red dust {gun/aiden}
Jun 14, 2015 4:43:19 GMT -5
Post by maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte] on Jun 14, 2015 4:43:19 GMT -5
A I D E N
Pills are bitter down my throat, placed one after another upon the back of my tongue and staining it a disgusting kind of white. There must be at least ten by now, I stopped counting some time ago. Father just keeps pushing the orange tinted capsules into palm and I just keep taking them. It's nice to see the hope in his eyes when I force yet another bulky oval down my throat, smile staining his lips as he chatters over breakfast.
"You're looking better already, Ai, I think the new stuff is really doing the trick! You're getting your color back and putting on weight. I think you have a chance. You really do. We just have to keep up this regiment and..."
He chooses not to remember that I was curled over the kitchen sink last night, staining the chrome bright red as I struggled for my breath. I can feel it even now, a painful kind of rattle in the bottom of my lungs. A year, they had said three months ago. It's like I am an hour glass, minutes slipping through my fingers as blood had the drain. And I want to be sad about it, I really do. I want to feel bad for leaving Father all alone and I want to curse all of the years I will not get. I want to be angry that I am going to die and I want to be scared too.
But really all I feel is relief. Only nine more months of this agony, only nine more months to cling to this miserable excuse for an existence. Then, I won't be in pain anymore. I won't wake up in such pain that I curl in on myself and cry until father gets me up in the morning with gentle hands across my cheek telling me that I don't have to go to school if I don't want to.
Nine more months of dragging myself out of bed and enjoying the sun upon my skin because I never know when the last time I'll be able to feel it will be.
The last time I was dying, Father took me out in a wheel chair. He rode me around the park even though I was confined to brittle cloth with transparent tubes stuck up my nose. He knew how much I loved the sun and the stars, the grass beneath my feet. And even though I hadn't the strength to stand he made sure I could feel all of it one last time. That the twinkling of the stars would be the last memory imprinted upon my mind before I died.
Father has never been a great dad, but he's a good one.
I remember how he cried when remission started. An ugly sort of relieved crying that consumed the whole of his body with violent shakes and desperate sobs. He pulled me into his chest and he ran his fingers through my hair and he told me he always knew it's be okay. He knew I would never leave him. Leave it to my father to make me feel guilty for dying.
The medication drains me of my apatite, replacing it with angry churning and sharp stings. I cannot bring myself to eat the eggs father so lovingly placed in front of me so I stand suddenly, insisting that I forgot about an important project and that I'd grab something at school. That he didn't need to worry because I knew how to take care of myself.
We both know it's a lie. I've dropped nearly ten pounds this month and I'm beginning to look more skeleton than man. When I'm rotting in the ground it won't take much for me to become just that, I imagine. But father simply nods and places a gentle kiss upon my forehead before wishing me good luck on the project. It's just like Father, really, to choose ignorance over reality.
I owe Old Jack an appointment after school, knowing the old Coot he's probably already waiting in the warehouse, curled around his old dog with a little toothless smile planted upon his lips. He's been having trouble with his joins lately, they swell to the size of mountains and are much more painful than he'd ever let on. "Makes it hard to walk Suzy." He told me once as I smothered a healing balm upon his hands, trying not to notice the way they shook in pain.
"I imagine this makes it hard to do anything." I had muttered and he had pretended not to hear me.
School doesn't hold much worth for me, apart from shared smiles in the hallways and small talk to fill broken silence. There's no point in me learning, really. What use does education have for a dying man? I'm sure that I will impress everyone down in wherever the hell I'm going with my knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem.
And I really don't know what made me see him today. His face stained purples and blacks and his gait that of a man badly beaten. Perhaps it is the hopelessness strung haphazardly upon his feature, a silent begging for help that everyone's eyes seem to shy away from when they pass him. I really don't know what made me run across the hall, subjecting my lungs to masochistic torture while I clung to the boy's wrist with as much force as I could manage.
I don't know his face nor his name. It's as though today he simply popped into existence with a sad look and a broken body. The thought burns as I pull him toward me, trying to steady my breaths as I speak.
"Who did that to your face?" my words are soft, holding a slight jovial tone as I try not to seem like a complete douchebag for prying. (Perhaps it's too late.) "No wait, let me guess, I should see the other guy right?"
I give him a gentle smile but I think my heart has stopped beating.finally