The Light Trilogy

chapter 4- station of misery

After tumbling and turning for hours, I had managed to fall into a light sleep just as the sun began to rise above us all.

I had woken up around midday to the same light outside and to a text message.

YOSEF:
We have some extra weed. Want to join?

I sighed and collapsed back onto my bed.

Yosef was like a puppy. Untrained, uncharacteristically happy and just over-enthusiastic.

You would think people like me who were more mellow than they should be needed people like Yosef in their lives. A little bit of sunshine in their darkened corners but his positivity did nothing but make me feel even more tired. It was just draining.

Nevertheless, there was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep and I didn't want to be haunted by Tavon's ghost which was going to be a certain thing if I stayed. Therefore, with one last touch of my blankets, I sat up and got dressed robotically.

I didn't have work today so anything that could take my mind of things, I would try. Weed was one of them.

I put on tracksuit bottoms and a baggy sweatshirt, my skinny frame being swallowed by the clothing and without a look in the mirror, I left my room.

I often didn't care what I wore, how I looked, my physical appearance. There had never been an appeal in me to put the effort into fixing my appearance to appeal to others. Tavon had liked how little fucks I gave.

I paused.

Maybe it was time to switch up. I had been doing things the same way my whole life and to what avail? Life still screwed me over. Tavon had still left.

Maybe I had to do the opposite of what little things Tavon had instilled in me.

In an act of pure rash decisiveness, I turned back to my room, ripped my clothing off of me in one fell swoop and then headed to my closet.

As I looked at all my clothes of which the collection was unsurprisingly sparse, I sighed. How was I going to try and look nice with no nice clothes to wear?

I pulled out one of the tighter fitting long-sleeved tops that just showed a hint of my cleavage and then pulled on my distressed, greying jeans.

As I turned to look in the mirror, I realised that although I hadn't put much effort even into this, I hadn't looked so put together in a long time.

With one last look, I sighed and then grabbed my stuff and left.

-

I had arrived at Gunnar's fifteen minutes later after a quick stop to more than a rundown shop on the way to pick up a couple of beers as a little gift. 

Instead of knocking on the door, I made my way around the house to where I knew they would be.

As soon as I turned the corner, I knew I had been right.

A mist of tempting smoke filled my senses, immediately relaxing every single one of my tendons and nerves that had felt ramrod straight in tension ever since he had left. I walked through the smoke like an ethereal creature, banished by the light and thrown into the darkness to fend of the demons that lurked inside of me.

When I made it to them and looked up at them, both Yosef and Zeth whistled underneath their breaths whilst Gunnar stayed quiet.

I tensed up, not understanding yet what would cause such a commotion until I realised I looked different to how I usually did.

"Who knew you were hiding all of that underneath?" Zeth announced in his cocksure annoying voice of his, making me want to smack the shit out of him.