Morphine

fourteen : tumbling

I feel as stiff as a horny boy's penis.

My hands wouldn't move. My legs wouldn't move. My face muscles are taut. I can still feel them even though I doubt they are still there. The only thing I can move with ease are my eyes.

Which is why when I feel someone's palm strike my cheeks, I can't raise my fist and punch them. My eyelids ache as I will them to open up. It's Milan. Why would he hit me? My dad gives a hard one on his cheek too. "What's wrong with you boy?"

Milan bows his head, ashamed. A little to the left sits Mum. Wide eyes staring at me. She looks like a mess. Her hair looks like it hasn't been groomed in weeks. That is not something that she would allow.

"She's awake," Mum whispers.

Everyone rushes over to me. Milan is apologising constantly. Saying he's sorry that he hit me. Saying he's sorry that I'm hurt. Saying he's sorry that he wasn't there to help me. Saying he's sorry that it wasn't him that Bansik had picked to destroy.

Dad just stares at me and I stare right back.

"Can you talk honey?" Mum touches my face, my hands, my hair. Making sure everything is in place. "Is anything hurting?" She then nods her head at Milan and says, "Go get the doctor!"

I feel my tongue moisten, as if my body is telling me to open my mouth and speak. My lips part of their own accord. My lips are dry as I lick them, alleviating the process of talking.

The first words that come out are, "What's wrong with you?"

My dad sighs and rubs my foot which I now notice is lying limply on the bed wrapped in tape and gauze and other things that makes it stiff. And that's when I realise.

I realise that Bansik wouldn't turn to such inhuman methods of torturing me if he weren't absolutely sure that my dad had killed his son.

"What?" Mum stares up at him with clueless eyes. She doesn't know.

I sigh, resigned. I simply know that things are going to go downhill from here. I have no idea when I'll stop tumbling down the hill. Will the hill ever end? Will I lose it before it ends?

"Nothing, dear." He smiles at her. It makes me repulsive and that makes me sad. How can I be repulsed by something that my dad does when it was the same thing that made me happy when I was a child?

Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling.

I also know that I'm still on that island. The one where broken things go and try not to die. It was all inside my head, I told myself. I figured out that what I needed to do was take both my palms and push against that petrifying white, spherical wall. It was in a sickening, shimmering shade of white. It was erroneous and plain right disgusting. It wanted me to think that I was open to anything, that I could talk to anybody, let anybody do anything. That was just wrong.

So I grabbed some black paint and poured it all over. Restricting those thoughts. I am not and will not be open to anything or anybody. Nobody is to be trusted. Everyone is like that. They have that outer white wall when they are actually bleeding red inside but they are too selfish to be honest.

I pushed the wall further apart with everything I had. Not enough to break it though. Just enough to stretch it. I still needed it. Compact and protecting me from the world.

But now I'm wondering if I accidentally broke it, because how can I be back when I died? How can someone survive being stabbed in the chest? Did I go fuckshit crazy? Did I loose my mind? Is that it?

The doctor, probably older than my dad, walks in with a clipboard wearing white coat with Milan at his side. Why do doctors wear white coats? Do they like to see the blood splatter against it while treating patients?