Disclaimer: Even if I were to chase down and hold Wolf hostage, I still couldn't convince him to hand the characters and everything over. So, unfortunately, they aren't mine.
Author's note: Okay, I'll admit it. This 'story' is going to be random and messy to my discontent. But that's what I get after listening to hours of music while driving down south. I wrote it from Olivia's POV, and the 'you' and 'he' mentioned are the same person…that's why it's so messy. But there you go and I hope you enjoy.
You made me feel like the one.
Every second, every minute, every moment I spent with you.
Every step we took together, every chase we ran beside each other, every path we took.
Every time we broke, every time we fell, every time we lost.
Every touch I felt, every glance I caught, every sound I heard.
You made me feel like the one.
Looking out the window and not knowing where I am.
Looking out at the world and questioning if I exist.
Looking into the future and wondering where you are.
Looking into the past and remembering the times I was able to see you.
You made me feel like the one.
You don't know what it's been like meeting someone like you, loving someone like you, being hurt by someone like you; my heart struggling because of i you.
Angry mountains look down on me as I drive down the slope to the base of the river, glancing longingly at the deep waters before me. If only I could walk on water to
you. If only I could be anything but what I am.
Instead I am running. Running towards the unknown. My nonexistent future calls to me, driving me forward to the nothingness that looms beyond the graying desert of melting snow and withering trees.
Why aren't you stopping me? Why aren't I hitting any other obstacles than my heart? There's nothing to dodge or block my attempt at escape. Even the roads are smooth as they dip through the valleys of the mountains. And as I get through the gap it closes up, further blocking me from my past.
I shiver inside the car, the sun slipping down to the earth, no warmer than the snow that lies before it. Both are unwilling to provide me with any feeling or warmth. I breathe heavily and take one last glance at the sun before it slips behind the mountains, which hang at the fringe of my vision. They bulge before me like an unapproachable being, their rough corpses turning the light against me and obstructing it from my straining eyes.
The sloping trees, brown and dying from the cold, appear as small soldiers in the hills miles in front of me. I wonder for a moment if I can get myself lost in them, if I can hide in their rough branches and forever drift away from the real world. If I can have their arms hold me when all others scorn my entrance. I quietly beseech them, kneeling before them and asking them to embrace and conceal me. I close my eyes and frantically hope that they will grant my frenzied plea. Instead they screw up their hollowed faces and order me out of their homes, leaving me out in the cold. Even their rough caresses are kept from me.
I pass by them slowly and I'm still running.
I'm standing in a timeless nightmare, and I'm the only existing substance. And yet at the same time I don't even exist. I'm this small molecule of the universe, having no effect on my surroundings and being completely shut out. A bodily function of no use.
I can't hear your unspoken words or thoughts like I used to. I'm staring at the blank road before me and I'm reaching for something that doesn't even exist. I lived your life, I felt the things you felt, I heard your words before they slipped past your lips. Now all I breathe and feel is the bitter air outside my half opened window, gasping for a single breath that includes the same air you breathe.
The road continues on and I can't seem to fight it, so I let it lead me blindly. I neither fully taste, see or hear. His voice is the last thing I have heard, his taste the last my tongue remembers, his body the last my fingers have touched, and his eyes the last my own eyes have drowned in. And now I'm numb to everything but pain.
I'm one of those people who fall out of reality, who's made of a star whose light has been extinguished with sorrow and time. And when that star falls down there's not even enough light to wish on it. It brings no hope but the promise of a new star being grown in its place. A new and foreign star that bears no remembrance of its predecessor, that strikes its memory from the darkness that surrounds it and that gives a new life to the night sky.
A new star. A new star that puts that long awaited swivel in your step, that melting grin on your face, that keeps you warm and happy throughout the entire day even though you only spend the nights with her. The new star that your children seem to love just as much as you do, even though just weeks ago all of you had said you had loved me. Even the goddamned solar system didn't evict me as harshly as you pushed me away.
Yet you came to me yesterday with tears in your reddened eyes, your face unshaven and your tie loosened. A picture of her tightening your tie for you gripped my heart as I stepped quietly away from the opened door. You walked in, rubbing your eyes vigorously as you followed me to the couch. We sat at opposite corners and it took all of my nonexistent strength to not break down right in front of you. You tried to explain to me that you had been seeing her so as not to get us into trouble at work. You told me how she meant nothing to you and that the only reason your kids liked her was because she was an old family friend. My heart continued to break into tiny miniscule pieces as you told me your kids loved me.
You hoarsely whispered my name and I looked you in the eyes for the first time in days, my barriers tumbling down as silent tears streamed down my face. You took my face in your hands and dropped your lips to mine, lightly grazing them with your tongue. I sobbed softly into your mouth as we tasted each other's tears. When our breaths left us altogether, we broke apart. You held me in your arms and whispered my name into my ear once again. And then you said it. You said those words that sent me running into my bedroom, grabbing my already packed bags and running out the door, leaving you standing in my living room.
I love you Olivia.
So as night descends on the hills facing me, I feel myself losing more and more of what I am, what I used to be. Days of life have passed, and I use the rest of my fading strength to lightly cheer their previous existence.
I succumb to the darkness, the red lights from the back of the cars in front of me hypnotizing me and the white headlights of the cars coming at me to the left blurring my vision. I speed up and pass each car one by one, not caring that the speedometer is reaching a limit way over the maximum speed allowed, nor caring that the white stripes separating the lanes of the highway seem dull and worthless.
My cross-country trek across this monotonous expanse of potholes and litter is infinite. For a moment I wonder if it is feasible to go in circles on a warping path to hell. Even that destination seems paradisiacal compared to the inauspicious end I would claim for my own if I could only be worthy enough to possess anything in this absurd death trap.
I glance at the numerous houses being built below me, those that are giving birth to new life and new knowledge while others are being demolished. And still others are disintegrating because of broken foundations, broken lives, and broken bodies. The broken bodies which seem utterly untainted while my shattered self stalks their hallowed hearts.
The memories of the past are reaching within me, tearing at my insides and squeezing my heart as I feel it about to burst. I struggle against the pain screaming within me and against the needles pricking against me as they struggle to break the skin. I look at my hands on the steering wheel and I'm actually surprised to see that they're intact, instead of broken and bloody. To all eyes it may appear like I have survived this crash I have been through, a crash that has actually mangled me and practically paralyzed me. I'm so far from surviving this life, this truth, and this separation, that I'm worried about even surviving this very realization.
Survival. A dictionary definition does not do the word justice, for the word might not even exist. To survive means to get through life without losing yourself. And if you haven't lost yourself you indisputably have not gone through life. Survival certainly isn't a one way street. It's a long damn circle that you can never truly solve or flee from.
They say an apple a day will keep the doctor away. If that is true I have eaten a rotten apple. I have bitten into a sour apple that has poisoned me, and there is no doctor to help come relieve the pain. I can't even throw the pain out into the night, for it refuses to leave its comfortable position beside me. He holds a knife to my heart, forcing me to drive on without looking back.
And I continue running away from you, with an unwelcome passenger at my side.
I laugh at my thoughts, so 'deep' and yet so…random. I mean, a star? An apple? That's what you get when you drive through a country road, the night seemingly unwelcome as the final rays of sunlight illuminate the empty fruit fields that started once the mountains stopped.
I also scoff at myself for being so dependent on you, so taken by you. I was once an independent being, without complicated relationships and without my heart belonging to anyone else but myself. I'm not use to it, nor am I used to being without my autonomy and devoid of my very essence of being. I've gotten lost in you, while you appear to be lost in something else, something I can't seem to comprehend.
I want to hide within you and at the same time I want to get out, but I can't seem to find any exit doors, neither to your heart nor out of your life completely. If I don't locate a door or a key soon, I'm likely to go insane in this barren hole of isolation. And if I had enough strength I would bang on the walls and search for an escape route, but instead I lie here meaningless on the floors within you, too exhausted in body and mind to make things any better for the both of us.
I look at the green signs in front of me, their white letters branding their meaning into my brain without them registering. I figure I should actually stop somewhere soon for gas and a map. I don't know where I'm going, but I do know that I should have a destination in mind. Any destination.
I exit into the rural town that still remains anonymous to me. The old man at the gas station looks at me over the counter with solemn eyes. Even with my sad attempt at a small smile I know I look back at him with the same expression. He slowly gives me my receipt, tacit words moving between us.
For a moment I wonder if he has lost someone. But then I acknowledge the truth. The look in his eyes reflected the same hurt and the same numbness that resides within me. Not only has he lost someone, but he has also lost himself. Nevertheless, he wasn't running away. He had taken what life had given him and discovered that one can't run forever. Even I know this truth, but I am yet to be able to face it.
As soon as I find my way back to the long winding road that I have been traveling for hours on end, I realize that I am going the wrong way. I was once heading away from you, but all of a sudden I am turned around and I am heading back. I don't know what to do in this situation.
Do I make an illegal u-turn to further seal my fate against the closed mountains that are again heading my way?
Or do I continue on the road in front of me, back to where I left my life, my happiness, and my existence that have been stolen away by a shattered soul with blocked cerulean windows to his own heart?
Has it been that I was going the wrong way all along? Have I marked the wrong path or mistakenly followed the wrong signs to what I had thought had been the only way out of this life? It must be that because I don't stop the car and I never look back.
I know that I'm leaving the warmth of the south, the unworthy new life that would have awaited me there, and darkened shadows that were preparing for my arrival. Instead I head toward the cold world, where I can only hope a warm body, an old life, and a shadow of a man will be there for me when I come back to them.
I silently pray that this new found strength that is growing within me will strike a similar seed within the soul of the man at the gas station. He needs this as much as I do.
I still can't force out the dangerous hitchhiker that sits to my right. The best I can do is force the knife out of his hand and hold it against him.
A star reincarnated, an apple in blossom, a soldier going to war. Fuck the future. I'm going back to the past. To New York. To You.
You made me feel like the one.
