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Papercut
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Why does it feel like night today?
Something in here's not right today
Why am I so uptight today?
Paranoia's all I got left
I don't know what stressed me first
Or how the pressure was fed/but
I know just what it feels like
To have a voice in the back of my head
Days have passed in blur formation, melding together with no determinable separation. Because Calleigh's not here anymore to save us from monotony. She's not here to stop Horatio from blaming himself, to make Speed speak. She's not here to make the lab do what they're employed to do nor to head off the administrative honchos when they start with the bullshit that he's not fit for duty; that none of us should be working but there's no one else to do the work.
Speed…he's deteriorated so badly we can't get through anymore. He won't ask questions like he did before, won't tell us if he's hungry, and refuses to pay attention when we speak to him. He doesn't do much beyond sit on the couch, a picture of the blonde in his hands and watch endless loops of home videos.
Hell, he's pissed himself a few times in the days prior because he wouldn't…couldn't…stand up.
The funerals today and while I wander through the rooms of my apartment, I see the last remnants of my friend's existence among the knickknacks, the photo splashed walls – A Christmas gift from last year of a glass angel, a picture of she and I having a picnic together, the blanket on my couch she bought me during her last trip home to Darnell.
Not so long ago she slept in my living room with eyes glassy after picking her father up from his bar hideaway, crying because she'd started running a fever that made her frustrated. My couch still smells like her, emits the soft feminine scent into the air.
Damn it.
No tears. I promised I wouldn't cry. Promised…I must…I must…
Oh, fuck it all! One promise – one moronic little agreement with the blonde girl. Now my best friend is being put in the goddamn earth today and she should be planning her wedding. Picking out a dress, flowers, and invitations. All the little details that she and Laura talked about over ice cream during lunch breaks.
There's tear tracks on my cheeks. I didn't realize I'd started, but I cannot stop now.
Why didn't Tim just go home when she asked? Why didn't she say some thing to us? Hell, why didn't H send her to a friggin' doctor if she was so sick?
My mind screams back the answers, screams back the saddening fact that Tim was too wrapped in himself. That we wouldn't have heard her if she'd said something, because we didn't think she was capable of this act of self-hatred.
We loved the person that she presented and didn't want her to be anything but the precocious southern belle with a sweetness for ballistics.
It's like a face that I hold inside
A face that awakes when I close my eyes
A face watches every time I lie
A face that laughs every time I fall
Laid out in a white dress…one that displays the scars with prominence. Her voice no longer telling stories, no longer answering questions. It is forever quieted and silenced.
'Calleigh's not here right now.'
Her answering machine's greeting. Sweet natured and giddy-happy-content, but now…now…that one sentence states it all. Since I don't think she ever was 'here'. Never really was as she presented herself.
And I miss her all the more because I didn't truly know her, and I never will get that chance to look beneath all the layers to see her. To know her as she was meant to be known.
Horatio walks over to me, grim-faced and bag-eyed, when I enter the parlor earlier than most.
He hasn't slept. There's a surprise. I doubt he's had a good night sleep since this started as he is the one taking care of Tim. He asks me if I want to pay my respects first or wait until the other mourners have done so.
I'll go now, I respond, I want to get it over with.
The boss nods at me, walks with me as I make my way down the aisle to the white-and-silver casket. The non-descript earth angel nestled into it. He scalpels himself from my side and half-collapses into a Victorian-style couch against the wall, then rubs Speed's back gently. Our colleague doesn't even deviate his gaze from the wall.
I won't think about that right now. The last think I need to do is fall into the same bottomless pit of despair, because I will never clamber my way out of it.
I don't think the brunet will manage to escape either. Only if she were here…
Delko! Pay attention to what's in front of you, Eric. Pay attention to the what-is and not what-should-have-been.
[And watches everything]
She looks so delicate and natural, like she were merely sleeping. Napping between cases. Blonde hair haloed against the baby-blue satin pillow. Like the pajamas she keeps…kept hidden under her bed.
The sobs come unexpectedly, bright against the harrowing dim light of the room.
I knew about her father. Knew about all the things he'd done to her, but I could never get through that wall that she built around herself to protect her heart from being battered again. That right was reserved for Tim Speedle.
I reach out and trace her fingers cold. Ice. Where there was once warmth.
Oh, Cal. I wish I had more time to explain how special you were to me. But there's no time anymore. It was cut desperately short by the pain only you fathomed. That dream we all had of you is shattered glass, hopes for the future wisps of nothingness.
'Look at what's left. Look at the sparkling glass, Eric. See what's left behind?'
So I know that when it's time to sink or swim
That the face inside is hearing me/Right underneath my skin
I can't stay here any longer, standing beside her final home.
Turn, walk away, settle in beside my sister who drove me because I was too upset to it myself. She wraps me in her arms, whispers that Calleigh looks beautiful.
She should be beautiful and alive.
Horatio's kneeling in front of me, asks to know if I want to sit with Tim. I nod. My best friend is gone and our boss has yet to grieve; he didn't get to feel the reality of this realm we live in until now. I can see it in those broken blue-eyes that he's able to see that she is not coming back.
His protégée is taken from him. He's brokenhearted – his mother, his brother, his mentor, his student. All taken and now he's defiantly alone with a heart no one will ever get through to.
I'll sit with Speed, but only if you promise to say goodbye to her. If you'll say goodbye and cry because I know you want to. I instruct, as his outward demeanor starts to crumble like chalk in a classroom. He chokes when he provides me with leverage to rise to my feet. Drift to my coworker – my friend – while the redhead drags his feet.
I dry the drops rolls down my chin, attempt to induce a conversation with him about passive subjects. Sports, work, weather. But in this place I can't stop myself from commenting on the flowers and the dress she will adorn eternally.
He shifts and turns his gaze to me, insentient expression on all his features, in all his movements, and speaks even though his voice is a croak.
I should have gone home with her. He says.
Push back the rising bile, resist the urge to scream that it's a little fucking obvious now that she'd still be breathing if he done so. Instead I reply with: It's over with, Tim. Heaven has her now and she'll be safe. No more pain.
'No more ignorance. No more people who couldn't save her when she needed saving.'
His face immediately changes, yet he's still holding back the torrent I know will inevitably come.
Cry. I order as though I have the authority, and he snaps his attentions to me once more.
It's like I'm/Paranoid lookin' over my back
It's like a/Whirlwind inside of my head
It's like I/Can't stop what I'm hearing within
It's like the face inside is right beneath my skin
I see the pure alarm, hear his breathing become more rapid as we both learn firsthand that Horatio Caine does cry.
He's getting more jittery. His hands dig into the couch cushions, his feet tap out a rhythm against the carpeted floor, and his eyes flick from person to person entering this room.
Speed's searching for an escape route. He wants to run…run from the pain handed out to him at every turn of his life; run from the memories that keep him up at night and we never ask what they are because he mumbles in his sleep the name of his best friend. Cries for the souls now angelic.
Flash, he's up and racing and Horatio half-wrestles, half-yells until the New York-born man settles his nerves and ends his struggles.
The parlor shrinks down. Shrinks down until it's just me, the redhead, Tim, the body of the person who was the glue of our team.
H sinks to the floor, arms still heavy with our colleague and his face wet with shedding tears. He holds out a hand, gestures that it's okay if I come over. Which I greedily accept the invitation, collapse heavy against the offered shoulder.
I miss her already. I say to no one except myself. I can't remember her laugh.
'You'll forget, Eric. It's the way it goes.'
I don't want to forget! I don't want to let these images and sounds of her evaporate from my life or my mind. She has to be remembered! Cannot let her become a singular grain of sand on the beaches of time when she deserves to be a boulder.
Someone's whispering, a voice familiar but not routine and I open my eyes to see the owner rubbing the supposed-to-be-fiancé's back. His father trying to soothe, but not succeeding against the abrasive sounds coming from his mouth.
I know I've got a face in me
Points out all my mistakes to me
You've got a face on the inside too and
Your paranoia's probably worse
I don't know what set me off first but I know what I can't stand
We sit there for some time, until the tears have dried to a cheek-sheen. Tim's fallen asleep and H's trying to move the two of us because his legs have fallen sleep. The other people flux in and out, down to the current trickle.
H holds my hand and steadily strokes our sleeping friend's arm. Ready to get up? He inquires, tone husky and thick.
I don't answer, rising to my feet. Speed jars to consciousness, asks to go.
Look around at everyone present and my mother says she'll stay behind to help with whatever needs to be done. The offer made and taken, we leave with tight grip on the brunet as we drag him bodily to the Hummer.
The though comes unbidden to my mind – Calleigh used to drive our H2s better than any of us. Could power through traffic, but never even ghost a pedestrian. She was the best. Her jeep as well.
Like when she took me with her on a road trip during Christmas to visit her brother Jaikob in northern Louisiana and took me off-roading.
So much for the demure spirit I had thought she possessed.
'That's what I like, Eric. I like going against the grain – keeps life interesting.'
Is that what she told me? I can't recall if it were her or if it were one of my other friends, but then…she was the only one I ever had meaningful conversations with. Conversations with mock-smiles and choice words that someone would mistake for actual happiness.
Now I see that it was all a bitter shadow of who she could have been.
Everybody acts like the face of the matter is
I can't add up to what you can
But everybody has a face that they hold inside
A face that awakes when they close their eyes
A face watches every time they lie
A face that laughs every time they fall
H pulls into his driveway, knowing that I cannot go home and be alone in the coming night air. Gently, he stirs our sleeping-again-friend. Tells him that we're spending the night with him, hear the jingle of handcuffs as they bobble from a belt hoop while he jumps out to ensure that Speed doesn't make a break for it.
I stumble toward the door, open it to be immediately faced with a poster-sized black-n-white photo of all of us. Our boss stands dead-center with Calleigh and Tim to one side while I and Megan stand to the other. I never understood why he made us take that picture, I doubt I ever will, but I think I'll have to ask him for a copy to hang in my home to pay homage to the fallen.
Sit down, Eric. He commands, shoving me toward his living room. Tosses me into a chair, before placing Tim onto the matching couch…and surprises a pair of cuffs on to our colleagues thinning wrist. The other end is attached to the wall the couch is pushed to; a ring in the wall that a piece of art once hung from.
I know which piece is gone. The one Calleigh gave him for his birthday this year; A painting she did herself of a section of the vibrant Miami beaches at sunset.
Tim jingles, screams out that we have no right to hold him here.
All this…because the dream died.
[And watches everything]
Because she's dead.
Never to solve another crime, never to put away another criminal, never to take another road trip on a whim to see her nephews. Never to coach me when I have to say something to Laura but don't know how to word it.
Nor to heal the frazzled nerves at the end of the day.
She's not here to stop Speed from wanting to run like a fucking hurricane away from us. And the reality hits me hard as I sit in my boss's home – there'll be another funeral one day. No, I don't think it'll be sometime soon…it'll be once we let Tim go back out in to the world, once he's fathomed how to act with some semblance of normalcy.
Then the call will come, inevitable. We'll ask why and know the answer, refusing to speak it aloud. Bury him beside his wistful…wistful…girlfriend? No. Fiancée? She wasn't yet, though they immerse her in the brackish Earth with his ring adorning her finger.
He survived the loss of his best friend in New York. He won't survive this.
So you know that when it's time to sink or swim
That the face inside is watching you too/Right inside your skin
The sun sets against the rippling waters. I can see it through the large plate glass windows, see H standing with hands in their magnetic position dressed in lounge pants and a white shirt. His head is bowed in the twilight, and the glow coruscating his tussled hair. And the soft shake in his torso alerts to the grieving.
Tim snores delicate, one arm still chained.
I lean further into the loveseat, reiterating the thought from earlier:
She was the glue that held everything together, and in the void of her presence, everything is falling apart. Dissolving, smashed, unmade…shattered beyond recognition.
And I don't care anymore if things are re-done.
Because I saw the paper on Horatio's kitchen counter, the resignation waiting to be folded and mailed; know that we didn't lose one CSI – we lost two, and the second is biding his time; that I'm nearing thirty and about to make a massive career move.
Change since I know in my heart every vic who comes in with blonde hair and a petite frame, I'll start crying and won't stop. She ingrained herself into our lives so deep that taking her has ripped a single string from the tapestry that is life…unraveling everything and leaving us staring at bare walls.
The sun goes down
I feel the light betray me
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*v* Cassie Jamie *v*
csimiami@cassie-jamie.com