type), so I stuck to the alleyways that went between them. I mulled about here and there for a few minutes before the lack of noise began to get to me. I took a quick look here and there to make sure no one was watching, and I made my way back to the road I had come in on. There had to be somewhere better to go; somewhere where the words could no longer pull me down, down, down into the depths of the water that threatened to drown me. table by rave |