rain pours and closet doors • River Phoenix

adrift towards the abyss

River woke to a sound nothing like his alarm, but he swore it was a nightmare. A complete and utter hallucination.

He opened his eyes, a blurry haze was all he saw before he focused on a figure standing over him. His mom.

She looked younger and more youthful than he's ever seen her, she glowed like her skin had a lambency that outshone everything around her. Like she was the sun and everything rotated around her. The center of his universe. She placed a hand on his cheek, and broke a large smile.

"Mom," River choked out, reaching up to grab her. A pipe wired to his inner arm ripped out of his skin, making a loud noise as it hit the bed frame.

A figure walked up behind His mom and she vanished, as if she was never there. The light she admitted faded away, and the room came back to a sorrowful gray shade. A women with a large fur coat on, grabbed Rivers hand.

"Oh River." She said, mourning. She squeezed his hand. "Lisa is gone."

River felt empty, as if his insides where ripped from his body and all that was left was this hollowed out shape.

He didn't weep, nor did he falter.

River already new deep down that his parents where dead, and his little brother. He just wouldn't except it.

River watched the woman in front of him blankly, as if she was some kind of inanimate object.

River felt as if he where a painting, a portrait. Something that showed a person but not their emotion, not their pain. Not the continuous screams they let out every second, not the emptiness they felt when they are just painted and left alone to be hung on a wall.

"River?" The woman asked him, as if she could tell he was completely dysfunctional.

"River honey?" She smiled sadly. "I'm Saturn. Your dad Mercury's sister. River I'm your aunt, and I'm going to take care of you okay?" She choked up, letting out a sob, her shoulders shaking.

River could tell she missed her brother, but he still didn't understand why she would come in there and hold his hand as if they'ed known each other. He's never met her.

"Ma'am, will you please step away from him for a second his blood pressure is rising." A nurse said softy to Saturn.

She got up from the chair and left the room. The nurse toyed with his needles, putting the one he busted back in. She smiled at him, and went out of the room.

River turned and laid on his back, staring up at the ceiling. His breathing slowed and things got blurry again, and he hoped to see his mom afresh.

☂

River stood outside the waiting room, with his glasses in hand. His cheek was stitched, his eye and lip treated, his depression controlled with a pill. River felt lost, completely at sea, every time someone spoke to him it was hard for him to listen, every time something happened he'd vacillate. He became ill with pills, he had to pop at least twenty of them every morning to control something he never had before.

He studied his glasses in his hands, he ran his index finger over the metal piece that kept the two round bits together, that sat above your nose.

A really prodigious part of the glasses, he thought to himself.

"Oh don't worry darling, we'll get you some new ones in no time." Saturn came up to his side, papers in hand, and luggage in the other.

"I don't have anything." He whispered weakly, keeping his sight on the glasses.