The kids are alright.
a short story
written by Psiren
18.06.2010
Please don't worry, I am doing fine. The day I left the womb - Escape the Fate
You're much too busy to even find the time,
So use your chemicals and take this to your grave,
The boys you left are men you didn't raise.
She's sitting in the park. Nothing remarkable about her.
She's had a bad work today. Her boss yelled at her, a bunch of empty insults that had no basis of being true but that still stung. They always sting, but she never lets it show. She'll go home later completely drunk, if the two empty bottles next to her are any indication. The six pack's still full. She starts to wonder how much time it'll take her to empty it, and slowly begins to wonder if maybe she should've bought a pack of twenty four. Dying of alcohol poisoning would be smooth and painless. She'd pass out, go in a coma, and then die. Just like that. In the middle of nowhere, in the middle of nothing, in the middle of crying, maybe.
He's standing under the streetlight. Nothing remarkable about him.
He's died so many times he makes Jesus look like God' unwanted son. He died a couple days ago too but his brother doesn't know he came back. He doesn't really know what to do anymore and doesn't really know how he made it out of there, anyways, the prison of hell. He's not quite sure what happened after he threw himself in the pit-he knows he cried, cried all the tears of his body and every other body that may have died because he was careless. He cried for everything he did and didn't do, and then he came back to nothing. He's in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of nothing, in the middle of the worst times ever. His brother's happy though, happy with his girlfriend and his almost-adoptive son. It's okay, it's all going to be alright.
She doesn't notice there's someone on the other side of the street until her fifth beer, by which time she's firmly decided to buy another pack of beer, twelve, this time, and figured that it might be enough to kill her. And when she noticed the shadow in the streets, it starts to rain. She hardly even cares enough to get up and go home, mostly because home never really existed. It was an almost empty apartment, filled with nothing but empty pots and blank sheets of paper and frames devoid of any actual artwork. Basic furnishings, nothing personal. Nothing was ever personal anymore.
…rather, she felt him more than she saw him.
She's so rusty, she thinks, and she also thinks that it's a horrible thing not to have noticed him there before. How long has he been standing there? Does he know her? Does she know him? She feels like she does, and it's a strange thought. Feeling. It's so foreign to her now, after spending so many years alone, away from society, despite being in the center of it all. And she makes it sounds so much longer to herself but it's only been two years. Two excruciating years of resigning herself a life she knew she was never meant to live. She's surprised, for a second, that she's even made it this far. Surprised she found a way to cram herself into a life of normal routines with normal people in normal places doing normal things.
She looks down at the watch on her wrist, wrought in gold and diamonds and she wonders for a second where and how she got it. It's not in her line of work to have so much money to spend on-
Oh, right.
She's a secretary now. She works in a neat little office in a decent building for a well known company that makes more money in a day than she could make in several lifetimes. Her throat clamps up. For a fraction of a moment there, she was back in that time, sitting in the middle of a park on a rainy night waiting for something to pass, drinking herself silly for lack of anything else to use to numb the feelings she didn't want to feel.
She takes a good look at herself-like she does once every few months-and frowns, mostly in disgust. She never wore skirts before, but now that's all she can wear. She never dressed her age, never dressed like a working woman. She never bothered, and, besides, it wasn't useful. The few suits she'd bought had been trashed, covered in blood and bur-
In a fit of rage that's far from being normal, she shrieks and throws the bottle against the gravel pathway that connects the two streets in between which the park is shoved. She starts sobbing uncontrollably, as she never does, as she should never do. Crying makes it feel so real, the fact that everything's gone, that only three years of her life were spent in utter bliss. Even the first time he left, it wasn't that bad. She'd found the, found people to take her in, and then-
She stands up and kicks the last bottle away and stomps off, completely disregarding the fact that she's missing one of her black high heel shoes and that her nylon socks are going to be ruined by the time she gets home. She doesn't give a damn anymore. She's soaked to the bone, freezing her proverbial balls off and crying like crazy. She can't find comfort in the rain anymore. It's too cold, to biting and too familiar for her to stay outside. But her place is at least a twenty minute walk away. She wonders why the hell she had to come out this far in the night to drink. There were loads of parks closer to home than that, not to mention there were a hell of a lot more bars around than parks, anyways. Maybe she just craved the familiarity of it. Or maybe there was something else guiding her.
She forgets the last idea before it even pops up in her mind. There's nothing more to what happened than what happened. There's nothing to look into.
The figure following her isn't nearly as quiet as it thought it was. Yes, she was drunk-less than usual but enough to be unable to walk in a straight line-but her instincts, her skills, those skills, they never die out. She walks seven minutes, weaving between streets she can only vaguely remember, because she's made so many escape routes that she can only remember have of them on a good day. And today isn't a good day.
Eventually she turns around and starts screaming her lungs out, hurling so many insults and obscenities that she can hardly believe her own ears. She missed the sounds of her voice, so loud, so powerful. But it's only an echo. Only an echo of how strong she was.
"Andy, Andy, it's me, calm down, it's just me," and the voice continues to whisper reassuring nothings to her while it gets closer but it's lost on her. The nickname was enough to tell her everything she needed to know. But that hoarse voice-just loud enough to cover the rain and make her shut up-the voice that sounded like it'd been smoking since before it had been able to utter words, it killed her.
She died, all over again.
"Noah," she breathes and stumbles into a chest that feels too warm for how cold it is outside. "Noah, Noah, Noah, Noah…" The name rolls out of her mouth and she can't help but vomit the syllables one after the other in a string of hopes and prayers finally answered.
He runs his hand through the hair at the back of her head, so short, so choppy, unlike how long and smooth it used to be. The woman in front of him is nothing like the woman he knew. This woman-this girl, rather-was so detached and scared and her nerves were so frayed they were all over the place, in places they should never be and not in places they should be staying. She's so broken, falling apart in his arms. But he can't bring himself to say it, that he's not here because he needs her, that this isn't a call for duty, that it's not even something that should be happening.
But he's broken too, and he can't help it.
He stares in the thing alleyway between two houses. He stares, and eventually his eyes tear up and he loses sight of the form there, of the silhouette of someone he knows he knew before, of the shadow that can only be that of the one person they'd need to bring themselves together again. He closes his eyes and lets himself cry for the same reason this broken little woman is.
Two years felt like an entire lifetime, waiting to something to show up again. And though he knows that this broken doll isn't the person he wish he were holding, she's quite literally the next best thing. She's the one who understands how he feels, the one who knows what he's been through, who lost just as much as he did, for so much less.
"I miss him so much," she sobs, and it sounds so strange, so different from what he's used to hearing from her. Maybe it's the fact that she's showing emotion-or reflection his own-or maybe it's all those months of waiting, hoping, praying and all that time it took to make herself give up, resign herself to a life they know should never, would never, apply to them.
"I miss him too," he whispers into her hair, and it's okay that they're not talking about the same person. It's okay, because it doesn't matter. With the sky crying for the both of them, it doesn't matter anymore.
She sobs harder, because she knows what became of the one he misses.
He sobs, a choked, mangled sound at the back of his throat, because he knows what became of the one she misses.
"The kids are alright," she says, tries to say, through the rain and tears and sobs racking her body like gale winds through a tree. "We'll be alright, we'll be alright…," she says, repeating the words like a mantra, like maybe if she repeats them enough times it'll be true and they'll be alright, despite the fact that she knows that the damage has been done.
They'll never be alright.
Not anymore.
Written while listening to Escape The Fate. It's a beautiful song, and the second I started listening to just the intro guitar riffs, I had to start writing. It was a very painful process. My hands hurts and the tips of my fingers are numb. But I'd like to think that this is pretty okay.
For a lovely friend, to whom Noah belongs.