A/N Y'know those kinda sorta not quite songfics I write? This is essentially one of those. Only instead of songs, its works by Bukowski. This is what happens when you read Bukowski while listening to Tom Waits and killing a bottle of vodka all at once. Any awesome turns of phrase are almost guaranteedly Hank's, and not at all mine, as this borrows liberally from his works.
She sat listlessly on the bed, reclined against the headboard, a battered, beaten paperback in her hands, and her eyes skimmed over the words, taking them in without reading. She knew what they said, knew what would happen. Knew that the anti-hero would be written into impossible situations just to be written out of them just as ham-fistedly as he fell into plot holes the size of craters. It didn't matter, what happened, really. But just having the book there, with its dog eared pages, cracked spine, and bruised cover in her hands, a symbol of everything that she had come to hate, that was what mattered.
It wasn't even her usual fare. Far from it. She never would have even given the book a second glance had it not been the one sitting on a nightstand the last time she walked into a bedroom that was forever etched into her mind. She'd asked about its companions before, in happier times, in days of wine and roses when she had been surprised to see a small collection tucked neatly into a nightstand, and had simply gotten an offhand comment about the man behind the works being the only thing that had ever been enjoyed out of the hell of high school English classes. She'd thought the works morbid, depressingly fascinating at the time as she had skimmed through them. But that was before the world had gone to hell.
The clock on her nightstand read six oh four, and she considered staying in bed all day. Perhaps at least until noon. Maybe by then, half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take. She wondered, idly, when she had started thinking like that. Wondered when, exactly the wonder had gone out of the world. When the brilliance and the lustre and the shine had been stripped off of life like the paint on the walls of a motel that only offered hourly and weekly rates, when the roses had still bloomed, when leaves were still flowers, before dawn had gone down to day and the trees had been stripped down to bare bark.
She knew when it was. She knew exactly when it was. It had been two hundred and twenty five days ago, on a brisk, spring morning, when she had decided that enough was enough. She'd had enough of this terrible tango they had that left her sore and aching for all of the wrong reasons. She'd had enough of second guessing everything she did, every thought, every word, every deed. She had grown to hate everything that they were. She'd never been good at social situations, she did not, could not, feel like others did. She had her facts, her figures, her statistics, she had her knowledge, which was a somber comfort to retreat to. But she liked things that way, liked being alone with herself. It was better than being with someone else, with all their tricks and handsprings and games and lies and fantasies. She liked her reality, just the way it was.
She had seen the future, and she had known it would be bleak of she continued down the path she had been on. She had finally drew the line of demarcation, and she didn't regret that, would never regret that. It had needed to be done. She had needed to finally put her foot down and say that this casual not enough, never enough, thing that they had between them was over, that she was sick and tired of the things that it did to her. She didn't even regret what had happened some six hundred hours later – that wasn't her fault. It would have happened anyway. She knew a normal person might feel guilt over it, remorse, believe themselves to be at fault. That maybe, maybe if she hadn't let her voice escalate to an angry register that she hardly ever used one morning some six hundred hours before the events of that night might have played out differently. That maybe, they would have been right where she was sitting at that fateful fatal moment instead of in a darkened warehouse, where the trip-wire would have never been seen. She knew that a normal person would ponder, consider what her life could have been if only.
But she was not a normal person, and she never liked dealing with what ifs, if onlys, if things were differents, if she had her ways. A normal person would have cursed god, gods, goddesses, idols, a normal person would proclaim that there was no way anything that moved like that, who knew her name could die in the common verity of dying. There had never been a way for her to live comfortably with people. She dealt with realities, with what the cold, dead facts of life presented to her. But it did not mean that in the dark of night, she did not stay awake with a battered paperback by a man she had not understood then, but understood now in her hands, eyes skimming words without reading. It'd been one of the few things she'd taken- the collection from the drawer of the nightstand, a few pairs of pants that had been hers originally anyway, a blanket that she kept draped over the back of her couch, fastidiously removed every time she cleaned, and replaced again when she was done, a piece of mangled, corroded metal where if one squinted and tilted their head and stared long enough they might be able to make out what had once been a V or perhaps a Y, and what was maybe an eight or was maybe a B at one point in time, what could have been a five or a B or an S like it was one of those magic eye pictures where you just had to unfocus to see what lay beyond the colors. She was not the sort to ever unfocus.
There was a vase of yellow flowers on the windowsill, catching the light through the venetian blinds, bathed golden in the rising sun, interrupted by the dark shadow of telephone lines in the autumn dawn. She had done what had needed to be done that morning before the world went to hell, before the sky had rotted and dragged the color with it. She had put an end to things, because it was easier that way. She had wanted to be opened, and untangled and tossed away, the same as dozens had done with her before. The keeping there, the hanging on, with the not enough, never enough, that was what had ruined her. It was not a battleship gray casket, it was not a set of bagpipers, or the echoing of twenty one muskets into an overly warm, sunny, spring day. It was that she had expected things to end, and they hadn't, so she had ended them, and she had nothing but hate for the one that had put her in that position.
She understood the rise and fall of nations, of the way things were made of something and went to nothing, but she had never understood love, relationships. All the love she had was not enough, never enough. And that had been her downfall. Death had wanted more death, to give life you must take life, and it had taken from her the one that she had hated most. She could hear the low buzz of a fly against the window pane, having darted inside with her, searching for some greater glory and finding itself trapped instead. And yet it still fought for its freedom, banging relentless against tempered glass, aching to go out into the dawn's early light, eager to feel the warmth of the sun, begging for release as it flittled for a moment larger than heaven or hell against the opaque barrier to the world. And she could see a spider lying in wait, not willing to expend energy to hunt when it's prey would easily come to him. She'd never minded spiders, and indeed the one in the corner was one she recognized, a friendly companion in her room, keeping away the pests and the vile insects that attempted to invade her sanctuary. She had always let him be, filling his web with things she disliked.
And she sat listlessly on the bed, propped against the headboard, battered and bruised paperback in hand, eyes skimming words, but not reading. She wondered if she was a happy person, or simply too ashamed and frightened and lacking the guts to do anything but pretend to be such. The clock on the nightstand read six fifteen, and she wondered if she closed her eyes if the world would be mercifully blank for just a few more hours. She wondered when her dreams began to be filled with visions of tigers, hunting, stalking, all feral power, so similar, and yet so different to the way her dreams had been filled before. She wondered when her dreams had ceased to be filled of images of one of nature's tricks, of perfect, undulating movements, quicksilver and snakelike, of giant, taunting totality of beautiful eyes smiling and a mouth turned down slightly at the corners as though it was about to burst into laughter at her helplessness. Her dreams were still of glorious, feral predators, even though they had changed. But it was for the dreamers to interpret the dreams, and she'd never been a dreamer.
She'd let the days run away like wild horses over the hills, and let the cold, emotionless being she was come back to the fore. It was why she hated, because warmth and brightness and joy were everything that she was not. She had done what was necessary, for both of them, that morning, when she had severed the ties between them before the world had gone to hell. She had done what was necessary when she had not minced words, stooped so low as to fall to profanity, a go fuck yourself that had echoed long after she left in the hall of an apartment she had only visited once since, and that was merely to reclaim what was hers, and pick up the dog eared, tattered, ragged reminder of what had been, of what could have been, if only she would ever think of the what ifs. She had done what was necessary. She had hated, when it would have taken less courage to love.