Watch Your Step

Birds and Bells (3)

I wake up in his arms, feeling queasy. It's burning down there, maybe even sore. I feel like I lost something again. Definitely not my phone. My phone's over there. On his table next to the condom he used. Like that's going to change anything.

It's too late.

My cheek damps on his chest. It's dry compared to the rest of his body that's soaked from his own sweat.

If I could just reach my phone and make it alarm so I can get an excuse.

An excuse? I ask myself. What are you, a child? Do you need a waiver? We've gone beyond that now.

It must be 6 am now judging from the faint daylight. I'm not too familiar with time without my alarms. I wish I could set it to 7:00, no, 6:30. But I don't dare try to move or make a sound.

Only the lyrics of his favorite song played in my mind.

Diba nga ito ang iyong gusto?

Isn't this what you wanted?

Do I want this on purpose? Maybe. As I let my hand get pinned down by my weight, cutting off the blood circulation, I let myself feel numb.

At that moment, lying still, I wonder, Do I feel nothing or do I feel everything at once?

As my blood flows back on my arm, comes the realization. I can laugh but only the tears grow from my eyes. I have to do it. I need to break up with him.

A couple of minutes later, the alarm still doesn't ring. It should be, by now. It should be.

I try to reach my phone again but I'm afraid Earl might wake up. What for? Why am afraid to wake him up?

Wake him up.

Wake him up.

Not me no, I don't want to wake him up.

You wake him up.

I can't believe I'm telepathically trying to speak to my phone.

If you just set off now! I scream in my head. Why won't you just set off now so I can leave this place already!

Shit. Now I just remember in all my sobriety, it should have rung at 10 last night—my curfew.

But in my drunken state, I must have deleted all my alarms. Or, or my phone's dead. That's it, that's all my hope going down the drain.

I retch from the rising and falling of Earl's hairy chest. But when I try to move, I feel like vomiting again.

Thoughts wriggle as moments slowly and painfully pass by. One of it was if I'm pregnant I'm going to abort the baby. Another thought said as if I have the heart to do it when I can't even break up with him.

Him, I hate him. I hate him. Just what... just what am I doing lying on his body? Why am I even touching it?

Tears swell in my eyes again. But letting it trickle won't hurt, right?

I look at his window but the light is still faint. Dimmer now than when I first opened my eyes. Earl stirs awake and he pulls me closer to him.

I let him.

The alarm that's supposed to wake me from this bad dream. It might be useless now. Might be. When the birds, the bells, the music are gone when I need them.

Where are they?

I can't hear them anymore.

So then the alarm clock blares,

Only it doesn't. It didn't.

But it will.

Soon, I guess.

For sure this time.

Any second now...

Any second now.