And all the best deceptions and clever cover story awards go to you.
So kiss me hard
cause this will be the last time that I let you.
You will be back someday
And this awkward kiss that tells of other peoples lips will be of service
To keeping you away
The Best Deceptions by Dashboard Confessional
Chapter 3 – Lies
You press your hand against your lips as soon as Cameron is out of sight. What the hell? This isn't supposed to go like this. They aren't supposed to find out, and they certainly aren't supposed to care. But she does.
She does, right?
The damn needle is confusing you. You hadn't seen the kiss coming until it was really too late. But the needle definitely had come out of nowhere. She set you up. You ought to be proud; it's a fantastic ploy and you fell for it hook, line and sinker. In fact, if you hadn't been so wrapped up in the kiss that you were actually…holding her in your arms, you might not have felt her move for the needle at all.
She can't really be that detached from you. Not after all this time. She spent most of the last two years either trying to get your attention or trying not to garner it. Not after so much effort. She cares about you too much to be so cold, so calculating, so callous in the face of your impending death. Not with her history of caring about the damaged.
Not after you're finally at least considering the possibility she cares.
Not after you took it back just to make sure.
Not unless you are wrong.
She doesn't kiss like she doesn't care. You try, but fail.
She kisses like she means it. You do.
She kisses like she wants to remember what you taste like. You'll never forget.
She kisses like she wants her taste to cloud your senses. It does.
She kisses like she wants not to miss her chance. You're afraid you have.
She kisses like she wants you. You know the feeling.
You sit in your chair heavily. This plan is as close to a positive step toward changing something about your miserable life as you've taken in years, and it's all about to go to shit. They'll definitely notice when you don't die, and then what? You sigh and close your eyes.
Sleep, your fleeting friend and ferocious foe, comes.
Cameron's rotted, festering face appears. Maggots squirm out of her eye sockets and nostrils, worms hang from her ears in a grotesque parody of her mother's earrings. And a new detail manifests. On the top of her skull, in roughly the same spot that your implant would be placed, a rat nibbles through a hole at her brains.
How oddly poetic. Rats lie. You lie. Are you the rat, lying to Cameron and eating away at her mind? Or your own?
"You faked cancer…to get high?" Cameron asks in stunned disbelief.
You watch her carefully. Unlike the cool demeanor she presented in your office earlier that day, now she seems ill. She looks like she might cry; a look you haven't seen on her face in quite some time. It's a look you would prefer not to see again.
"I'm going to bed," you say and limp toward your room, unable to face them. To face her. You hear Foreman's parting shot, and fire one of your own. But it's Cameron's disappointment and disgust that lingers with you long after she departs.
Sleep is long in coming, and it comes with a price. She is back, rotting away in front of you. But this dream is different. You aren't standing in the doorway watching the workmen replace the carpet. You're in the conference room. You remember this too.
"I don't feel like dancing," you say, your voice cracking with fear.
Half-faced Cameron just stands in front of you, unmoving except for the nauseating squirming of the maggots in her face. You move to step past her, but suddenly the room shifts and you are in a tight hallway. Cameron is blocking the door and won't move.
"You're not dying," Cameron accuses you, and the fetid stench of her breath rocks you back on your heels.
"Move," you order. It sounds like an order in your head, but it passes your lips more closely resembling a desperate plea.
Cameron shakes her head; you clench your teeth and grin to suppress the bile that rises in your throat as dozens of maggots fly out of her face in every direction. You can feel the hall closing in around you. You've never really been claustrophobic, but you've never been closed into a small space with a reanimated corpse before either.
"You lied," Cameron says.
"Everybody lies," you answer automatically.
"And everybody dies," Cameron says.
A brushing against the sleeve of your jacket causes you to start, and you whip your head to the right to see the walls are actually touching you. Panicked now, you try to push past her, but she is unmovable.
"You can't make me leave," Cameron says.
"Cameron, the walls are closing in," you plead. "You've got to let me go."
"I'm not what's stopping you," Cameron says, and as she speaks her face begins to melt again. As her skin drips from her skull, a new face forms.
It is you.
"You're what's stopping you."
The walls collapse.
"NO!" You scream as you shoot up in bed. You squeeze your eyes shut and are surprised to feel a tear run down your cheek. You don't even bother looking at the clock as you climb slowly and painfully from bed. It doesn't matter what time it is; you won't be going back to sleep tonight.