Water // Matty Healy ♣ The 1975

2. concrete

There's a song on the side, if you want to listen to it, great, if you don't, we're still cool. 

-

I took to London like a fish to... the sky, before I had even arrived. 

I had six hundred pounds in my purse, three hundred of it from my own piggy bank, a suitcase and a guitar in a pretty crumby fabric case. 

I stared up at her, she she laughed a bit. 

"You thought you were escaping, didn't you? Sweet girl." she rolled her eyes at me.

She pushed her horrendously dyed blonde hair behind her ear and tried her best to smile at me. 

"You disgust me. You useless, horrible, attention-seeking cow." she snarled, grabbing hold of my hair and pulling with all of her might. 

I screamed.

I never screamed anymore.

Not since I was about ten. 

She kicked me, I felt her shoe scraping my skin and I just wished that she didn't insist on wearing shoes in the house!

I sheilded my face from the blows and she laughed at me. 

"Sweetie, nothing could make your face any worse than it already is." she said. 

I looked up at her, begging with my eyes, telling her to stop, but she never stopped. 

Not until I was a bloody mess lying on the floor, but this time it was different. 

Dad pulled up in the drive, and in stead of stopping and making me go up to my room and cover my wounds, she just continued. 

Dad got through the door and hung his jacket on the coat rack, placed his brief case down where he stood and stared at me. 

"Daddy..." I choked out, looking at him desperately as she began to kick my back. 

"Lizzy?"

That hurt. 

He never called me Lizzy anymore. 

"Daddy, help me!" I cried as she slapped me across my face, tearing her fist away from my hair, and my hair away from my scalp. 

He stared, blankly. 

"Dad!" 

"Michael, ignore her! She's making a fuss over nothing." she hissed at my dad as he took a step towards me. 

"Dad, please!"  I begged, trying to kick her away from my ankles as she closed her fingers around them both. 

"Magerate, Elizabeth." my dad leaned down to pick up his brief case. He looked at the both of us again. "Call me if you need anything." he said to us, and began to walk up the stairs. 

"Dad!" I struggled against her grip. 

"Yes what is it Elizabeth?" he asked softly, turning to face me again as she kicked the side of my stomach. I looked into his icy blue eyes, illuminated with sadness. He tried to tear his gaze away from me, but he couldn't, not until I spoke. 

"Nothing daddy." I said quietly, wincing as she kicked me again. 

Tears began to spill down my face as I heard his footsteps quickening as he tried his best to get to his office as quickly as he could. 

"Daddy." I sobbed again and again as she continuously beat me to a pulp.

I woke myself up from my nightmare. 

I was still on the train, it was about two in the morning and there was only one other person with me. 

He boarded about three hours after me, in Manchester with a rucksack and a guitar case, and despite being the only people in that carriage, and the fact that we seemed to have something in common in the shape of a strange, hollow wooden box with strings on it, we'd barely even looked at each other. 

However, now, as I tried to keep the tears at bay, he looked at me. Stared in actual fact. 

"You okay?" he asked me. 

I nodded my head. 

"You sure?" 

I nodded again. 

I didn't want to talk, because I knew the minute I opened my mouth I would begin to sob, and nobody wanted to see me crying. 

He ruffled his dark, curly, messy, almost birds-nest-like hair. 

"Um-" my voice crackled slightly. I swallowed. He turned back to look at me. "How long until it gets to Paddington?" I asked. 

He turned his phone on and stared at it for a minute, momentarily distracted by something, I assumed. 

"About another hour." he said. 

"Thanks." I replied. 

I didn't like being so alone, but it had pretty much always been that way, only this time, I was heading towards a different city. 

He looked as lonely as me, but not as battered.

"So, um, you play?"  he asked, gesturing to my guitar. 

Neither of us were in the mood for conversations, but we kept it up anyway, and he actually moved to sit with me on the other side of the table. 

"Why are you heading there so late?" I asked. 

"I kinda got really fed up with my family, so I guess I kicked myself out. I needed to leave, y'know?" he shrugged his shoulders gently. I nodded my head. "So, how about you?" 

"Same, I guess." I lied. He nodded. 

"Sucks, doesn't it? To live in such shitty places that we would rather have to wander around London at two in the morning with nowhere to stay." 

"It sure does." 

To him, I may have sounded antisocial, but it was how I was with everyone. My childhood destroyed me. 

"Sorry, I didn't quite catch your name." I said, trying to seem less rude. 

"Matthew. But, yeah I'm trying to re-invent myself, so you might as well call me Matty or Matt or Bob. Anything." 

"Okay, Matty. I'm Elizabeth." 

"Okay, Lizzy. I'm Matty." 

There is was again, the ache, the pain, the thoughts. 

I liked Lizzy, it was quirky and nice, but that had to be the fucking nickname my dad chose, didn't it?

I was starving, but I didn't eat. 

Matty was tired, I could tell, but he didn't sleep. 

We just spoke until the train pulled up at the station.

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holy cow. 

anyway, i hope you guys like it, idk, i got one vote on my last chapter, which was coooool, so thank you, whoever you are. :-) 

maybe i could get two votes on this chapter? eh???

oooooooooooooo

x jasmino