The Last Semblance of Humanity
The ear-piercing shriek of her phone sliced through the veil of sleep and roused her viciously from her dulcet dreams. She growled and howled within her head as an arm shot loose from the confines of her blanketed prison.
When she reached the small silver device that seemed Hell bent on destroying any remnants of a wonderful sleep, she slipped it open and readied herself for a yell.
"Yeah?" she snapped angrily.
The young woman struggled to sit up, her body sore and aching from not getting enough sleep. She'd only just made it passed the precipice and slipped into the dream world when she was so cruelly ripped from its embrace. She wasn't happy.
Silence stretched for a long period, long enough to cause her aggravation to grow. She knew she hadn't dreamt the sound of her phone ringing; it was too cruel a sound.
So she waited and still there was nothing. Fearing she may indeed be losing her mind, the young woman pulled the phone back and saw an all too familiar number and name staring back at her.
Every semblance of anger suddenly vanished from her with the passing of a single breath as she pushed the phone to her ear again. This time she could hear the haggard breathing of the man on the other end of the line. Her brows pulled together tightly.
"Johnny?" she asked meekly, fearing that saying his name would cause him to hang up.
There was a hitch in the breath, nothing more.
"Johnny," she whispered, slipping out of bed and to the bathroom. "Johnny please say somethin'. I can hear ya breathing."
Her ears were met with the sound of fabric or something else rubbing against the phone and nothing more. Her brows pulled together tighter than before, her eyes burning with the promise of tears not far behind.
Her gut turned with anxiety thick in her throat and threatening to choke her. Her heart beat so hard, it began to hurt and still he wouldn't speak.
"Please, say something." She begged with cracking voice, wanting to know he was alright despite the enveloping fear he wasn't.
The shuffle happened again and this time she heard a muffled sound. It took a trained ear to notice and even more so to identify, but she knew it was the sound of crying. She heard a sniff, the exhale of breath and knew there were tears in the man's eyes.
Her arms ached to hug him and make him feel better, to take away the pain she knew he was trying to drown out but intensifying in the process. She wanted to make everything better.
Before she could open her mouth again, the screen on her phone lit up. The young woman pulled her phone away and read call ended. The phone call lasted all of one minute and three seconds of nothing but breathing and silence at four eighteen in the morning.
The urge to call him back was immediate and overwhelming, but she knew he'd turned off his phone. It was tradition at this point, so he wouldn't have to hear her beg or cry because she was scared. He'd turn it off or take the battery out completely and forbid her from calling him back.
Every time, she would think that maybe this was the time he forgot, that this time he would expect her to give up and not return the phone call and every time she would do it regardless just to check. Every time it was off.
Sleep wouldn't come now, now that the fear of something wrong encompassed everything around her.
She was sitting against the bathtub, welcoming the cold, remorseless tile of the bathroom. Her knees curled to her chest and she hugged them desperately, still holding her phone tightly in the off chance he would call her back.
With her face buried in her knees, the tears finally came and she cried for him. She lost count years ago, how many times she's cried or how many tears flew her lashes on his accord, but it was unavoidable.
The door opened but she didn't hear it. She didn't feel the arms that hugged her or the man telling her to come back to bed as he wrenched her phone from her hand. This wasn't the first time she'd gotten late night phone calls from him and it was unlikely to be the last.
~~!~~
The young man sat in his bathroom with his bare torso pressed against the clear glass of the shower stall. The cold feeling was welcomed.
His arms were propped on his knees and his head back against the glass forcing him to stare at the ceiling. The tears were hot against his skin as they fell silently from the corner of his eyes, over the contour of his sunken cheekbones and around his ears before somehow making it to his neck. He didn't feel any of them.
His eyes burned from a mix of the tears he was shedding and the smoke hanging low in the cool room, the smoke he was desperately wishing would either return to his lungs or choke him entirely. He shouldn't have called her. He knew that, he just couldn't stop it.
Like the hundreds of times before, he gave into the urge to feel normal, to feel human again and called her. His rational mind screamed for him to stop but was silenced quickly with another hit from the cylindrical piece of glass. The idea became better and better the more he inhaled the noxious fumes of his pipe.
He grabbed the phone that held only her number, the cheap burner he kept and could lose without problem because it held none of his other numbers and he could turn it off without reservation. Guilt yes, tremendous waves of it, but no reservation. She was the only one in it, a number he had memorized long ago. She didn't change it and part of him knew that was his fault. She never would, just so he could contact her.
The second he hit the call button and heard the rings, the drug began to wane. Its hold on him weakened and faded completely when he heard her voice. The moment his name left her lips, the guilt began to swell again.
He felt his mouth open repeatedly, trying to speak and form something resembling words, but no matter how hard he tried, they wouldn't come. His throat closed up and the pain began when she spoke again.
The rational mind wanted him to hang up, what little of it was left, but the addict couldn't. He wasn't only addicted to the drugs coursing through him, no, that would be easy. He was addicted to torturing himself in every way. He had to feel the pain of disappointing her, of making her cry at his expense and the fear in her voice. He had to feel the grating agony she induced in him because it meant some piece of him was still alive.
That piece, no matter how small, tortured and anemic, was the only thing that kept him breathing. It was the only thing that made him keep going when everything else made him want to slit his wrists or overdose. That one little, inconsequential piece was all that remained of his soul and she somehow managed to breathe life back into it when he swore it was going to die.
That was when the tears began, when he heard her voice crack as she asked for him. He dropped his head down between his propped up knees, the hand with his phone rubbing the back of his head as he fought to rid himself of the image of her face looking painfully at him.
His shoulders trembled lightly as he tried to shove the feelings back down, the ones he tried so hard to drown with the pipe. With a deep breath, he sat up again, his head against the cold glass and the phone to his ear.
With glassy eyes and hazy vision, he stared at the countertop overhead, hearing her ask, beg, for him to speak again. He sniffed and steadied his breathing again. Her eyes burned in his memory, that sad and pained look from the first time she saw him like he was now and it was too much. He'd reached his level of torture and had to end it.
Pulling the phone from his ear, the young man ended the call and turned the phone off with practiced motion. He thought maybe one of these times he wouldn't, that he'd welcome her calling him back, but it wasn't likely. He couldn't listen to her asking if he was alright, if he needed her or if he was coming home. It was too much to take.
Pushing himself up from his seat, he went to the mirror above the sink and panted his palms on the cold marble of the hotel's vanity. His head fell between his shoulders before he dared to look up.
His mouth hung slack from the lack of energy to close it, his lips chapped and damaged. His eyes looked black where they weren't bloodshot and dark circles encompassed the entire socket. His cheeks were sunken in and hollow, adding further to his spectral appearance, and his skin an ashy, sickly white. He wasn't a man any longer; barely anything more than a shell of what he used to be, which wasn't much to begin with in his mind.
Gathering what little saliva his cottonmouth would allow, Johnny spat at his reflection, at what he'd become and what he knew he'd die as.
"Fuckin' junkie." He growled to himself before pushing off the countertop and moving into his hotel room for another hit of his pipe.
Okay. I really love this movie and think Johnny Quid steals it from the get go not to mention Toby Kebbell is an amazing actor. I hope you guys like this because I really do. Let me know what you think.