What I Own: A disgruntled Siamese cat, a set of red pans and a signed picture of 100 Monkeys
What I don't: Rookie Blue. I think that is obvious by the fact that I spend a vast part of every day in front of a computer screen at a real estate agency. I'm not making a penny on this piece of fiction.
Author's Note: I just shouldn't be allowed to be unsupervised. I also shouldn't be able to listen to music. Basically, I need an adult, at all times. This popped into my head out of NOWHERE as I was trying to convince myself that I needed to do my job. I pretty much blame my playlist, because music and feels are so intrinsically connected. It is not, in any way, shape or form related to either of my other two fics. It is, however the first in a series of drabbles… The likelihood of any one part being more than 500 words is slim to nil. I'm not going to promise regular updates because it is one of those spontaneous things that just NEEDS TO GET OUT OF MY HEAD. Like I said, this is part one. Feels ahead and a warning for a character death. I'M SORRY OKAY? PLEASE DON'T HATE ME. Reviews make me bounce in my seat more than a pixie stick and red bull bender, although you'll probably wanna yell at me instead and that is okay too. I highly recommend listening to the song while you read but I am a sadist.
At the end of the world
Or the last thing I see
You are
Never coming home
Never coming home
~The Ghost of You, My Chemical Romance
In and out.
In and out.
In and out.
It was a mantra at this point, the thought passing through my mind so much it seemed like it had always been there.
'Remember to breathe.'
I'd always laughed when people reminded me to breathe, as though it was an easy thing to forget. It was automatic, your body did it for you, unconsciously, why in the hell would you need to think about it?
And then one single moment, my world stopped spinning and I knew.
I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, I couldn't see… nothing. Everything just stopped, everything but the pain and that, well, that never stopped, it was all encompassing.
That's a lie. The memories, they didn't stop, not even when I wanted them to.
Black and white images flickering on a constant loop through my mind, every moment from the sublime to the mundane, they haunted me, all the things that I'd said, that he said… I could still hear them as if they were spoken yesterday but they were somehow muffled as though I was underwater.
I couldn't turn them off, not even when I slept, especially not then. In dreams it was easier to forget about the absence, to pretend everything was okay again but something was just not quite right… everything was just a little too bright, pictures that I knew were askew were hung perfectly straight. The coffee mug, his favorite one that I'd chipped the day he had surprised me at the dishwasher, was smooth and unblemished.
I wasn't sure which was worse, the dreams or the memories, they were both beautiful torture in their own way.
The pills helped, sometimes. Waking up screaming at three AM, drenched in sweat, a gunshot still ringing in my ears, they provided a brief salvation. Trembling hands shake one small tablet out of the bottle and I swallow it dry, its bitter and scratches going down but it is proof of what is real, what I still have even as the cold sheets and empty space beside me remind me of what I have lost.
The bright smile, complete with dimples that were so rare, captured in a spontaneous moment, shined out from the picture frame on the nightstand, breaking my heart all over again, taking my breath with it and the mantra would begin again.
In and out.
In and out.
In and out.
