Why have you forsaken me in your eyes? Forsaken me in your thoughts? Forsaken me in your hearts?
Forsaken me.
Trust in my self-righteous suicide.
I cry when angels deserve to die.
Anger.
Hate.
Misery.
That's all that consumed Eli Goldsworthy. He sat on his bedroom floor, arms hugging his knees. His entire body was shaking. The casts and braces had been removed from his limbs; his body was healed from the accident. His heart however was a very different story.
What was wrong with him?
He'd chased the best thing that had ever happened to him away. She was gone, she'd left him forever. He wanted to hate, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He wanted to hate everyone in his life, he wanted to hate everyone for not realizing how broken and lost how was, for not reaching out to help him.
But he couldn't. There was person he could hate though, and he did with a burning, dangerous passion.
Himself.
Blood dripped from his open wrists onto the ground below him, staining the debris that littered the floor. The dark red drops were unforgiving against the garbage, just like he would be unforgiving to the garbage that was his soul.
He noticed a copy of Stalker Angel that had been tossed next to his bed, and he barred his teeth at the magazine. That fucking stupid story, the one he just HAD to write. The one that had driven Clare away. Why had he made such a big deal out of it? Why had he been so eager to share his messed up talents with her? Why did he suffocate her with his poetic ability yet at the same time insanity? He didn't know. And it didn't matter. She was never coming back, and that was a good thing. For her at least. She'd be better off without him, better off without his dark influences. Everyone would be much better off without him.
Clare, his few friends, even his parents.
An all too familiar pang of agony attacked his heart as he thought of the people that had brought him into this world. Why had they done it? Why did he have to exist? All he did was burden himself and all of the people around him. It would be better if he was gone.
Hell, he'd be doing a world a favor if he left.
His thoughts jolted back to his parents when he heard a brief knock on the door.
"Eli, your mom made lunch. Come downstairs and eat." His dad's voice said sternly.
Eli turned his head and glared at the direction of his father's voice as he heard the footsteps signaling he was walking away.
His father didn't even open the door, didn't want to see the demonic face of the monster he'd created. Eli huffed and wiped his arms on the legs of his jeans, wincing as the rough denim chafed his already wounded skin.
But he didn't care, he would embrace any kind of physical pain because it distracted from the emotional pain he was in. But it never distracted him for too long.
"Eli, now!" He heard his father's voice yell.
His father had become much stricter and more distant since the accident. He never looked Eli in the eye, he never asked Eli how he was feeling, and he only ever gave him brief commands. Told him things he needed to do that most people didn't need to be told to do, such as eat and sleep. The jokes Eli and his father had shared once were no more, the once happy man never even cracked a smile. Eli knew his father's coldness toward him was because of what the accident had done to his mother. Cece Goldsworthy had been frail and broken ever since, stealing quick glances at her son every now and then and then turning away and bursting into tears. Eli knew that his father hated him for putting Cece through hell. For making her think she'd almost lost her son, and for making her accept that her son was crazy.
He'd never forget what his father told him in the hospital, after he'd watched the love of his life walk away from him for the final time.
"Eli…I'm sorry. I'm sorry that things didn't work out between you and Clare. But you can't do this! Do you know how scared your mother and I were? Do you know how much she's crying right now? You almost killed her with this stunt! I don't know what to do about this Eli…"
Hot, angry tears sprung up in his eyes as he remember the words of his father.
You almost killed her.
He felt terrible for what he did, but he couldn't help but be angry at his parents. Why hadn't they raised him better? Why hadn't they protected him against this? Why had they let Julia come into their home and destroy their son, ruining him so that no one would ever be able to love him ever again?
Why had his father completely forsaken him, given up on him? Why did his father hate him? Wasn't love supposed to be unconditional? And now his father hated him because he was crazy, because of what he did.
"Elijah Goldsworthy, if I have to call you one more time…"
"Coming!" Eli shouted icily, standing up from the floor. A new feeling of pure, malicious anger spread through his veins, and it was what controlled him as he walked down the hall, but not toward the stairs, toward his parent's bedroom.
He walked through it into his dad's office and picked the screw driver up off the desk. He pushed the big safe in the corner of the room over and slowly removed each screw from the bottom piece of metal, one by one.
Clink, clink, clink, clink. They all fell to the floor and Eli reached in to the safe to retrieve his prize.
A wicked, inhuman grin lit up his lips as he grasped the gun his trembling hand, not even thinking about what he was going to do.
He marched down the stairs to the kitchen like a mindless droid, programmed only to do the simple tasks life required. He held the gun behind his back and entered the kitchen, eyeing his father who sat at the small table across from his mother, reading the paper.
"Hi son, better sit down and eat. You must be starving and you don't want your lunch to get cold." Bullfrog didn't even look up from the page he was eyeing as he spoke in monotone to his son. And that did it for Eli.
His mother screamed as he pulled the gun out from behind his back and pointed it at his father.
"Holy fuck!" Bullfrog screamed and jumped up from the chair, falling over and scrambling away from Eli. His back met the wall and he stood up and stared at the weapon in horror.
"Eli, baby boy, what are you DOING?" Cried his mother. Eli spared a glance at her to see tears streaming down her face, her hands over her mouth. She met his eyes and let out a huge sob that wracked her body.
"Honey, lower the gun, please." Cece begged. Eli looked at her crying face, her trembling form, and he hated himself that much more.
He looked back at his father who had his eyes clenched shut and his head turned away.
"LOOK AT ME!" Eli screamed.
Bullfrog's eyes flew open and he looked at his son, completely wide-eyed with fear.
"Why do you hate me dad? WHY?" Eli shouted.
"Wha-…Eli, I don't hate you!" His father protested
"LIAR! You've given up on me, everyone has. And the sick thing is I can't even blame you." His voice quivered and he got quieter toward the end of his sentence.
He cocked the gun and watched a tear trickle down his father's face as he swallowed his fear.
His mother was on the floor weeping at this point.
Eli looked back and forth between his parents, just two of the many souls he had destroyed.
He thought of Julia's, cold, dead face in her casket.
He thought of the scared look in Adam's eyes when he'd visited him at the hospital.
He thought of all the tears Clare had cried for him.
What had he done to these people? The people he loved?
Eli closed his eyes and let out the only two words he could think of, the only words that had a chance at saving his accursed soul.
"I'm sorry."
A gun was fired that day in the Goldsworthy house. A body fell to the floor as blood flowed everywhere, painting the kitchen with its sickly red hate. An ambulance was called, a body turned over, eyes gazed into, expressionless face screamed at, pleaded at to come back. But it didn't matter, he was gone the moment he hit the floor.
Bullfrog and Cece wept over the dead body of their son, hugging it close to their chests, not caring that his blood stained their clothes. They held him and refused to let go, their sobs heavy with regret, heavy with all the things they could have done, all the things they could have said, things to let their son know that they didn't hate, they loved him SO MUCH, and they would never be anything ever again without him.
Other people came soon enough; the widowed parents recognized the faces of their son's best friend and girlfriend. They all wept together, over the dead body of Elijah Goldsworthy. The body of the boy whom they would have handled things so much differently with, if they'd only known. If they'd only known what they know now.
But it was already too late.