NA: A short story to try eliminate (somewhat) my writer's block. Let's see how it worked.

It's warm

It is waiting for you. — Near, Matt

—|—

Ignoring is easy.

Forgetting is not.

The effects still come, rasping on your bright skin, craving to feel beneath, making you surrender to the only game you can't win. You are not different, you only think you are. If this would leave you unaffected, without any signs, any scars—you are not human anymore. You may be abnormal, strange, uncanny, wrong in every possible way but you are still a human—you breathe like everyone else.

Being a human doesn't, though, make you feel more alive. Maybe that's impossible.

It seems like your vocabulary lacks common words, words other plays with on their tongues like nothing, normal, normal, normal but in your world they are not. Words like friends, happiness, smiling, they are there but you cannot use them. You don't want to use them.

You don't want friends.

You don't want happiness.

You don't want to smile.

It is weakness and you cannot have weakness. You have a goal and you will reach it. Nothing else matters.

It is easy to cover the truth with sand. You do not lie because you want, you lie because you have made it a truth. You do not see what everyone else see—your goal has made you this way.

Your personality has made you this way.

Deep analyzes, memory of numbers, brilliant conclusions have ingrained your mind and changed your future. You think it is right because people say it is. You believe them because there is no chance that you can believe yourself. If they want to use them as a machine then you will let them. Let them destroy you, rip you apart and transform you—it is better than not using you at all.

Sometimes though—more often now than before—you cannot hide your head under the sand. You cannot cover the truths with false descriptions, make them something else than they really are, they come and slush through you body, causing everything to twist.

It does.

Friends, happiness, smile.

You don't want friends because you can't get any.

You don't want happiness because you don't know what that is.

You don't want to smile because you just can't.

It is reality in its most simple form.

It is reality when it hurts the most.

You want to run but there is no place to run to. You want to hide but everything is left exposed. You want someone to see you but no one wants to see you.

Looping a finger through white locks, pushing puzzle pieces with milky fingers does not change a thing but it brings down the bright colors of this madness.

Ignoring sure is easy.

Accepting is not.

On the inside you don't want to be this way. Who wants to be this way? Who wants to face life's pointy, bloodstained knife alone? Who wants to be stated as an unsociable freak? Who wants to be alone? Who wants to be a machine?

The answer is simple—no one. Not completely.

But you are. You are, you are, you are. Nothing more.

Twining your hair doesn't work when the void opens beneath you and swallows you open, down to oblivion, down to nothing. The only solution is waiting until the bus that doesn't exist comes and gets you.

Ignoring is easy.

But it isn't a solution.

You understand this as you hear someone flick with the doorknob, pulling it down and enters you room. No one comes inside your thick walls of glass because they want but because they have to.

The difference makes the wall crash and fall to the ground like raindrops.

You can only see.

"Hey, Near," the voice says, the voice you know so well, but still not, because you don't dare to get to know the person who wields it.

Bonding is a vulnerable thing and if you aren't with the rules it will break, the leash you thought was made of steel, it will break.

You don't answer him—don't answer Matt—because in all honestly, what will it give? What will it give him, what will it give you?

You don't know.

"Near? Is everything alright?"

You look up, watch him, look back again. You don't, don't, don't know. Such a simple question and you can't find the answer. Has something ever been alright? Really, has it?

The puzzle pieces fit, you reasoning doesn't.

You are your biggest enemy, Near, your failure is a sign that you cannot cooperate with others. You wish you could but wishing is not reality in written form, it is only strings of a imagination that lacks verity.

And Matt, Matt's kindness doesn't mean he wants to be with you. You know that. It makes you run away.

Some parts of you are very selfish. But humans in general are selfish. It's you, not them.

"Near?"

"Is there anything you need, Matt?" you finally ask, turning around to face him, his pretty eyes that today aren't covered by those orange-tainted goggles.

He has warm eyes.

You live in the cold wastelands. You belong there. You don't belong with Matt.

It is your fault.

"Nope, I was just gonna ask if you wanted to play video games with me."

You clip with your eyes. "What did you say?"

Matt rolls with his eyes and smiles a little. "You heard what I said. It is boring to play alone and Mello is too busy stealing chocolate to care about poor me, that bastard."

"But… Why me?"

You await the answers you already have—because you are alone, because I pity you, because—

He doesn't say it. He says nothing. Only points out his hands, still with his smile there and you do nothing, just sit there on the cold floor, waiting.

Finally—you don't know why—you take his hand and he helps you up. The skin is warm, warmer than you thought, and soft. You look at him and he looks back and suddenly you understand everything.

Matt delivers the truth like a Christmas card—if you don't give you don't get. If you don't take gifts you don't receives any.

Matt is a gift. Matt gives you something and today is the day you take it and follow him to his cramped, messy room.

Ignoring is easy.

Sometimes it is not necessary though.

Like now.

—|—

fin