Disclaimer-
S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders. Division Street is a song by Thursday.
Author's Note-
Here the hell is this, Division Street, a side project I'm hoping will drag me back into the writing world—or not, we'll have to see where this goes. I don't have insomnia and most of this is written at "night" (read: one a.m.) but told in an insomniac's point-of-view, so…whatever. I have no idea if Division Street is comprehensible (this first chapter, anyways) but unlike Inhale, this actually seems to have a plotline and might go some places in the near future. Constructive criticism would be nice, if you have the time to leave some.
Division Street
He is a leech, a persistent bug sucking the tainted black blood from your neck you can't flick off, buzzing in and out from the darkest corners of your bedroom just when you've finally succumbed to the possibility of slinging your arms over your stomach and stapling them there for forever so your insides won't spill out onto the dirty bed sheets and slip between the floorboards.
Inhale stagnant air through your mouth and close your eyes.
Don't forget that he's rocking back and forth in the corner by the cracked window, broken and bleeding to some sort of death you only wish would come too fast—its middle of the goddamned winter and you're still so fucking uncomfortable in all this heat—his silent screams trying to shove themselves down your throat and burrow themselves so deep under your skin if someone had the unfortunate privilege to slice you open in half, you're almost sure all the creepy crawly things would somehow find a way out.
Shut off all internal organs and forget how to breathe. Roughly, on a scale from nearly-impossible-to-achievable, you've got almost three whole minutes of absolutely nothing. A nothing that is, seemingly, deafeningly endless besides the beating of your hollow heart against your swollen ribs and the uncomfortable tightness of your decaying lungs as they squeeze together to force in oxygen you don't want.
Hair plastered to your flushed cheeks, you, somehow, are able to twist your aching limbs into a ball. The masochistic hunger in the hollow of your chest heightens to a boiling point.
Pray to God that the son of a bitch doesn't come any closer, because if he did—his cold blood dripping onto your jaw line, the result of a bottle smashed into the corner of his face that you maybe or maybe didn't cause, you can't remember anymore; hot breath pleading on the shell of your ear—help me—fingernails as sharp as scalpels tearing you apart at the seams, searching for a hand that won't hold his—you don't really know what you'd do.
It wasn't always like this.
At first, whenever you caught the faint trickle of various blue-green bruises and infected scars branded into his dark skin underneath the shitty bathroom lighting as you tried to stop him from quivering—the only way you knew how was to grip his chin and shove a fist into his mouth while you took a dirty wash cloth from the cabinet and tried to, somehow, smear off all the sin, like you of all people in this world could erase all the bad by making it worse—something inside your chest would implode and you'd find yourself breathless and exasperated against your will.
Anger for what, at the time, you didn't know, until this kept happening, until every other week he was coming to you for help he otherwise didn't know how to ask for. Gradually, you watched the bruises get larger and the scars stretch longer and the strangulation marks get more prominent and you'd just lean against the sink or the doorjamb, dirty wash cloth slung over your shoulder and venomous teeth sinking into the inside of your cheek so you wouldn't brand him as your own piece of shit—how wonderful that plan fucking worked out, huh?—tongue inflated with lies you didn't know how to say because, sometimes, words just weren't enough.
There are no words in the English language for the emotions you felt during those long, long nights. To watch him suffer was indescribable, a pain you'd gladly drown yourself in for an eternity if it meant he wouldn't have to deal with this alone.
It was only because you hated him out of pity, you told yourself. Because he accepted you by doing the worst possible thing he ever could—loving you—for your faults and looked up to you as something valuable—like you were the only reason he breathed.
But he had it all wrong, you wanted to scream, he was the reason you breathed, not the other way around. Couldn't he see that you were both fucked over from the start—one too cynical and experienced while the other was too vulnerable and innocent? Couldn't he see that every time you fixed him, another part of you broke? Couldn't he see the infinite damage he'd caused—the worried crease between your brows and the frown lines pulling your whole face down into a permanent scowl and the way your muscles itched and tensed to rip his from their sockets whenever he accidentally tripped over a rock or a shoelace he forgot to tie?
Couldn't he—
Son of a bitch is standing at the foot of the bed.
You know this because, even though your eyes are closed, you saw the shadows move as he crawled across the floor and heard the springs sink down and rise up as he pressed his bloody palms onto the mattress to push himself onto his feet.
The air around you is hot and cold all at once—full of vomit and blood and sweat and cigarette smoke and the remaining shards of a three-day bottle of whiskey you'd left sitting on the bedside table. You can't hear anything besides his labored breathing and the tick of the alarm clock as time inevitably pushes forward.
Panic seizes your body into a nightmare as the realization hits.
He is going to kill you. He is going to kill you. He is going to fucking kill you.
You cannot breathe.
Suddenly, so quick the barest parts of your consciousness acknowledge what is going on, the mattress groans and then he is leaning over you. His knees are on your thighs, his head over your chest. And, oh, god, his hands—
You are paralyzed with fear. You cannot think of a single way to get him off of you without killing you both.
He is hot, hotter than the sun and the stars and the Oklahoma desert combined. So hot his very presence is suffocating. The metal that claws itself into your jugular does nothing to stop the beads of sweat from trickling down your forehead.
His breath is blowing on the shell of your ear, the tickle of cold blood dribbling down from his jaw line onto yours where his grin smears into your cheek.
He will make you bleed for him because he is strong. So much stronger than you…
See?
The metal gnaws greedily and a warm, sticky wetness begins to pool down your collarbone and then your chest. You jerk away in pain, dried-up lungs choking out his name, gasping for air that is anything but dry.
He doesn't stop.
The tip of the metal drags over your shirt, tearing it down the middle, and your chest cavity and stomach are exposed to the core. Air filters into the tight spaces between your ribs and stings like salt poured on an open wound.
Look at what you did.
The metal digs deeper—
Your ears buzz with fireflies that missed their expiration date and the dull sense of him above, humming a song you don't recognize.
If you reach down and grab the metal from him in a last attempt to save you from yourself, he'll label this a sign of weakness and your last words would be a scream. If you swing your arm out you'll have half-a-second to push him so hard he won't have any time to understand what's going on because he'll already be dead.
—and deeper—
Look at what you fucking did to me.
—the weight crushing you to the mattress lifts as Johnny pries your eyes open with his bloody fingernails and turns your head towards the cracked window where the gray-yellow sun, the bane of your existence, gets caught between the cheap aluminum blinds you'd installed to block all of the lights out—your mother always said your eyes were too pretty a blue for a man so used to spending half his life hiding in the dark—
"Wake up."
Press your fist into your mouth to keep from screaming.
