Exist | Malum

6

"They always say there's something beautiful about everything, and though that may be true for a moment, you can't be sure that moment exists.  Much like I question myself, stuck in the explanation of ginger and honey, a combination that will always be taboo. I am a disaster. It's what makes me want to die, and death is the one existing thing that I'm positive about, even if I wish I wasn't..."

Calum

"You've been missing school a lot, lately."

The cubicle was like raspberries and olive oil, maladjusted into grains and seeds, into fear, into so much fear that couldn't be displayed, even with projection. "School is useless."

"Mr. Cabera, education is important."

"But you're not," I riposted, contracting the coop lounging inside of my treacherous mind, "I'm leaving, and my last name is Hood, not Cabera. Get it right."

"Apples and rose hips, papaya and basil lips, mentum swaying off of loose fingertips, wildfires in his eyes, and he was the kind of tantalizing paragon that shouldn't exist, but with sanguine lungs and red-hot skin, it was hard not to, and it was driving me insane. . ."

"Hey Calum."

Pepto-Bismal hair, pasteurized buttermilk skin, oh how I wished she was him.

"Hey," I articulated, with a burgeoning pleura, the savoriness of mellow strawberry fields and inhalants pervading my lungs.

"I have a knapsack of Tobacco in my car. You up for it?"

I still didn't know her name.

But I found myself saying yes, anyway.

I'd do anything to take away this sadness.

Anything to get away from him.

We systematized our lethargic and paralyzed bodies onto the calash of her 1991 Chevrolet Caprice, limbs enmeshing as we scrutinized the pulverized cotton clouds, masks of haze and cinders of ash turning our sadness into carpet. "What's your biggest fear?"

"Falling in love," I blubbered, russet eyes writhing in verdigris textures of malodorous peas and bedraggled water. "Yours?"

Everything was a blur.

But I liked it that way.

"Being alone."

"She had thunderstorms in her eyes, while his imprisoned the sun. . ."

"Everything is so fuzzy." Her voice was full of cachinnation and hollowness. She was the cigarette I wasn't sure if I needed, but wanted, anyway.

"Yeah," I complied, heart bruising when sapphireandgrey became majentaandamber. Two colors fragmenting away from the hurricane, despite not being meant to.

"Will you be my boyfriend, Calum?"

"Yeah." Everything was pixelated and stained, but I liked it like that.

-

"How was school?" Cheyenne inquired, corpulent banana lips transferring into figs, situating eight plates onto the crystal table.

"Superlative, as always."

"Calum," Cheyenne breathed heavily, the bowl of noodles descending from her hands, "I received a call from the principal earlier and-"

"I'm not going to class, I know," I snickered, watching my napkin plunge onto my lap, "I have more important things to do than learn about the American Revolution or the quadratic formula."

"I don't want you to end up like your father."

"Beck is not my dad, and he never will be, in the same way that you'll never be my mother. I'm only here until I'm eighteen."

Cheyenne's jaw tumbled, sprinkles of red pepper enhancing her cheeks, bases gushing up the ashen stairs. "That was really fucking harsh," Winnie shook her head, Daelyn following, leaving me with the other four kids.

"I collapsed into branches of wood, hoping that I'd feel something, but I never did. I could only feel when he existed, and I pushed him away, because existing meant thinking, and that's what I hated the most. . ."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

-

"It's not good to smoke, you know."

"You told me that already," I retorted, droplets of rain and ventilators curing my absence, "I also don't care."

"It will kill you," Michael frowned, red-yellow lips twitching under the night sky, sapphire and grey hinges cornering underneath my fingernails, mango, mango, mango. "You're magenta and amber, why?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're not a hurricane," I emanated the fumes, forming them into idiosyncratic patterns, "I am."

Please stop existing.

It hurts.

Please stop.

Please.

"Hurricanes don't fraternize with most people."

"I'm not most people," I murmured, satisfaction lingering in the air, "I'm done talking to you; you can leave now."

"And where do you expect me to go?"

We were in the middle of the park.

So I left.

I needed to get away.

He needed to stop existing.

Or maybe I did.

"I'll be okay," I shakily stated, fingertips turning cherry red as I sat on top of my rooftop, fixedly looking at the stars, "I-I won't be okay."

"Existing felt sort of like an irritating mosquito bite; you'll spend minutes trying to scratch it in hopes that it'll go away, but it never does. You're just there, and I didn't want to be alive anymore. But for some reason, I still am. . ."

"You'll be okay."

Maybe it was the cigarette smoke.

Maybe it was my mind.

Maybe I was thinking too much.

But I knew I wasn't okay.

Because I didn't want to be.

-

A/N;

Shorter chapter than usual, sorry. It's a filler, but also important.