A/N: HEY! I swear to God, the moment I type the last word of this, I'm going to bawl like a baby. Soooo much shit has happened since I started this story…all…weirdly related to its contents…what? Hm. That's creepy. …Like, woah, how am I just now realizing this…? It's the end of an era, isn't it? –sigh- Well, anyway, keep all hands and legs inside the ride at all times. And Craig's CRAZY.
--
He touches me again. Affectionate, parental touches; nothing vaguely sexual. I can cope with that.
He comes home one day with a crate filled with those little orange plastic pill bottles; none labeled. Every morning, he administers one to me, and one to himself. I never ask as to their purpose. I've become a deaf mute invalid; he directs me from one action to the next. With the time I'm not using to fulfill an order, I take to cleaning, TV watching, plant raising, and sleeping.
It's gotten a lot easier.
He works consistently from eight to seven at an electronics store, each morning warning me not to leave the apartment or open the door for anything, then stands outside the door to listen to me setting the deadbolt, which was a futile act, considering he manually locked it using the key from outside anyway.
The house is always clean. I sweep imaginary dust into the pan, and drown all my plants. He buys me a DS and a pet simulator.
Time smears and runs and skips around; at times I think it's Friday when it's Wednesday, and sometimes I think it's been three days when it's only been one.
He clips newspaper articles regarding murders, accidents, and impending doom, and hangs them on the refrigerator.
He's nice, if not distant, paranoid, and of course, controlling to the point of psychosis. He thanks me for making dinner, reminds me that he loves me, buys me gifts, and lectures me on his importance in my life. The world outside is dangerous. He couldn't stand to lose me.
I tell him I understand.
I stay within the confines of the apartment walls for three years.
--
I don't know how long I've been unloading the dishwasher. I know that it must've only been a few minutes, considering the space left from the little progress I'd made, but I feel as if I've been pulling out the same dish, while Craig sits at the table and eats the same spoonful of cereal, for at least an hour.
Distracted as I attempt to work out the chronology in my mind, I don't notice as I spin too close to the counter while holding a glass bowl. It bangs against ehe edge and shatters, scattering glass over the floor and my feet.
It's hard to process the curved, three-inch piece of glass sticking from the top of my foot, and the blood pouring in streams down to the tile floor. I can feel the pain, but I don't really care.
Craig does.
"Oh God, Tweek, that's really deep." He says, jumping to my side to inspect it.
"Do I need stitches?"
"Yeah, you probably do."
"Do I need to go to a hospital?"
Craig looks up; his eyes wide, yet narrowed, in angry shock. "No! Of course not! I can do it."
He uses tweezers to remove the glass, and a routine needle and thread to bridge the gap between the split sides of my flesh. He leaves for work directly afterwards. I take my CGI dog for a walk.
Three days later, as we sit watching TV after dinner, I remark at the swelling and color around the cut. He bites his lip.
Two days after that, I wake up beside Craig at four AM, sweating profusely.
He calls in sick that day to take me to the hospital.
--
I knew I was fucking up. Just like in school, when I knew I was gonna fail no matter what I did, so I chose to ignore all work rather than attempt for a more respectable, yet still failing, grade. I'd destroyed my Tweek. And I continued to do so. But I couldn't lose him. I would sooner have him a zombie than dead.
For some reason.
I was terrified as I held his wrist, nearly breaking his bird bones, trying to rush him as quickly as possible from the danger of the four-room apartment building to the diminished danger of the interior of my truck.
The trip only lasted about forty five minutes, drive included; they pulled out my shoddy stitch work, cleaned the cut properly, restitched, and gave us an antibiotic for him to take. It was the most frightening forty five minutes of my life.
He stares with slightly conscious eyes out the car window as I speed home. My heart breaks. The sedatives I provided each of us with each morning were doing their intended job; my considerably smaller dosage curbing my anger, his keeping him walking dead.
I knew I had to repent somehow. I couldn't release him out into the world, because the risk of losing him was far too high. If there was any risk, it was too high.
I was killing him.
I couldn't be without him.
Everything became clear.
--
Craig calls in sick the next day, too. I don't know why. I don't ask questions.
Neither of us take the pills.
We spend the morning lying naked under the comforter, my head in the crook between his jaw and his shoulder, his hand on my hip. Everything feels sop clear, and ordered; a minute lasts sixty seconds every time, and I love Craig. Rational, logical thoughts.
I know Craig's done pretty awful things. But, I went along with them. I love him so much; I'd do anything to keep his feeling of security. If in order to let him know I'd always be around, I had to always be around, so be it.
The first word he says after three hours of lying in this position are; "Tweek, do you even know how old you are?"
Of course I—what? "I…I'm…I have no idea." When did that happen?"
"You're twenty three, Tweek."
When did I get so old?
Where had I been?
…Here.
Craig separated out two components, leaving all the places that had been touching him comfortably to feel bare and lonely. "Hold on a second." He said as an explanation as he folded back the comforter to allow himself to leave.
I watched as he pulled a pair of jeans over his bare hip bones, then walked out of the room, scratching his midriff cutely.
After a moment, I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing.
I waited for nearly half an hour.
--
The apartment always reminded Tweek of the Wayside school; four floors, one room per floor, plus a small area to allow enough room for the door into the floor's designated room and the staircase leading to and from the next.
Just outside the door to their apartment, Tweek noted a pair of tweezers.
He stooped to pick them up.
On the bottom step leading to the fourth floor, he saw the lid to a canister of coffee.
He approached it. And picked it up as well.
He mounted the stairs.
The trail of miscellaneous items led to the door leading to the roof. Tweek had never been on it before; however, he knew Craig was giving him permission to go outside.
A whoosh of cold air frosted him over as he opened the door; it was snowing. With slight hesitation due to the temperature, he left the heated interior of the apartment and stepped into the snow. There were footprints leading from where he stood to the edge of the roof; on the edge, Craig;s cell phone lay open.
Tweek's stomach sank.
He approached the phone, shaking partially due to the cold and partially out of fear; as far from the edge as he could, he stretched his arm and batted it into his reach, where he picked it up.
The numbers 911 has been typed in; all he needed to do to contact the police was press send.
He thought he was going to puke as he slowly leaned toward the roof, attempting to see what lay beneath the edge, in the new snow.
--
A/N: Oh…whoops! One more chapter. I'll write it right away. Plz review; although be warned that I'm basically pouring my fucking soul out here and I'd appreciate some god damn respect for that. I know it's a little jankity and inconsistent, and I pretty much suck at writing in first person, and I probably made nine thousand flaws, but…uh…actually never mind. Say what you want, I deserve it.