Note:
Hi.
Just so there's no confusing, this was part of chapter two before I changed it but I edited it a bit and here it is separate because it made more sense to me that way.
zzzzz Survey zzzzzzz -same as for the previous one, but I thought I'd jam it in anyway.
What you like to see more of the bohemians in this? If so, who?
Spoiler: I've started something with none other than Mimi in it, but I wasn't sure if you guys wanted to see others.
And again thanks for reading!
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One, two, three…
Her breathing resumed to sharp amounts of pain from within her chest, resulting from withdrawing herself of letting the air reach her lungs.
Pause.
"What the hell?" his crispness of his voice echoed, shifting her back to reality. At least for a moment.
April hadn't reacted. She'd withdrew herself, her heart racing brought on by a simple incident. She hadn't known how to stop and resort to handling it in a normal manner. There wasn't an explanation she could give herself for snapping the way she did, but in some way she could see it coming.
And with Ben, it was only a start.
Kneeling upon the floor she took hold of a handful of the broken glass attempting to quick fix the situation. The shards pierced the skin on her right palm and before she could react, or at least look at the situation from a calm perspective, she raised herself up again as the shards fell back onto their place on the floor.
"I'm sorry…I don't know what I'm-" she tried, unable to find the words perishing under his gaze.
Go.
"April!" April, where are you-" Benny started to yell before the door slammed in his face, leaving his words to be heard by no one but himself. Dumfounded by the sudden events, he began growing rather angered towards the confusion of the whole situation. A simple incident had sent her over the edge. A scraping of metal, and the garage door opened. Keys jingled in her shaking hands as she pried open the door to car. He stepped outside to see what was going on, to catch the glimpses of her car about to leave the driveway. The vehicle was never used. April Ericsson did not drive a run down version of a 1993 Saturn. The vehicle was stashed in a garage and rarely taken out to see the sunlight; it was surprising the engine still worked. Yet when he had brought up selling the piece of junk it was, she always refused. There was must have been something more to the piece of metal that met the eye, to her anyway.
Banging her foot on the jammed gas petal, it functioned on the third try. Turning the wheel all too fast, it swerved out of the driveway. In panic and fear, she was deafened against Benny's calls for her to return. The house appeared farther and farther away in the rearview mirror but the extent of the state she was in didn't allow relaxation. The road flashing before her eyes, she clutched onto the wheel, holding it at nine and four, as opposed to the standard ten and two. The bad habit had formed back in high school when she first got behind the wheel, and she had never stuck to the proper way since. Cars passing by all drove in the opposite direction, coming home as opposed to leaving the neighborhood. With a blink, she took a turn to the left; another blink and tears began to befall her soft azure eyes.
'Suck it up, Ericsson' she started to tell herself, wiping away the signs of weakness with a sleeve of a dark, loose gray sweater. She was no longer sure what to call herself anymore either. She had been April Ericsson once. The divorce wasn't finalized yet, leaving her as Davis for the time being. Coffin might be what the future brings, and although she wouldn't admit it to herself the feeling of being together was as good as being dead.
There would be a good few months until she was perhaps back to her own name, the delay in the lawyer's office was due to the paperwork of the battle for custody of the child. Neither parent wanted to give up Thomas, and when the mother was finally awarded charge for the boy, it became clear that both the adults would never make a clean break. Too much too tie them together, and all of it turned into a tragedy.
She wasn't sorry, there wasn't one bit of remorse on her own part towards herself. All of it however weighted itself down on the part of her son and a certain man; whose locks of dark blonde hair her son had inherited.
'You broke our family, mom.'
She found his voice echoing inside her head, repeating itself over and over. It came to be a broken record of her mind. A few more flashes of his face from the earlier in the night and she was ready to drive off the road. He looked the same. He was the same, yet she still felt in debt to this man whose life she now told herself she shattered.
Another turn, and a freeway formed in front of her. The speed limit was raised, gladly. Leaving the needle jumping over the meter from time to time. There was no destination. Nor an explanation. There was to keep going, to keep driving until someone was to stop her.
So I'll drive so fucking far away that I never cross your mind.
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He sat at a window ledge, staring out into the 'city of insomnia', it seemed. But with a closer look, he held onto a frame. He'd long put the boy to bed, compromising with his protests to give into sleep with promises of tomorrow's outings. Only then were the real emotions from the following evening unlocked. He hadn't expected to see her, for all he knew but there she was wanting in on his life in the present. She was the past, and he was sure to keep her there.
She had broken him too after all, no matter how hard that was to believe. Tonight, he'd lied to his own son about injuring his hand, just to not have to pick up the instrument he now dreaded, and which had been stashed away in a few places of the apartment.
The chords were no longer the same, the lyrics were nostalgic and the sound was lost inside the soul of a man who was long gone.
There was nothing more in between the two of them but an ever-growing feel of anger and rejection towards one another. However, he wasn't filled with detestation towards her, as he had appeared to be. That wasn't apparent to the rest of the world for various reasons, many of them he was unable of explain, even to himself.
A black wooden frame had its place in his firm hands. He'd come across it by a pure accident, searching through boxes for an old record. Along with it he'd found one of the notebooks he used to fill with tabs and lyrics. Used to was the key, and there wasn't a feel that change was nearing. He hadn't bothered opening it to it's college lined paper, and traces of a black inked pen. Instead he tossed it aside like another unwanted part of this life he was leading. But the same could not be done with the frame that contained the simple photograph. His hand shook slightly when he had found it, and unable to put it away he'd been locked into it's embrace since. Roger had tried to take it out of it's frame to throw it away, but guilt had prevented.
Twice.
The glimpse that he had caught of the back of the photograph read 'Rog, Tom at five months and me.'
The handwriting was cursive, messy and hard to make out, if it was anyone but him reading. The words stood out perfectly of their surface, running back and forth through his mind. The endless moment captured in time that was this photograph contained a small baby, safe from the world, cradled in a shady blanket in his mother's arms. And she looked good. Healthy and still sporting the pregnancy glow, smiling wide at the photographer, a smile to kill for, like no other. Her eyes glistened reflecting back unimaginable amounts of happiness and joy. He'd put his arm around her back then, looking not at the camera but at the family. His family they had been.
It had begun to rain, which he took no notice of. As the rhythm of the drops against the window started he had just fallen deeper into the deep state brought on by the discovery of this object.
Mistakenly, it wasn't the idea of family that which had captivated him. It was more on her part that he grew attached to the matted photograph. It was what she had been years back, as opposed to as of now. She was no longer happy, content maybe, but not happy. She never laughed anymore, even with Benny she was never the same. Even her smile was loosing it's once surreal captivity. Pale and fragile she had become. Weak and afraid. Her thin frame frightened him, hipbones projecting through her clothing. Hair a bright shade of red, was now barely auburn. Her face seemed hollow, and eyes which used to glisten in the sunlight were no longer full of the same intensity. April Ericsson wasn't the same, she was vacant and broken.
Defeated at a battle she had no chance at on her own.
And more than anything he was afraid he had made her that way.
Just make a smile come back and shine just like it used to be
And then she whispered "How can you do this to me?"
Review… pretty please?
+ Feel free to tell me anything about what you've thought of it.
Thanks!
