｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ( 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚 ) chapter ten — STELLA, OH STELLA!
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─ 🧳🕸📺📀🦟🌪🎞⌛️ PLATOON. 1966 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
STELLA'S WORLD BECOMES BROKEN BEYOND REPAIR, after that day. It has become a place darker than it has ever been, and as time progresses, the corners of her vision are slowly fading to black. Through her very own vignette, she watches her own world crumble around her. There are few escapes; some she scarcely wanted to consider — it was as if the gates of Hell have been opened exclusively for her.
She only has a week left in Vietnam, she reminds herself, until she's shipped back home to the land of the living. The prospect makes her feel sick to her stomach, the thought of those pitiful smiles and half-hearted welcomes home. She imagines the gentle pats on the back and her parents walking on eggshells around her, like she's a ticking time bomb waiting to explode on their nuclear family. She knows that she doesn't belong back in Mobile, back at home. She doesn't belong in a world that doesn't have Paddy in it.
Stella attempts to keep herself occupied. Throughout the day, she works mutely, and spends every spare second on her own with a cigarette drooping from her downturned lips. And during the night, she cries horrible, ugly sobs that keep the other girls awake, but they don't say anything. Marianne gives her shifty looks over lipstick-stamped love letters and Shelley sleeps facing the wall now. Not even Elias can coax her from her heartbreak-induced drowse.
He tries and tries, but Stella prefers her own company now. She likes to cower in the MUST cabin on her own, with the moths and the beetles and the cobwebs that decorate the ceiling like lace. She pulls her legs close to her chest and her arms around her bruised shins, hugging herself closely. She thinks, if she makes herself small enough, she might just be swallowed by the ground.
There's a broken needle that she toes with the tip of her shoe. She's been struggling to find a vein the last couple weeks — the spot on her inner arm had formed a welt and ached perpetually. The more she used, the worst it got, but the cycle continued.
People could tell, too. She was as thin as a toothpick, and barely exuded the sex she used to. Stella was no longer Stella, she was a shell. She was the Grey Girl . . . like the Grey Man, whom had attacked her with that needle in his fist so long ago, one with wilts and sores all over his face and a complexion that rivalled that of a skeleton . . . she was him but worse, hiding in that same shed, cradling herself, rocking, rocking . . .
"Stella?"
It's Elias. Of course it's Elias. Who else would it be? Who else would seek her out? Who else would care enough? Her whole body cringes at the affection she has for him. It's so foreign that its almost repulsive. She wants to reject it, to make herself sick until her love for him is a mess on the cabin floor.
