Darkside

Sixteen

Mechanical.

Fucking mechanical.

I fall to my knees, falling in the few wisps of grass that I've somehow ended up in, tears now covering my face. Cash, Orson, Luvvie, Phoenix, it's all too mixed up. I'm forgetting who I am, who I'm meant to be, who I'm dealing with.

Why can't I just switch the past off and focus on the future?

I should have just stepped away and shed my snake skin. Phoenix should be all of me now. I don't even have to like the life I'm living, it's more just an essential than anything else, but Luvvie isn't going anywhere.

I want the beach. I need the ocean.

I once told a girl in school that my mother left because she was a mermaid and she needed to be back in the ocean. She didn't believe me, of course, no one did, but I liked that little lie. It was special and exciting.

Now, I want to be special and exciting.

Screw the diner, fuck the city. I need the seaside.

"Phoenix." Of course Orson has caught up with me. "Phoenix, come here."

He leans down beside me and wraps those gorgeously warm arms of his around my waist. Ever so gently, he lifts me from the heap I'm piled in.

"I know life isn't easy for you, Phoenix. I haven't asked because I want you to tell me in your own time. I won't ever push you for anything. But I'm also not leaving you out here along. You like to run away, to escape your problems, but I won't ever be an issue for you."

I'm tired.

Tired of fighting, of running, of trying to get through this.

I've been tired for a long time. Cash wore me out. That message, the callous way he treated me, it should have been the last straw.

I fought a battle I could never win.

Maybe someone like me is never destined to win.

"I don't want to go." Can he hear me? I might as well be whispering. "I don't want to run, I just...I don't know how long I can keep doing all of this."

Orson doesn't know what I mean, he understands nothing, but he likes me enough to carry me back inside the motel, to take me to bed, to lie with me while I weep. Everything I've kept locked up since I shed who I used to be floods from my eyes.

And he stays.

Orson needs to go for his own safety, I've tried so many times to express this to him. By attaching himself to me, he's becoming what I am; basically a fugitive on the run. But if he won't heed my warnings, won't listen to my words, who am I to fight him more?

I'll leave her soon enough anyway, now I know I want the ocean, I'm mentally checked out. That's where we can part ways and he can return to the existence he had before me. The one where he was safe and content, where he didn't know Phoenix whatever-my-surname-is-supposed-to-be or Luvvie Thompson.

I'll miss him.

There will be times I crave him.

But keeping him safe is all I can do for him, it's the right thing to do.

I'll just keep him for a little bit longer.

Nothing will happen overnight, surely?