Together
Chapter Three
Death the Kid
Saturday.
My feet wondered aimlessly through the street. They had so eagerly hurried to leave my home that they forced me out into the centre of publicity. Where I mostly despised to be.
The snow crunched beneath my feet with every step I took: each step seeming to last for eternity before I took my next.
My breath floated away in front of me. The crisp air catching it in its grasp before devouring it - forever. Is it wrong I felt powerless against it?
"Hey look," two women glanced in my direction. "Isn't that Kid?"
I gritted my teeth. Both women being the exact reason for why I no longer graced this town with my presence. The reason why I despised every part of my own existence
The other lady nodded towards her friend, "it is."
"Poor boy," lady number one continued with the audible conversation. "His father is such a mess over having lost his wife. The child most be so lonesome without having his mother around."
Shut up.
"I wonder how he's doing? His father obviously can't take care of him, let alone take care of himself."
You know nothing.
"I can't help but feel so sorry for him."
"Then don't." I couldn't hold it in any longer. "I don't want your sympathy!"
Wide eyed; they watched me breathlessly from where they stood. Dumbfounded and frozen to the ground as well as the air around them. Short on lasting breaths and things to say.
"I know my father can't take care of himself. But can you blame him?"
I stuffed my numb fingered hands deeper into my hoody pockets, and breathed out slowly as if the air were barricaded within my lungs. Trying to free it from my body, as well as freeing myself from the feeling of suffocation.
And then I carried on walking, fading my ever existence from the two ladies across the road.
The snow was slippery beneath my shoes, making it hard to maintain my balance and not fall over as I continued my walk down the crowded streets of Death City.
I had to escape.
"Kid!" My mum's voice echoed up the stairs, "dinner!"
"One sec mum, I'm on the phone!"
She snickered, "suit yourself, I'll give it to the dog!"
"I'm coming!"
She always did stuff like that. She was beyond humorous, but at the same time - serious about everything she did. Every thought she crept into, made me want to turn back time so eagerly and keep her safe within my arms.
A few more thoughts slipped through my mind, one after the other. But before I were able to fully acknowledge them, I realised I had walked all the way to the library. The only place in this god forsaken town that I didn't hate.
No longer wanting to fight the cold around me, I stepped on in, rushing into the comforting warmth the air brought me as I hurried to the back of the room. And as I placed my back against the back wall - leaning on it like my last support was wavering - I already felt more belonged than I ever had before.
~o~0~o~
My fingertips brushed against the spines of every book I walked past. Feeling every tattered or newly placed cover that wrapped itself around a story that had yet to be burned within my memories.
By now the receptionist had asked me if I required any help at least three times - and every time I was tempted to reply with whether they meant mentally or physically - but I just declined their assistance.
Secretly I was just hiding until I felt the courage as well as the strength to begin my journey home. With every glance outside, I new everything that existed out there could somehow break me. So for that moment, I decided it would be best to wither away inside.
Children giggled from the entrance, both excited and impatient as they could no longer fight the urge to run to the beanbags. They jumped in amusement from one beanbag to the next, with nothing but the gleam of joy and youth marked upon their cold bitten cheeks.
Oh how I longed to show them the existence of depression, and teach them the feeling of fear and emotionless pain. I'd smack the happiness from their faces and replace it with eyes that gleamed with tears beneath the midnight moon.
Their mum quickly shushed them into silence, and like a moth to a flame, they were drawn to obey her. Their big childish eyes watching their tall elegant mother with eyes of admiration and the desire to be her. Like the only reason they agreed to tag along was to learn every move she made.
I bit hold of my lip, "cherish your mum, okay kids?"
I was inaudible to them. They were so drugged up with the need to be older that everything around them was just suddenly a background. Just an old toy that waited to be damaged even more. And I was part of that.
My favourite book rested beneath my fingertips. Stephen King's: The shinning. I had already read it six or seven times, but as I saw it on the shelf once again, the urge to read it one last time was scratching at the back of my skull.
It felt strong beneath my fingertips, powerful even. Every line and every word wanting to ink itself up and down my arm as I gripped it fully in my palm. And as I held it - I remembered every memory I had of reading it.
The days when my mother still existed. The day she handed it to me on my fourteenth birthday with that wide toothy smile and gleaming eyes that shimmered with pure and utter happiness.
I put it down.
My lips trembled with the urge to weep on the library floor, but as I gripped them with my teeth, I felt every single one of my emotions fall into my clenched fists.
Everything was pinching at my knuckles, as well as my nails pinching at my palms. The anger and frustration that had built up over the year I had strived by myself. The pain I wanted to unleash out on myself as well as others - I could feel it burning beneath my skin.
To the point I couldn't control it anymore.
Mummy!
I threw myself forward, fist at the ready. Every ounce of anger piercing in my knuckles as I aimed my hit towards the window overlooking the outside. I was beyond ready to bleed.
But before my fist came in contact with the glass, my eyes were drawn to the girl standing outside.
Her scared green eyes - locked with mine.
My chest burst and imploded with beauty, displaying vibrant colours of purity like splatters of ink staining my ribcage. I was being consumed by a bright light in which opened up inside of me, gripping on tightly to every shaken nerve that were raging inside my body as well as blinding me from every bad thing that ever existed around me.
Nothing hurt anymore.
Her long blonde hair hanging past her shoulders and tickling at her collarbone, with a fringe that sat just above those emerald defying eyes, like they longed to hide an enormous amount of beauty.
But still she stared at me. Deeply - her sad eyes watched me as my fist inched closer to the glass I destined to shatter.
My knuckles brushed against the glass. The cold melting my rage and at the same time - the barrier to my pain.
And as my closed eyes squeezed out the trickle of tears I'd been dying to release from the moment I awoke, I immediately felt like a river flooded the window before me as it escaped my suffocating body.
Mum. I could've saved you.
When I finally released the tight grip on my eyelids, daylight steamed up the salty water that rested in my eye sockets. But as I looked to the empty space in front of the window, a whole new kind of depression seized hold of me.
