help. - a Scömìche short story

help.

I wake up to find the other side of the bed empty and immediately get up to check on Scott, worried about him after everything that happened last night.

"Honey? Where are you?" The silence of the house sends a fresh wave of panic crashing into me, my heart stuttering a bit. "Scott, please." I try to convince myself that he's fine, just in the kitchen where he can't hear me, but when I come to the bathroom door and see it closed and locked, I feel as though I could throw up. "Let me in." I try the handle, but it doesn't budge.

"Go away." His voice is shaky and hoarse, evidence that he has been crying for a decent amount of time.

"Please." Heat is welling behind my cheeks and tears threaten to fall. I keep my hand on the doorknob.

"No."

"Fine." I turn my shoulder against the wooden panel and throw my weight against it so hard that there is an ear splitting crack and suddenly I am in the bathroom. "Scott." I find him kneeling over the toilet with a small razor blade in one hand, its edge tainted red. I grab it from him and throw it over my shoulder into the hallway before falling to my knees and pulling him into my arms.

"Why can't you just let me kill myself?" he sobs, trying to push me away.

"Because I love you!" I scream, unable to keep calm anymore. "I love you too fucking much to let you go, Scott, and you need to understand that as long as I live, I will try to keep you alive, too!"

"Don't! You always say - always have said - you just want me to be happy! Well, I'm not happy. Not like this. I'm never at peace, never just content. There's always something eating at me, and I can't take it anymore. I need to stop."

"Why aren't you happy? You have a good life. A good family who loves you. I love you. Doesn't that mean anything to you?!" I regret the words as soon as I say them, bringing a hand up to cover my mouth while something in his expression tells me that I just lost this battle.

"You...you know it does. You know that you, you, are the only reason I'm still alive even now. I would've killed myself so many years ago if I hadn't met you when we were ten." His voice is quiet now, and I am too afraid to interject. "I tried to keep doing this for you. Everything I do is hard. Everything. Even waking up in the morning feels like a task that will just end up being a burden to someone else. So I figured, why not just sleep forever? Never wake up? I know that you will move on. You always do, because that's who you are. I'm not worried about you, Mitch, because you can pick up the pieces and put them back together without me here. Me...I've been trying to figure out where the pieces go for over ten years. I realized a while ago that all of my pieces came from different puzzles. They don't fit. I'm broken, and nothing can change that. Not even you." By now, tears are flowing freely down my cheeks and my gaze is averted even as he gets up and leaves.

****

For nearly a minute I sit on the bathroom floor, trying to comprehend everything that Scott just said. Then, suddenly, I jump to my feet and go to the kitchen to find Scott turning another knife, this one much larger, over in his hand.

"Mitch, I need you to leave." he says quietly, staring at his reflection in the long blade.

"No way." I start forward to take the knife from him.

"Get out before I make you." His voice is low, threatening, in a tone that I never imagined him using on me. Fear rises in my stomach.

"No." I hold my ground. Suddenly, his anger seems to peak again.

"Are you deaf? I said get out!" he screams, throwing the knife down on the counter and grabbing my shirt collar to slam me back against a wall. Despite the crack in my spine and the pain throbbing through me, I fight to keep myself upright and say, voice shaking, "Please, Scott, don't do this. I love you."