-oneshot-
song is HeavyDirtySoul by twenty one pilots
[tw implied past self-harm, tw implied suicide (if you squint)]
Gangsters don't cry,
He's outside only after the shadows grow long across the street. Strands of his hair falling over dark eyebrows, his eyes strange and expressive and black as he glances over at me from across the street. He tosses the last of the construction debris into a dumpster and wipes the plaster from his hands.
"Hello."
He doesn't respond, but his lips curve into a charming, voracious smile.
therefore – therefore I'm
I think, he's different.
There's something slow, methodical and careful in the way he speaks – the way he moves, the way his eyes look into mine. Maybe he can see me, see the hollow pain and the terrible hurt that swells and aches inside me when I'm alone and the air is empty and cold.
And yet his gaze reminds me of the look Shelia gets when she's chasing rabbits around the yard.
Mr. Misty-eyed; therefore I'm –
He lingers (politely?) just outside the threshold of the kitchen backdoor as I go to retrieve a sweatshirt I'd borrowed from him. When I return, he's staring pensively at Shelia. She's risen to her paws, her lip curling to show her canines as she growls at him.
I apologize for the behavior. Lately she's been acting strange around me as well, skittish from something she can smell in the air.
He smiles and says that it's okay. Watches, almost fond, almost jealous as I scratch under her chin and let her lick my hand.
can you save,
She dies a week later.
Shelia sleeps more each day – what I thought was the autumn tiredness, slow blinking and muffled huffs of breath when I rub her belly. But one morning I wake up and go downstairs, and she's lying on her side behind the couch, her limbs stiff. She's not breathing, her eyes closed as though in sleep. The vet says she's eaten something that must have made her sick. Asks if I accidentally fed her chocolate, onions.
Garlic.
When I get back to the neighborhood, he's already waiting outside my house. I don't ask where he's heard the news, how he knows – I drop my purse, the mortuary forms in my hand and wrap my arms around his neck, sobbing. He consoles me, holds me close to his chest as I break down in the middle of the street.
I'm afraid.
can you save my,
Neighbor's kid comes outside in the bright sunlight, practicing tricks with her longboard.
I think about how Shelia would've loved to go outside and play with her – but now she's gone and the house is empty and silent. And it doesn't help that he's gone as well, apparently going out of town all this week. It's a shame, really, the weather's finally nice now, bright sun from dawn to dusk.
I miss him, and I miss Shelia so hard that it hurts.
can you save my heavy dirty soul?
Clouds roll over past the mountains, shielding much of the warmer weather and bringing fog and rain.
He comes around in the evening when he's free, helping me garden in the backyard after I'd commented on how the rose trellis had flourished under his care.
It's nice like this.
Through our banter I can tell that he's treating me differently – almost as if he's holding me at arms length. I've seen the way he's talked to other women; the slow, flirtatious smile, the predatory gaze. But here, his eyes are bright and his laughter loud, warming me from the inside out.
Like this, I can barely feel the pain when the gardening shear slips in my grasp, cutting a line down my palm. But he whispers my name, a strange look coming over his features and I look down to see the red blossoming across my skin.
Hand grabs my wrist, pulls me forward. There's something intent in his eyes, and I try to pull away, only for him to suddenly slide my sleeve up my arm, baring the rest of my forearm to his eyes.
Pale, thin cuts crisscrossing over the skin, some slightly raised and bumpy, others just whitish lines. The blood is running further now, dripping down my wrist, hot flashes of pain emanating from the cut. He inhales sharply.
Please, I beg him. He lets go of my hand and I turn tail and run back into my house.
He asks to come inside. All but pleads. He wants to help me. Wants to fix me up and hold me close and never let me go, not like others have. He promises – everything.
But, already too terrified, ashamed, frightened of what he's seen, what he's seen of me, I shake my head. I close the door on him and fall to the ground, sobbing.
The next day, he brings me a bouquet of bloody red roses and an invitation to come into his house.
can you save,
Woman screams, waking me up. It takes me a moment for me to realize it's not me – that tonight it wasn't a nightmare.
Another shout, then her voice jerks off. Coming from the direction of his house.
In a flash I'm getting up, pure dark panic racing down my body, making my skin tingle. I leave the house and walk over to his clad only in my sleepwear and a robe. Knock on the door.
He greets me. Eyes lingering on my breasts through the near-translucent night shirt. I hug my arms closer around me, shivering, and asks if something happened.
He says the scream came from the TV – a horror movie he'd been watching. Asks if I'm okay.
I'm not, I want to say, miserably. Everything's wrong, and I don't know who you are – what I'm doing with you.
Instead I tell him that I'm fine, and he accompanies me back to my front door.
can you save my,
The streets I'm walking on – they're silent, houses empty and left hollow. I don't recall ever seeing anyone having moved away, and the thought strikes me with a sudden worry. Have I been slipping further, unseeing and unknowing as the neighbors packed up and switched out?
When he catches me looking through the window of an empty house, I joke that pretty soon it'll just be him and me.
He grins and says that that would be nice.
Again, that latent, icy fear fills my mind.
can you save my heavy dirty soul?
Fingers cold already, frozen-clenched-painful around the handle of the shovel. The oblong white shape cast by the flashlight thrown on the cemetery ground.
Her body has barely decomposed by the time I open the casket, and something breaks in my heart at the feeling of violating her resting place. Her fur is matted and coarse where it once had been soft and warm, her face deformed from rigor mortis.
The collar around her neck – brand new, placed there by me on the day I buried her – gleams faintly in that new-leather way. The buckle slips from my cold-numbed fingers, catching painfully on my nails.
I pull the strap aside, grab the torch and shine it on her neck.
Two puncture marks, in the shape of teeth.
I hug her corpse against my body, too tired to care about how revolting the action is. And I cry and I cry and I cry.
for me, for me,
He sees the shovel in the trunk of my car, the dirt under my fingernails. Looks up at my face. I blink, not knowing what to say. Terror and panic and love and sadness sweeps through me in that one moment. My bottom lip trembles.
He drops my hand and backs me up against the door, and then his mouth is on mine, kissing me so fiercely that it hurts.
can you save my heavy dirty soul?
The days wear into nights wear into days. I can hardly feel the time passing; everything feels sluggish and slow as molasses, the last days of summer.
Night falls before I hear a knock on the door, and I see his figure through the window as I cross the hallway and open the door.
No garlic, no stakes, no crosses.
There's something terrible and dark and wanting in his eyes, enough to make my heart pound faster and my breathing speed up. Neither of us speaks for a moment, and then and there we understand each other. Possibly more than we ever have.
He tells me he's been waiting for me for a long time. That he's been waiting years (decades? Centuries?) for someone like me to cross his path.
And I know what's going to happen. I know what will happen.
Surprisingly, my voice doesn't shake over the words. "Come inside, won't you?"
for me, for me,
his hands are gentle as ever, one spanning across the milky flesh of my stomach as he holds my body close to his.
"Sweet thing."
my eyes close hard enough that I can see the swirling, symmetrical waves - galaxies spanning in the darkness behind my eyelids.
"Do you think you can save my soul, darling?"
sinking into the sunlight.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the
paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death; I will fear no evil: for thou
art with me; thy rod and thy staff they
comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the
presence of mine enemies: thou anointest
my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life; and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord for ever.
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