Summertime (Frerard)

44: I'll Know It's You And That It's Over So I Won't Even Try

"Stop...." The word came from my lips like a tremor, and at first, no one listened, at first no one cared, because who would? I was only a kid, after all. "Fucking stop!" This was my eighteen year old voice, through the body of my younger self, and that brought all attention to me, the small boy in the doorway, within mere instants.

"Don't fucking tell me what to do you little faggot brat!" He stormed past her, pushing her to ground, the impact sending the whole word into half time as my ear rang out with a blur of sound a words I was told not to listen to, not to pick up, and to ignore.

And then only as the back of his hand hit my cheek did everything seem to fall back into real time, and I fought back, despite the fact, I knew like anything that I shouldn't, I just did, fight or flight response kind of thing, and although I started off well... I didn't finish off well.

Because I didn't finish; I didn't stop, I didn't stop until it was too late and his body on the floor elicited no response, but I didn't truly top them, because she, she was all noises, profanities, and screams, and nonsensical murmurs that certainly didn't aid the tornado wrecking its way through my conscious.

And I never stopped, not even when the noises made sense and she called out for me to stop, and I retorted with that she never listened to me, and I didn't stop, my child body morphing back into my eighteen year old one as I felt sick and dizzy with what I'd just done and the pools of blood on the kitchen floor, and I tried to scream only to find myself working without vocal chords, and blood dripping down my chest; the flesh red, raw, and torn in places - it was gruesome to say the least, and I threw up what little I had in stomach, profanities leaving my lips in a higher concentration than the vomit itself.

Nothing seemed to stop, because the bleeding most certainly didn't and neither did my screaming as I thrashed down, hitting my head down against the plaster of the wall, slipping in the puddles of blood leaked onto the kitchen floor, rendering myself helpless upon the floor, just waiting for death, and wondering if I ever deserved it at all anymore.

But then he stood up once more; a skeleton in his place, nothing he was, and all he would be, and a smile turned smirk as he met my eyes - paralysed against the floor, and he whispered words I couldn't quite understand: not noises, not this time, just words, my brain not quite fast enough to link them with their definitions before everything faded away and lost myself, my heartbeat, the irregular pull and push of my windpipe as it transferred oxygen to my lungs.

And I lost myself for ever and ever with that wicked smile, and the smash of the wine bottle, and the smash of his hand to her cheek and the ache in my heart as reality caught up with me, its dark shadow never quite looming too far behind: there's a dark shadow in all of us, and it seems just some are better at hiding such things.

Perhaps I was one of them, but not anymore, not anymore at all.

-

I woke up.

I woke up, for real this time.

I woke up, and it was unexpected to say the least, and whether I even deserved such a thing was surely a matter of question, but the wind surging past the open window and the bumps of the road brought me past that and into reality quicker than anything ever had.

At first I was choking, choking on the nicotine, on the last cigarette left in the packet placed between his lips and lit with one hand as his other hand gripped the steering wheel tighter and his foot slammed down upon the acceleration, and he threw the empty packet out the open window and muttered something to himself that I couldn't quite understand.

"You're awake." It took him minutes to speak, but seconds to notice the commotion in the backseat, and if he was choosing his words carefully, I was sorry to say that he hadn't exactly done the best of jobs, depriving me of an explanation or anything other than the blatant and obvious, but perhaps I didn't want to know, perhaps things would be better that way, but that was stupid, and so was I.