"Only if you want me to..."
A heart that flutters the whole of the day,
Forbidden emotions she's not meant to say,
Daydreams are troubles, but tasty, devine,
Stay Away.
.
Her heart won't stop skipping,
Despite so much time,
The dreams never ending,
Fascinating,
Sublime..
Quit.
.
Unknowingly taunting,
Heart-breakingly fun,
Dangerously daunting,
Run.
Please make it stop,
Make it all go away,
I don't want to want this,
But I can't keep it at bay.
O'er my self like a cloud,
This self-torment remains,
Like dark, icy shroud,
Please...let this end.
.
I stood there for hours, waiting to see if he might come back. Trying to decide if I should go home, or to his place, or to just...wander, like he had. The longer I stood there, the more I found myself convinced that he had been wrong. Hating him for how he'd reacted once I'd finally told him the truth. Hating him for making me feel like a monster in the same way that Marie Waters had.
You're a liar! A freak, and a liar!
Damn it. I could hear her voice echoing in my head, images of that night trying to force their way back into my peripherals and seeping out in horrid flashes, like static in a corrupted video tape.
I thought you were my friend! Why would you do this to me?!
Stay away from me you freak!
I crouched, unable to trust myself standing.
"Shut up."
I hate you!
"Shut up."
I hate you!
"SHUT UP!"
I couldn't stand it anymore. I ran. I gunned it to the only place that would force me to think of something, anything else but what was wrong with me. My feet pounded the pavement, my heart races with rage and adrenaline, my tears were hot and genuine.
Music. I needed my music.
It seemed like it had been so long since I had relied on my music to help me. The past few months, it was Liam who distracted me, Liam who comforted me, Liam who made me feel right. And now he had made me feel like an abomination. I slammed my door and desperately searched for my phone, noting at how the air smelled of rain. Where had I even put the damned thing?
I tore everything out of my side table, ripped the covers and sheets from my bed and still couldn't find it. In desperation I went to my CD's grabbing the first album I could. My hands shook so bad that I dropped the CD.
"Is something wrong?"
My scream came out as a small squeak where I tried to stop it, and spun around, running into the small shelf behind me. My knees gave out. Weakly, I noted that the CD was just a few inches away from my still trembling hand. Tate's eyes showed concern as he watched me, sitting half-crazed and shivering from repressed panic.
A single spot of cold water dropped onto my face, rolling down like a tear. I wondered if it betrayed my frantic emotions. "I...yeah, I just...uhm...shouldn't you be upstairs with Micheal?"
He shook his head, moving closer to me and kneeling by my side. My breath hitched. Was he really so comfortable being around me now? "My mother took him home after you left, he couldn't stop crying."
"Oh..."
I closed my eyes, and pulled my knees to my chest, resting my forehead on them. I couldn't even stand took look at Tate right now, not with Liam and Marie fighting over who should be louder in my head. The wind felt somewhat colder as it blew. I wanted to tell him, but I didn't. If anyone would understand, surely he would. My head was beginning to throb. I needed my music, I needed something. At least a conv...
A sob broke through, as I felt him run his hand across my hair, petting me lightly. It was a small comfort, though he might as well have wrapped me in his arms and kissed me while promising all the justice in the world and it would have been the same. Individual fingers parted my hair while he gently played with it. It dulled the voices, but they still didn't stop.
I moaned like a wounded animal.
"They won't stop..." I found myself leaning into him, and was further surprised when he wrapped his arms around me and just held me while I cried, "I can't stop remembering. And they're so loud, Tate. I can't make it stop..."
Had Liam even realized that we were alike? Did he know how hard it would hit me when he reacted the way he did? Did he even care?
I don't think I can care right now.
No. And if he did, it would be fake. I was his escape to a normal life. He probably told himself that one day I would leave this house, and it would be a distant memory, and we could go day by day pretending to be normal, and never quite getting it right. He didn't want a freak like me, he wanted a normal girl, who didn't act crazy or hear voices from houses and memories. Someone who didn't really need to be fixed, just saved.
"You know, after I killed my classmates...I started questioning myself." Tate said suddenly. I lifted my head and stared at him. He was opening up to me so easily? Admitting everything he'd done without even a question as to how much I knew. "I started asking myself, did I really save their sorry asses from this sick, twisted world? Or did I fuck up what little chance it had to be better? I kept hearing them...their whiny voices begging to be spared while they pissed themselves, and it finally drove me crazy. I could have got out of this hell hole alive...stuck in prison on my way to hell, but still alive. I probably might have swung an insanity plea and just spent the rest of my life in therapy. But I didn't think I could live the rest of my life thinking about the looks on their faces. That's why I went out the way that I did...with a bang."
He leaned into me, breathing the word 'bang', and I couldn't help but smile at him. In our own sick way, people like us were comforted by this. "You went out with a lot of bangs." I noted, remembering the house showing me all of the police men that had shot him.
Slowly, he crawled directly in front of me, both hands on my cheeks. His face was serious. "It got the voices to stop."
Somehow my hands had found his, gripping them lightly. I waited for everything to snap back to reality and pull me from my fantasy.
Nothing happened. This was real.
How had I not realized just how close we'd really become? With all of the time we'd spent together, with Micheal, I'd been hyper aware of my own emotions towards him, convinced it was the houses poison making me worse. Now I saw that while I was focusing so much on myself, he was too. The look in his eye was dangerously close to the way he had once looked at Violet, yet somehow different. Not less, just different. I shivered. Why hadn't I worn a jacket?
"Cherie, I like you. A lot. I didn't even think I'd like you when you first got here, I just thought you'd end up hurting Violet at one point or another."
"But I did hurt her." Another cold drop, on the side of my face this time.
He shook his head, "I didn't care anymore at that point. I've heard you, calling to me in you're sleep. Saying things that I'd wished Violet would have said to me. I started watching you after that. It wasn't Violet in my head anymore, it was you. And the more I watched you, the more I realized that you were just like me." He grinned, rubbing his thumb on my cheek. His tone was teasing almost. "A psychopath.
"Then, when my mother brought Micheal over, and gave us a real excuse to be around each other, I didn't even care how Violet felt about it. I didn't care if she was hurt by how you acted...you did it for me, didn't you?"
I couldn't think. I had to remind myself to nod, though it came out as a seizure-like twitch more than a natural motion. He was saying everything I'd hoped me might say one day, and with every word I felt Liam becoming a distant memory.
I had always loved Tate, since the house first whispered his name into my ear. Even when he threatened my life the first time we met, my skin had burned with longing. Liam was just a scapegoat, someone that I had used to try to convince myself in a rational lifestyle. The only part of me that had ever really loved him was the tiny part that was afraid to die.
At least, that's what I told myself. And that's what I chose to believe, logical or not. I wanted this. I'd dreamed every night that I would hear these words, and now I finally had them.
"I knew it," His smile was relieved now, his hands moving from my cheeks to my hair as he pressed his forehead to mine, "Cherie, will you die for me?"
Could that really happen if I went back? I rubbed my arms, regretting the black, boat-neck sweater as the rain sprinkled onto my shoulders, slowly working into an insistent pour. My raging emotions had dulled me into shock as I knelt there. My legs were stiff from how long I stayed in place. I didn't know what to do, how to act...anything. It was like Liam's presence had held me intact by a tiny thread, and now, being out of that house alone coming off of the high of the poison, that thread had snapped, sending all of my pieces into nothingness. My mind was all moral, versus wants.
I couldn't leave that spot—my body wouldn't let me.
"Acid"
Close your eyes,
Just sink right in to it.
Nice and slow,
So that you can feel every thing.
.
Don't breath;
Not yet.
Wait until your all the way under.
Wait until your screaming with pain,
And then you can breathe it all in.
.
And then you can suffer...
.
"Cherie?"
The sweetest, most innocent voice I could imagine broke through my haze. When I turned around, I was surprised to see little Micheal standing behind me, donned in his green jacket. The hood was pulled up, with the velcro face flaps sticking out in either direction. In his hand he held a bright yellow poncho, dragging on the ground like a safety blanket. I looked for Constance, but he was alone, just watching me.
"Hey there, buddy." I said softly, finding my composure so as not to worry him. I leaned over and rubbed his arm. He was still relatively warm, so he had to have just ran outside. "What are you doing out here alone? Where's Grandma Constance?"
He looked down to his feet and shuffled them a bit. "She's at home, asleep."
"You know, she's probably going to be mad that you left the house by yourself. She might not let you come see us anymore." Though I kept my tone light, I still tried to sound stern.
His eyes got wide, and he shook his head frantically. "Please, please don't tell her. She won't understand, I had to."
I smiled at him, the way you do when kids say silly things like that. "And what made you have to?"
One thing I'll never forget, was how serious, and honest his face was that day. Even being only three years old, he looked me dead in the eyes when he spoke. "I felt you hurting."
When I had walked Micheal home that day, I made sure not to ask him anymore questions that might get me unsettling answers. He handed me the poncho and grinned happily when I thanked him. His hand was so tiny inside my own. I don't know what I would have done If anything had happened to him while he was outside, and made him promise me that he wouldn't do it again.
With a sad sigh, he promised, and I sneaked him inside with a kiss goodnight, then went home where I would lay awake for hours. I couldn't stop thinking about what he'd said.
"I felt you hurting."
At least it was better that what I had been thinking about. But if it was true, than that empty, dull, uncontrollable feeling I didn't know how to express, had been pain. A child had felt my pain, his child.
Another short chapter, but I thought it was a perfect place to stop. I had this all burst in my head earlier today and I really wanted to put it out there. Think of it as the finished bit of the last chapter, I guess. Lol
**All poetry this chapter is from my own MyDarlingsDear account on WritersCafe.**
Honestly Sinead, I don't plan on this story lasting much longer, but with everything I really want to do it probably will be.
Thanks everyone for reading! Let me know what you think so far! :)