Awaken

by

DES


You… always said I loved flowers. Their uttermost splendor and beauty pledging to kindle and smolder in my hyacinth eyes… that's what you always said.

You believed I was your angel; your godsend and I was brought to your feet on a garnished silver platter, to beg and kiss your every whim.

… I always hated flowers. Their foul beauty and a blinding cheerful brightness that just seemed to ooze carnage. They just had this innocence about them, and I always loathed it, flouncing a purity I never had. But, it was never a flower's fault; it just seemed easier to blame my problems on, to ponder my hatred.

You see, I always hated you…

Because I hated myself…

Your touch was crippling and painful, the way you clamped on my arms and pummeled your fingernails in my flesh, scattering tender bruises and boiling scars along my skin. The way you stole every kiss, shredding the whispering reminance of my soul.

I don't know why I stayed, you never said I couldn't go, and I almost did, I almost left you, every time I gathered my courage enough to sob away as I tried to shuffle out of the door and leave you forever…

The farthest I ever would have made was the front patio.

You wouldn't even move a muscle as I fumbled with the slanderous lock of the front door…

Cursedly, it was always your silence that nursed my heart to stay…

I guess, some part of me, still loved you.

…You proudly took me in that cold and hostile night, when no one else dared, your eager actions and tender thoughtfulness sealed thoughs powerful mental scars that badgered my sore heart. The way you smiled as you gave away your last rations of food, or the way your rough cracked and weather-beaten hands thrust forward fresh clothes and blankets that were not stained in tainted blood, your eyes wrinkling in parallel slothfulness.

I was stupid to think you didn't have an ulterior motive.

I was stupid to think you loved me.

…I killed for you! You even found the courage to call me your lone worthy hit man, or what I could be so called. I murdered countless for your false love, for your lame comfort, and you just used me for my deadly skills with a gun.

You just showed me no matter how far you run, or hide in the shadow; your past seemed to always catch up in a pained repituar.

The only sympathy I ever granted, was from the rain itself.

I was doomed to squander in lithe less purgatory.

As years decomposed and reborn, you began to callous a hardening shell, no longer pretending to look worried and solemn when I came back, bled and slashed. You found it easier to ignore my hisses and stumbling from a tedious limp, staring at the TV as you drank your alcohol of choice. You didn't even take the time for me to warm a smile, but rather inserted a scowl as I trailed a mess of mud and copper blood, trying helplessly to find first aid before I passed out. I knew I would get beaten up for it later when you were tipsy enough.

I was never that good at my job, seemingly somehow coming back with a nick or a gut full of bullets. Sometimes, I was even surprised I was still blinking, my body mutilated in brutal scars or gapes that would never heal even after so many years. But the thought itself wasn't that simple...

I was already dead...

My body nothing more than a rotting shell. I didn't even need to eat or sleep anymore, my mind being forced into consciousness against any physical proof.

I was a phenomenon, a waking dead, with no purpose but to prove my existence in this universe with a tangent, lifeless body. There was no other way to describe it.

You thought it funny, humorous to take advantage of my 'condition'.

I tried-- I tried so many times to rid myself of this surreal world, to rid myself of living…

Only trying to slaughter with a chafed sword.

I was never a stable person; plotting death seemed to be my virtue.

When you gave me a bed and room that long decade ago, you were also lane with my doubts and insecurities, and waking depression that seemed to clot over the folds and lobes of my mind.

I had demons, as does anyone.

I just didn't know how dangerous they were.

I was drenched in my bed of lies, tossing and curling among the blankets that held my hesitations and barriers, cooing to the down pillow that nibbled at my inner feasting fire of uncertainty.

…Why did you stop me? Why did you keep me alive on such a thin valid thread, that you kept mending and knotting?

I had no reason to live, no reason to strive, and yet you wouldn't let me try—you wouldn't let take my own life…

It was never a secret I was suicidal.

I remember when I lifted my first sail in descendent to many long rolls off retribution. It never even reached its peak, I never even touched the pill bottle before you were on me, slamming the cabinet shut from my lingering hands. Your reflection was masked while eyebrows etched down in a deep frown, as you stared at me from the surface of the latch door from behind me.

It was a lame, cruel world.

My second self inflicted chance with death was more risqué. Our fight had mounted high till you were degraded to running around the house trying to grad me as I tried to make it through the bathroom door.

I had felt hostile to the world and to myself.

I painted my hands red.

I had murdered a woman, like any other, but lost to the glee and giddiness of a first kill. I slaughtered her baby right before her eyes before pulling the gun on her.

I felt dirty and defiled, fueling a passion as though a crime of loathing the very aspect of my being. I hadn't even locked the door before the pills were crammed in my mouth. I didn't even hear you enter the dinky room, grabbing me hoarsely from behind and cramming your fist in my diaphragm, making me choke on the tablets that had made it past my throat. You jerked my face to stare up at yours, prying my jaws open with your hands at the corners on my mouth, flashing rabid dimples as I tried to knaw your fingers away.

I watched you that night as you flushed the remnants of my destruction down the toilet.

I even remembered the time when I tried to jump off the roof off your tall 3 level Victorian house, ending with me shaking in a pile of blankets on the kitchen table, you trying to force feed some sort of nutrition I hadn't consumed in many days.

I loathed you; I hated you for keeping me in this unresponsive form.

I had felt like a fish out of freshwater, a bird with clipped wings, a primal urge deep within me stirring my instincts as a bear knows to hibernate for the winter.

I was tired of watching the stoplights turning green.

I had to go, I had to leave.

Maybe, that's the reason I did nothing Maybe that's the reason, I only stared at the barrel of the gun that kept shaking and wavering in different directions. It was only a fact to little nimble hands clutched it erect, a cloth doll soaking up dew that clung to the grass and sopping soil with its blasphemous face in a over exaggerated smile, limp on the ground, fat damp splotches darkening its peach fabric from trickled tears.

The house lights were twinkling through foggy windows, illuminating the small space before me and silhouetting her stumpy figure. I had found her sitting on my doorstep, playing with her juvenile toy and singing a small jingle of a tune that was direly off key and squeaky.

I hated children.

Maybe because I lost my brother as a kid. He was always messed up in the head, from the day he was born; my parents told me he was 'special'. Most days he'd spend his time staring out the window, a blank eary look on his face.

He died at seven years old; hit by a truck on the road that junctioned our house, holding his rabbit by its limb as he stared straight forward at the speeding rim of the car. The driver never saw him, I was the only witness. I watched as he died-- I watched as he didn't even blink. There were no words exchanged, no moves or cries of fear.

I let him commit suicide, and after, watched the blood seep into the pavement. The remnants on muscle and tissue left on the bone of his face, that hadn't been tore off with the flesh, seeming to curve in a smile, his eyes rolled back so you couldn't see his pupils.

He haunted my dreams after that night.

I vowed to never have kids because I couldn't handle their touch, their laughter, their screams, I would begin to shake and stutter, because I was no longer staring at the child's face, but his, marred and torn as he grinned at me with white eyes.

That's why I didn't look at her, but her gun, listening to the whimpers and sobs that purged her throat.

I knew who she was; I knew who she could have been.

I remembered everything from the incident, how the woman pleaded with me not to hurt her baby, the said child screaming and crying in confusion. I killed her mother, bathing the room in a thick coat of scarlet, and splattering the little girl in her mother's blood…

And when I strained the gun on her, I hesitated, her body stiff with shock as she blanched at the body that once was her mother.

For the first time in my years since childhood, I felt pity, I felt pity for the young girl that lost the only thing she had left. And so, I gave her my gun, kneeling down and placing in front of her, and kept my head down.

I left that night, one dead and another left alive, the sick pit of regret burying itself deep into my soul.

I knew we would meet again. In the physical world or afterlife.

I knew she hated me, as much as I loathed her. Even after years of strife and pain, I could tell her wounds would never heal.

My groceries dropped to the ground from my unhooked hands, an orange rolling out of its plastic cradle to the base of her feet, my eyes traveling a longer its wakeful path.

I slowly began to sliver my gaze up her form, her haggard appearance seeming to flood wakefulness within me.

My eyes sluggishly caught hers in an unfrazzled snare, her hair swept away from her face in tangled pig tails.

No words were exchanged between us, no awkward changes of footing or movement of expression from pulling back. The only sound that penetrated the thick tension the fogged between us was her soft sniffling and the tapping of her little ring that kept trembling against the gun handle.

My recognition of her wasn't from facial features or profile, but by the weapon that pooled in her hands. On the tip of the barrel, was words carved deep in the steel metal, words that only my victims ever read before death. Words that placed a cold nest in my heart.

There were so many things I could have done, so many flips of the coin I could have chosen. I could have snatched the gun from her hands and knocked her out with a flick of my wrist, I could have killed her with a flip and a twist…

But, I did nothing…

Absolutely nothing.

I walked away those long years ago, because I saw myself as her— in her. I remembered myself huddled in the corner of my childhood house, pleading my mom to whisper 'I love you' to me, two bodies lain strewn across the carpet floors.

I died by her hands that night, not caring of the repercussions…

Of anything, but waking up.

The moment the gun awakened with a powerful explosion that echoed through the time and sound barrier, I didn't blink, I didn't move…

I died without a single protest to the world, a lone swear at the universe…

I died alone.

And as the impact thrusted me backward and pain clouded my mind from thought or feeling, my eyes dulling with a polished lifeless gloss. I stared at you, your face framed in an emotionless gaze as you sipped your nameless drink.

You watched as I died from virgin hands, you masked a stare as you watched all that we had crumble between us, dissolving to a void of solitude…

And yet-- you did nothing, as did I.

I finally died that night, not from the unmendedful wound that ruptured in my heart, but from the final feeling of…

Waking up…

Of falling asleep…

Of stirring from the nightmare of a restless dream.

I only stared forward, the last sound of consciousness was a birds waking cry, screeching forth from the bushes that resided behind me, the sun cracking over the horizon as my eyes fluttered close, the last image scattering across my mind.

Around the rim of the gaping hole that sunk deep within the lethal objects body, was the context:

It was always a dream