a/n: could possibly be triggering, mentions of suicide, depression, self-harm, slightly graphic death, very angsty
now that I've scared you all away...
It'll be a new beginning, they told me. You can start over without the shadow of your past following you, they explained. Maybe, this time, you can do it right, they said with conviction.
They were wrong.
It's been a couple of weeks stretched into long months since I've been thrown in here. None of them understand. I don't want them to understand. Nothing about me can be fixed.
(because you can mend a broken bone but not a broken skeleton, not a broken brain, never a broken person)
They like to tell me otherwise.
In primary school, everyone was told to be themselves, to embrace their uniqueness. I didn't know I was the exception. But then again, I'm always the exceptions.
(because these four white walls are your jail cell in a world that you were flung into by mistake)
Today is not one of the good days. But the nurse is knocking at the door and there is no other option but to get out of bed.
Even though the pills don't work and I never actually fall asleep, I still find it difficult to get out of bed. Especially since it's one of those days.
Stupidly, I had hoped. I had hoped and now it hurt that much more. Yesterday I was ohsowonderful and I felt so close to perfection and it felt like everything was getting better. When I concentrated, I could feel it deep inside of me, I could feel the magic stirring, waiting to come hurling out. I was ecstatic, everything seemed new and everyone was interesting and oh I lived for days like that. But today, I feel the heavy weight of sadness on me and everything is definitely not going to be okay.
(because the days following the ones where the light shines the brightest are the ones that are the worst, the ones that feel as if a demon has strung you apart from your angel and thrown you into the fires of hell)
We all stand in line for breakfast. I'm ahead of a very fat, ugly man who stands like someone is sitting on his back; I don't think I've ever heard him speak. It probably would have sounded as ugly as his face. Behind me is the tall, bony girl sniffling and muttering under breath about monsters surrounding her, all of them preparing to attack her. I should be glad she hasn't begun the screaming but I'm not in the mood for this, not one bit. So, I turn around with every intention to punch her but a nurse holds me back and prompts me toward a tray with a blob of mushy brown stuff in it. I turn my nose up in disgust and find an empty table to sit at.
Even though my table is exclusively for me, a boy with short black hair and small blue eyes smiles at me and sits down, like he was invited. A brief memory of both of us laughing at this very table flashes and it saddens me because, surely, I'll never be that happy again.
"What are you doing here? I sit alone." I tell him with conviction. The stupid boy thinks this is an invitation and smiles wider and scouts closer to me.
"Well, what would you say if I had a surprise for you?"
"Not interested. Leave, now. Before I get in trouble." He still doesn't move.
"Lucy, you're not going to hit me."
"And why is that?" He holds out his hand as an answer and I gasp.
It's been so long since I've seen them. I reach for one before I know what I'm doing, before I realize it's been so long since I've been excited about anything.
(because while they were all far away with their ohsowonderful spells and magic, you were stuck in this awful, cruel, simple world)
Before placing the fruit in my mouth, I roll it in my hand, feel the bumps and fuzz because even after all this time it hasn't changed one bit even though everything about me has. I wonder whether it's a sweet or bitter but before anymore unnecessary contemplation it's in my mouth and it's an explosion of taste buds that I've craved for so long. Juicy, intense, melting in my mouth, leaving an aftertaste that reminds me of magic and of family before everything went wrong. Raspberries…the equivalence of perfection.
"You can take them all, I snuck them for you," he tells me with that stupid smile still plastered on his face.
I eat each raspberry slowly, memorizing the taste and the texture and the feeling. I don't ask him questions and he doesn't try to talk to me anymore. After I finish eating, the nurses soon call us to line back up and the rest of the day passes in a blur filled with scheduled meals, community group, complaints, recreational therapy, tears, and meetings with psychiatrists who ask the same questions and prescribe the same bitter pills. At night, when we're all lining up to get our pills, he's behind me. Unnecessarily I'm hyperaware of him and his closeness to me and before I know it I'm turning around and getting on my tip-toes and whispering a "thank you, " in his ear. Before I turn back around, he puts his thumb under my chin and tilts my face up so both our eyes meet. It feels like magic. The nurse breaks us up and I swallow the pills and I know that tonight is going to be a good night.
I wake up to the same schedule the next day, and it's neither a good day nor a very bad one. Instead of wanting to be alone, there's a small part of me that wants him to be there too.
When I sit at the table he's already there greeting me with: "You're like a kite stuck in a tree, Lucy."
"That's very metaphorical for you."
"Don't you want to know why?"
"No—not particularly." Of course, he took this as an invitation to tell me.
"Well, obviously, you're like a kite because you're so pretty, so beautiful and unique and all anyone wants to do is be able to spend some time with you, but you're so far away from the rest of us that we only get a tiny piece of you attached by a flimsy string. And mostly that's enough for us. It's enough for me. But of course, you don't want that, you don't want that small attachment. So you pull and you push away and instead of flying high and forgetting everything you crash into a tree because that's where you feel you belong. Hidden away by the leaves, overshadowed and underestimated and unhappy. Left to live in a world completely different to the one in the clouds that you're used to. And you've been in this tree for so long that you don't really remember how freeing it was to fly and to feel the safety of those small attachments."
I really don't know what to say to that. So that's what I tell him even though all my thoughts are racing again and everything in me wants to argue with what he said because I'm not pretty or unique because I'm not like them, I can never be like them.
(because squibs can't just simply acquire magic)
And I can never be beautiful, not really.
(because murderers can never be forgiven; especially since she was your sister and you loved her more than anything, but in the moment, in that messed up head of yours, you thought she was your reflection, thought she was a figment of your imagination; so when you brought that knife down hard and fast over her heart and the tears and blood started flowing you thought you were dying and you smiled. That's how your dad found you, hours later. Smiling at Molly's dead body. You still hear his scream)
I don't tell him any of this.
Probably because I like the way he smiles at me and the way the scars on his arm remind me of the ones on my heart and how his blue eyes are always sad and happy at the same time and the way he looks at food like I look at people and the way my thoughts slow down when his hand is holding mine like it is now and when he tells me to "just start believing it" and kisses me softly on the cheek and because he finally gets me to believe in the possibility of a new beginning, of my new beginning (even though you don't deserve it).
a/n: for tour de fiction round two and triwizard competition
prompts: new beginning, rasberries, kite; shadow, light, fire, angel, sad, exited
I would love your opinion, especially if it's constructive because I've never tried something like this before. Did it work, make sense, too vague etc. Thanks :)