Sorry about this one, folks. Either I killed my writer's block, or it killed me. Who knows?
I've most likely been dead for a very long time, now. In a creative sense, of course.
- - - -
Doubled over.
The water is freezing. Goosebumps form all over my body, making my skin bumpy and sending chills down my spine.
I simply cannot adjust.
I've shed the dirt. Washed the filth away from my skin and fur.
Now, wallowing in my own bathwater.
My own filth.
Sitting here, leaning forward. Kneed almost touching my chest. Staring into a cloudy mess, lower half of my body stagnant in my own watery grime.
My face is less than an inch away from the gray pool that hugs my legs and waist.
Breathing loudly.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
The water ripples with each breath I take.
Denting beneath my nostrils. It stops as my the air in my lungs is put on hold.
Nose touches the water.
Another chill causes my whole form to twitch. The air expels from my lungs.
Water spurts up and splashes me in the eye.
Eyes close tightly.
Submerge.
This was when it was all about me.
When I was alone.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Let's skip ahead.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Spent all my money on you today. To make things special.
To make things perfect.
A bottle of cheap white wine, and a dozen carnations. Take-out pasta. I'm so sorry I couldn't do more. My apologies alone can't justify my inability to spend more. My funds are meager at best, but you already knew that, didn't you? You're well aware that a person in my line of work would never be able to addoes wine aged to perfection, and a bouquet of roses fitting for someone as special as you. As well as top grade food.
No. Not like him.
Not like he could.
He sold his soul for gold, and I sold mine for you. Or did I even have one to sell?
Whatever. We will get to that later.
Shifting the sacks into the nook of my left arm, cradling them to free the right hand in order to be able to open the door. Gaining entry. Grope for the knob. Firmly grasp and twist.
Body pushes forward, opening the door with my weight.
The door creaks. Step across the threshold, transferring the bagged bottle into my right hand once again.
As the door swings open, I glide passed it. Right foot hooks around and stops it in its tracks with a quiet thud. Bringing it back around, it pushes the door closed and it slams. Guess I don't know my own strength.
Amy?
Nothing. No response.
Hello?
The door opposite the front is open. My bedroom door. A thin streak of light stretches across my bed and floor. Instead of investigating right away, I take a left.
Set the sacks down on the counter. Fetch a bowl from the cabinet and set it on the wooden counter opposite the bar, next to the fridge. Open up the freezer and remove four plastic ice trays. Three of them blue, one of them white. One by one, I hold them over the bowl and break the ice from them. Twisting and slightly contorting the cheap plastic tray, the ice cracking as it breaks free and drops, crashing into the large white bowl beneath. Set it in the center of the dining room/kitchen table. Remove the wine from the sack, and bury it as deep as possible in ice to let it chill.
After removing the food from its to-go boxes and setting it out on plates with silverware and napkins, I retrieve a couple of candles I had been saving for a power outage of some sort. One red, one white. Light them, and snatch up the carnations.
Make my way to the open entrance to my bedroom. The bathroom door adjacent to my bed is slightly cracked. The source of the thin streak of light.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Hold.
Step forward. Boards creaking beneath my feet, due to strain.
Looking through the tiny opening, I ca see part of her figure sitting in the bathtub. What looks like her knees. There is no longer a curtain hanging in front of the shower, as the curtain rod had been dismantled during some sort of struggle.
The door slowly opens as my palms press flat against the white wooden door. The beam of light grows bigger and bigger as the opening gets wider and wider.
Hey, I say. There you are.
No response.
Come on. Let's get you dressed.
It's time for dinner.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Aren't you going to eat your pasta?
I know it isn't much, but aren't you hungry? I got it just for you.
Silence. We sit in uncomfortable silence.
I'm sorry, I tell her. I fucked it up. Fucked it all up.
Pouring myself another glass of white wine, while desperately searching the four corners of my mind for some sort of topic of conversation. Something. Anything.
I can't stand this silence. This constant agony.
Completely and utterly oblivious as to what could possibly be going on inside of her head.
You remember what things were like back then?
She just stares blankly at the table before her, her head tilted.
Hanging.
Limp.
I think she's confused. Maybe just tired. Perhaps she's not even listening to me.
That's okay.
In Knothole, I remind her. We were so scared back then. Frightened. Innocent, in a way. But, at the same time, we were so utterly useless, you and I. Sonic and Sally led the resistance to victory against Robotnik, not Amy and Miles. After that we moved to the city. I think that's when our kind lost its humbleness, you know? As scared as we were, we had this sort of innocence to us. Now that I think of the loss, it ;eave me a bit distressed.
Lift the glass up to my face, swirling the glass and creating a current within the glass. The scent wafts up to my nostrils, but I can't smell it. Kiss the mouth of the glass and drain its contents. There is no taste.
I digress.
She's still silent. Sitting there, quiet as her old Raggedy Anne doll she would carry around as a child. Just as pale, too. At a loss for words, maybe. I don't know.
Only she does.
And she isn't saying anything.
I can't help but feel a bit offended. Or maybe it's just that my feelings are hurt. Is that the same thing? Couldn't tell you. I can't think straight right now.
Something is wrong. Fill the glass again. This time, to the brim.
You did a lot of talking earlier, I say. A lot of screaming, too. Why the silence?
..
Well? What is it?
Her head hanging limp on her shoulders, her body leans forward, the table catching her fall.
The pasta spilling all over the white cloth beside the bowl.
What the hell is wrong with you?
……..
That's it..
Without finishing off my glass, my arm hurls it at the wall to my left. Glass shards ricochet back, pelting me on the face and shoulders. Clattering on the table. Without thinking, my right hand meets the right corner of the table in front of me. Left hand reinforcing, the table quickly rolls to the left, towards the wall stained with red. The food spilling all over, the carpet stained red.
But wasn't the wine white?
My head is spinning. I look back over to Amy, and she has fallen. She says not a word as I call out to her. She makes not a move, as I advance towards her form.
Kneel. My hands meet her shoulder. I shake her, trying to wake her up. Trying to snap her out of it.
It's getting warmer.
It's getting brighter, too.
Amy? Wake up now, Amy. Please?
Shaking her, her head rolls off. After that, she begins rapidly decaying, starting with her fur. It peels right off her bones at the touch. The reek of rotting flesh invades my nose and won't leave. I want to throw up, but I can't.
Blood is spilling out of both divided halves of her neck, rapidly forming a pool around her lifeless, body, staining her pale motionless form, as if she's a solid white rag doll all gussied up in a pretty dress. A rag doll that bleeds. A rag doll that decays.
It's getting brighter in here.
It's getting warmer.
It liquefies in front of me, and as the sickness washes over me entirely, I fall.
Lay beside her.
Help me.
Close my eyes to escape the sight. Cease breathing to escape the smell.
But I can't escape the heat. And for the first time in a while, I think about my situation with a touch of logic. Realizing a tad too late that the candles have caught the carpet on fire.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Suddenly, I'm hit with a flashback.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Amy, I need to talk to you.
No.
What? Why?
I already know what you're going to say.
How?
I have nothing to say to you Miles.
But I love you.
Don't.
Why?
You know why.
You're chasing a dream. One that will never come true.
Fuck you, Miles. You selfish pig.
I'm not selfish. I'm realistic. What does Sonic have that I don't?
He isn't selfish, for starters.
I'm not selfish. You're fucking selfish, Amy. You're chasing after another woman's goods. Private property. Sally's.
I'm not chasing anything, you asshole. As painful as it was, I came to terms with it.
Than why can't you love me?
That's just it, you idiot! I can't! I don't even like you, and yet I put up with your shit as not to offend you. I give you a leg to stand on, and you use it to run a marathon by consistently asking for my hand, but you can't have it! You hear me?
Just give me a chance. Please.
I'd rather die.
And she turns to leave.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What's wrong with your lady friend?
She's just drunk, I tell the prying neighbor. She just drank too much and passed out.
Oh. Alright. You take care of her, now.
I will.
Unlocking the door with my right hand, her unconscious body draped over my right shoulder.
The door opens, and we go straight for the bedroom, foot kicking the door shut after crossing the threshold. We go straight into the bedroom, and take a left into the darkness, blindly feeling the wall for the door. Blindly groping around the door for the knob.
Twist and push.
The door opens, and my right hand fumbles for a light switch, and weight shuffles on my shoulder.
Stirring.
The light clicks on and she starts kicking and screaming. Thrashing and yelling.
Throw her hard into the filled bathtub, causing dirty, gray water to splash back at me, drenching my fur. Her head hits the side of the tub, and her head slides limply into the water. Blood streak following her sliding cranium down the side of the porcelain tub and clouding once it hit's the water.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Hold.
My head is getting light. Back out of the lit bathroom and into the darkness. Seal the secrets away with the lies as I shut the door. killing the light in the room.
This wasn't how it happened.
Was that how it happened?
No. No, it couldn't be.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Forcing myself back to my knees, I come to the conclusion that there's no escaping from the front door. I've boxed myself in. Isn't the fire alarm supposed to be going off? Isn't there supposed to be some sort of sprinkler system?
Looking around, searching for a way out.
The window. The window to my left.
Fur is already singing, the roots of each hair slowly being softened and dampened by a pool of sweat forming across my body. Make my way to the window, and try to open it, but it wasn't meant to open. I punch through the glass, like in the movies, but it isn't like the movies when I bring my arm back, and it's cut to shit. Bleeding all over the place, pink shards of glass jutting from all sides of the opening, I suck it up and leap through. Every side of my body is grazed, scraped and cut at one point, and I'm just praying, praying, praying to the god that I never acknowledged, or really believed in, just praying my ass off that I make it out of this, that this isn't the end, that I'm not ready to cry, and I would beg, beg, beg on my hands and knees and kiss the ground that you tread if you'll just please, please, please spare my life, I'm not ready for this as the my eyes pop open and it's so surreal, the ground is getting closer and closer and closer and closer and closer as I fall through the air towards the cold hard cement, I know there's no way out of this, but I just keep begging, pleading, praying that I somehow get out of this, it doesn't even feel like I'm falling anymore, but that the world is rushing at me with the force and the speed, and then suddenly, before you know it, before you're even ready, before your life can flash before your eyes, suddenly we have impact, and everything fades out immediately.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
You open your eyes to murky water.
Inhale. Hold.
You open your eyes submerged in murky water, and you inhale. You did this to yourself. For yourself.
You open your eyes, and you come to the conclusion that it was all bullshit. You made it all up.
You open your eyes, and you figure out that there never was an Amy.
Hold….
You open your eyes, and it hits you. You fell asleep in the tub.
You open your eyes and you realize it's too late.
Now, let go……