Losing balance in my attempt, I followed Christopher as he slipped down the hood of the car. I cricked my neck fast in all directions to only see rows upon rows of cars, vans, trucks. They each lengthened exaggeratedly through my inebriation, which never seemed as apparent as it did in this moment. I attempted to catch up to Christopher, scanning left, right, left again, like he was.
He jogged across the lot, not bothering to see if I was following. He stopped to cup his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Chubby!"
His voice echoed atop the roofs of the cars we danced on so carelessly a minute ago.
"CHUBBY!" I hollered.
Christopher shook his head with his hands clamping down on either sides as I bent down to catch my breath.
"Shit. Shit. I couldn't have ...damn it."
Before I could respond to him, wondering why his anxiousness for this was three times worse than mine, he was too many feet away from me again. I struggled to keep up. "Wait, Chris -"
"CHUBBY!" He shouted into the air, a blank void. His head turned in all sorts of directions, his face looking so lost he might as well be searching for himself. "WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO? CHUBBY!"
"Christopher!" I called, grabbing his attention shortly. Reaching him, I gripped onto his arm to keep him from running off again. "Shit, Christopher. Stop. We need to get some water first, wash the drinks down, okay? Then look for him with a clear -"
He shook his head, disrupting me. "No. No, do you even know how long he's been gone? How long we weren't even paying attention?"
I pulled him the other way. "Yeah, but you need to calm down first and wash up so we can look for him without -"
He ripped his arm out of my grip, his eyes clouding over the affection he'd shown not too long ago. His blurry figure began stalking away from me.
I paralyzed momentarily. What about Chubby caused this switch in him? He knew Chubby always came back. We had nothing to be so afraid of. The initial shock of Chubby missing put me off guard at first, that's all, but I knew inside it'd be all right. A couple hours from now, this would be a story to laugh from when we ask ourselves what was so funny: us, drunk off our asses, losing track of a dog who was not lost, really, who knew what he was doing.
So why were my hands shaking so hard? I faced down, willing them to still as I clamped them into a fist against my waist. Stop it. Stop it.
I looked up, my vision a creamy transition of street lights that took too long to focus. I felt sick again –not from the alcohol.
Eye contact, look away, think, look up again, then ask –your concern for other people, for me, became a formula I got used to. It was a prediction I missed making so much. I wanted to see it now.
"Do you want to come over?" You've always asked.
I'd say yes every time. And when I said no, you'd ask again with a certain inflection in your voice that made my own shake and finally say, "Can I stay the night, too?"
The negative emotions in me was like a pilot episode on repeat; it was a conflict that was never resolved because it had only started, but it couldn't get past Go since there was this barrier inside of me called Inferiority. Taryn, the bartender before, was right. I was sad just to be sad, because I never allowed myself to cut the chase and go through with it. I –I always wanted someone to tell me it was okay to keep going. I waited every time for someone to ask me to finish my sentence on why I was feeling so down.
You were the one who played into the next episode though, and the next one, and the next one. You, in my head, were a concept that epitomized cognitive dissonance. I loathed your comfort but I loved breathing it in.
It was the only comfort I had.
You were a home for me, Sarah.
I wrapped myself up in your soft voice, the one that told me, "Keep going," when I paused in the middle of crying because you said pain had to be terminated, and if I stopped then it'd grow another head the next day. So I kept crying.
And I kept going now. I ran after Christopher, occasionally shouting Chubby's name after he did.
We passed alleyways, lean buildings, buzzing lights and foreign streets that contained looters and vagrants, but Chubby wasn't amongst any of them. Why would he?
When did we stop focusing on Chubby and start indulging in ourselves? Where did he go and why didn't he make a single noise? Nudge us, bark, whatever he did?
Why didn't you ever say anything?
A sharpness stroked the planes of my chest, and my breathing hitched for that one second my nose felt it reddening.
I could lose myself in my thoughts now, with a stealthy control, trying to organize the timeframe of tonight's brazen adventures.
I could notice the labyrinth Christopher was snaking himself into. When his face jerked left and right, straight ahead and behind, I caught onto the corners of emotion so tied into the common torment of panic that there was no distinction from him and the faces of nightmares the grieving have. And it was no question that this was the first time he appeared this way either.
"I wonder how it must feel," You said, "to repeat the same day again and again."
I could imagine you standing against your drawers in the room you sanctioned, imprisoned, yourself to.
"Losing someone everyday," You continued sadly. "It looks like you're supposed to get used to that, doesn't it?"
You wound each of those miniature clocks backwards by twenty four hours. Every single one of them.
"How many times would it take to stab someone before they wake up doing it to themselves?" You would ask me.
"Good question."
In another twenty-four hours, you stepped back against those mellow pink drawers and plucked a clock from the top, rewinding it and then picking the next one up. "How many times would it take to stab someone before they wake up doing it to themselves?"
"Good question," I'd say again.
You picked up the next clock. "How many times would it take to stab someone before they wake up doing it to themselves?"
"Good question."
"How many times would it take to stab someone before they wake up doing it to themselves?"
"Good question."
The days warped the time together like a thread around multiple fingers. Twisting together. You'd tell me that would be Christopher's head. That's how it must be for him.
Maybe that's how people leave him everyday. His mom's probably still alive.
His story was the type that seemed to align so nicely beside yours that you devoted yourself to loving him enough to make up for the lack-of he felt in his life. And you shared those thoughts with me.
I knew Christopher before he let me know him.
I only knew the him you portrayed for me.
In that, while seeing Christopher running after Chubby the way I imagined he'd run after every person who disintegrated the next cigarette in his box, I kept thinking, Where's your mother, Christopher? Where is she really?
Diseased thoughts were mine, but I couldn't help feeling a sorry from crawling its way upwards, peeking through the eyes of mine that saw Christopher haunted, Christopher paranoid.
Tell me she's dead, I thought.
Let me know she's not breathing anymore, not in Berlin or Prince Edward Island, not in those made up stories you were forced to believe, that you wouldn't allow yourself to let go of anymore.
Tell me you placed your hands around her throat yourself and found the thump thump thump missing, the way she was most of your life.
"Christopher," I called.
He ignored me again.
I sprinted to him to catch his elbow and held onto him tighter, planting my feet down. "Christopher." When he tried to rip his arm away like before, I used my other hand to anchor him down.
He stopped trying. "What?" He said, causing me to flinch.
"Why are you so...?" I took a deep breath. "You have to calm down. We'll find him."
"He's out there, and he's probably run all over this city without a name and a way back, and the Patterson's are going to hate me so much when -"
"Christopher."
His eyes were glued to the space between us. Look at me. Look me straight in the eyes and admit it.
"This isn't the same thing."
He should know what I meant by that.
"Chubby always finds a way back."
"No."
"We didn't lose him," I insisted.
"No." His voice got raspier.
"Look, I get why you're all riled about this, okay? I really, really want to find him, too –"
"Then let go of me."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "No, you're just gonna -"
"Let go of me, Candice," He said through clenched teeth. His eyes snapped to mine. "Shouldn't you be used to doing that to people?"
My eyes watered involuntarily, my grip loosening as he'd pleased. He was off again.
The back of my eyes hurt when I tried not to let it take over, when I raced after him anyway, thinking it wasn't worth it for such the dick response he'd given me. I should've let him go, just as he assumed I was used to doing but he was so right.
I let go of too many things in my life. A quarter of my nights, in fact, were spent thinking that young girls like me shouldn't have to go through these situations – "the common pains." I thought many a times, Okay my parents aren't divorced, my mom wasn't abusive, my family were the ones who raised me, not some hired nanny, and I grew up with enough money over my head.
But it didn't mean I managed to study properly every night through all the shouting going on in my house. The door knobs in a couple places inside were bent in an odd way from all the slamming done over the past two decades it's been owned.
Even though I never had to get myself a job in order to support my parents, I got one anyway because I was fed up of getting whatever I wanted from them and then have it dangling above my head like it wasn't a gift but a complete jibe to remind me to stay within the line. 'One step out of it, and I won't pay for your college.'
I didn't want the privileges I had, though small compared to yours, to be used to guilt-trip against me, because I understood that, and I understood familial love, and the fact that every thing I experienced was in the gray zone, like empty threats from people I loved, while yours bounced into the black every now and then, like committed threats, didn't mean I couldn't understand.
You were never alone, Sarah.
If I had a daughter, I wouldn't ever want her to feel like she had to one-up the worst parts of her in order to let someone in.
You let me cry and cry, the way I wanted to, without letting yourself break either. I grew up in a house of blame and tough love, too, Sarah.
I grew up with my flaws pointed in my face, even though it wasn't by the same people who put them there for you, Sarah.
I'd been called stupid, spoiled, and vying for attention by the first boy who showed desire for me when it had actually been genuine.
So every single one of those nights I spent not able to fall asleep because my subconscious kept flooding with emotional abuse, I placed into a box.
The perfect, perfect family I wanted, who would give me a traditional Christmas, a traditional birthday, New Years, Halloween, who loved celebrations enough so you wouldn't have to hold them for me, I folded up neatly and placed next to my sleepless nights.
I let go of Baxter years ago as well, the dog I told myself I'd adopt as soon as I could. But I came back the year I finally could, and he was dead.
Anger for people who tried to hold me back, time wasted on boys who only wanted me just to have me, grades that schools stated 'shouldn't define me,' "Good nights," "Good mornings," good opportunities, dreams.
As I dropped each entity or memory into the box, I could hear the swooping whistle as it traveled its way down, down, down to thud at the very bottom.
By the end of it, there was enough space in the box of things I let go of to fit something else. Another body, even. But when I tried lugging you over the edge of it, holding onto your cold ankles, clasping those clammy, ivory-blue hands, I couldn't lift. Your weight was overwhelming in an asphyxiated way that the best I could make of it was to heave your body enough to hang over the edge. You wouldn't budge. I couldn't pull you back, and I couldn't push you the rest of the way through.
With you stuck there the way you were, I couldn't "keep going" like you asked me to, demanded even on stubborn nights or mornings.
I grunted trying to push you over, your dead presence choking me as I did so.
"If you want to cry, Candice, then I want you to, too," You said.
Your body just wouldn't move. Tears streamed down my face in watery branches, either from the physical strain or the emotional.
"You know I never meant for you to feel sad. It kills me to think I could be doing something like this to you without even knowing it. I love you. I love you and I want you to feel comfortable enough to cry against me. And tell me what's really wrong."
I wanted to hear it make its descent into the box and then thud.
"Candice, if there's anyone in the whole wide world who should make you feel safe enough to show your true self to, every ugly, fucking color, it should be me."
I wanted to seal the damned thing away at last.
"It should be me."
***
The alcohol was waning, replaced by the adrenaline. I'd lost sight of Christopher, his footsteps, and any indication of which street he was running after anymore. It was just my heavy breathing now. The crackling sound of neon banners sizzled in abandoned shops. Ticking of absent traffic lights blinked. I slowed my pace to a gentle walk, touching the sides of stores I passed like they were railings, and no longer wondered why looking for Chubby was such a freaking slap of reality.
I knocked against my skull, the anxiety kicking back in tenfold. Where would Chubby run off to? What if I couldn't find him?
I was sprinting again, the sides of many bricked buildings flashing on both sides of me. The changes of lighting switched every several yards or so, making me feel like I was in that subway so long ago, too many hours earlier. My breathes elevated to pants, and my worries heightened tremendously. My senses caught minuscule movements, shadows, lights. And then I found Christopher standing in the middle of the road about ten yards ahead.
There was a light he was staring straight into that glowed over one whole side of his body, growing brighter and brighter as I neared him. My heart skipped a beat. "Christopher!"
The two beams of light got closer to him as he made no attempt to move out of the way. He just stared dead into them like the time when we were driving Gary's truck. Like a deer in headlights.
"Christopher!" I thrust my body the last few feet. My body weight yanked him away from the screeching of tires as it rolled down the end of the road and continued into the distance.
He stumbled away, swallowing and unfocused.
"What were you doing?" I screamed, throwing my arms up. "Are you trying to get yourself killed? What were –What were you trying to make –happen?" I came upon a rock in my words, noticing I'd said the same thing before in the club.
I rested my hands on my knees, bending down to retrieve my breaths as he mindlessly slipped his hand into his pocket, as if to reassure it was still there.
It could be tomorrow, he'd said.
No.
This time my thoughts were able to come to a finish. No, don't you dare be a hypocrite, Christopher. Don't you freaking dare.
What was he thinking? What made him crave this now? Did he possibly believe that throwing himself in front of danger was alright? He couldn't have possibly wanted this, not when he was so openly hateful of the decision you came down to and made me angry for it, too.
Was I overlooking this?
He silently maneuvered his way between a loft alleyway, hitching his back up against the wall in defeat.
I jogged up to him. "Why are you...? Are you okay?"
He didn't show any signs of hearing me, his eyes staring straight ahead at nothing, lost but akin to that same look he had back in his apartment -when he held onto the old Marlboro pack with that one cigarette.
The yellow light sprang fragmentally on one side of him in a prismatic overcast, outlining the sharpness of his jaw and the dryness of his lips as they began to move. "When did you know?" He asked, his voice low.
I stepped closer. "Neither of us did, Christopher. We weren't focusing at all in that club and -"
"I didn't know until three days ago," He interrupted.
"I..."
"If I died," He said clearer, "I would let you know."
I swallowed. "I'm not following..."
"If I died and you found out two weeks after, how would you feel, Candice?" Before I could register what he was getting at, he knocked the back of his head against the wall. "Shit," He muttered. "You haven't even known me for twenty-four hours. I'm sorry."
"You don't have to, um...I'd feel -"
"Angry," He snapped. "Robbed. I felt pushed so fucking far away I didn't know the pain had always been in me until she tore me open all over again."
"Christopher -"
He stood up now, grasping at the ends of his hair in bunches. "It was tormenting hearing you think it was all your fault but it wasn't, okay? Sarah's the only one to blame for and we didn't matter to her at all. You were right, Candice." He stomped around in circles, laughing humorlessly, and pulling at his hair. "I -I hate how I can't even blame myself, you know? Don't you know?"
I tried reaching out to him. "Hey -Christopher, you can't -"
He shot me a painful look in the eyes, all sharp edges and glass. "You wanted to know whether what Sarah and I had was love?" There was a twitch of a mangled smile before he kicked harshly at several crates lying by, causing a racket of wood tumbling down. He jerked his face at me. "At first it was. At first that's how it really felt. And then it felt like we were friends who fucked. And then it just felt like we were people who fucked. She broke it off with me that last month, and I wasn't too upset about it then because I was more upset about how I was becoming less of a person to her as she saw herself become less of a person. You can't just -" He yanked at his roots and smashed at the boxes in front of him, kicking and groaning and hauling the broken pieces at the walls. "You can't just -die and -"
I lunged at one of his arms as he lifted it and then latched myself onto his back when he refused to stop. "Christopher!" I grunted against him. "Stop! Can you just -!"
He shoved me away from him, making me teeter back on my feet, and then steadied me apologetically right away.
I felt my eyes burning as I trained them on the ground. I bit my lip to keep from saying anything.
I didn't know.
"He's not anywhere around here. At all," he said sharply. He scuffled on his feet indecisively, stopping as if he wanted to say something more. But then he exited the mouth of the alleyway without another word and left me contemplating the many degrees of his anger and just who exactly he was angry at.
:::
No, I wasn't the one who found your body.
The discovery of it was as vague as finding the person who discovered the science of fermentation and brought the world its greatest anesthetic or as vague as the first person to see the beginning of an atomic bomb soaring across the ocean.
I wasn't amongst the crowd who first spotted your body in the middle of the day, but I did think I at least counted for one of the first few to know who mattered. Then I accepted the fact that I wasn't even put onto that list to begin with. And then I accepted my unexpected 'okayness' in that. You know, because it had to be okay.
"We don't know who discovered water but we know it wasn't the fish," You once said.
"Huh?"
"It's a quote," You added, "by Marshall McLuhan, I think. Or Albert Einstein...People thought it could also be Pierce Butler or John Culkin. Or James Culman."
"Anonymous?" I'd suggested, before realizing that it didn't even matter. So I said, "It doesn't even matter, Sarah."
"Well I like to think it's Marshall McLuhan. Do you know what he stated about fish? He said they probably don't even know they're wet. Or that they're in water, or that water exists, for that matter, and that they're so 'immersed in it, they live unaware of its existence.'" Then you took your finger off the page and looked up at me thoughtfully.
"Um, well..."
"So I'm saying," You started off, "that this stupid philosopher here totally gets it without even having to talk about the same thing."
"I'm lost," I said.
"This 'whatever' I'm feeling." You shrugged. "I was so immersed in it, I wasn't even aware of its existence until I realized there were many more concepts that could fill in the blanks for me that I didn't know were previously blanks, like someone who lived their whole life not knowing what it's like to be tickled because they're not ticklish."
I said, "I guess Anonymous gets you better than I do."
You were ostensibly still hung up on this McLuhan guy and the anonymity of history's quotes because five hours later, when I've forgotten about this brief conversation between us, you called my phone at the break of dawn and said, "It's really bothering me now."
I was pissed, startled in the mid of my precious REM cycle, and had half a brain at the time –but I was still yours. I rubbed my eyes. "What's bothering you?" I mumbled.
"That quote from McLuhan."
"From who now?"
"The guy who wrote about the fishes."
"I don't get it." Of course I didn't though. It was four in the damn morning.
You sighed. "You never get anything. Which sucks because I don't like explaining things. I just want you to get it."
"I'm sorry."
Pause. "I know you didn't mean to."
"I didn't."
"If you wanted to, you'd understand in a second –I know that."
You were right. If I could go back to all the moments where you were too tired to spell out the meaning of the words you gave me, I'd be back at that library again with you, ready to not study. The thing that absolutely sucked was that the moment I understood something from you instantly, you were already gone, and I was devastated by the sap of all the colors you left behind for me, sticky, mucous-y, fossil.
I asked you to explain to me anyway.
"I'm talking about my life here...Like the entire...moment of it. Look at it like –look at it like you're holding it between the tips of your thumb and ring finger, okay. And hold it up next to the moon when it's full, and the next night, hold it up when it's gone."
I envisioned it. I was doing it right now, in fact. Just remind me to do it again tomorrow. What next, Sarah?
"What was your point?" I asked.
There was the longest pause. Phosphenes appeared in my mid-slumber until your voice woke me up again, a gentle sound. "What if this whole time, when I look back at my whole life, I realize that because I've gotten so used to feeling...this, I'll never know how it'll feel to live otherwise?"
I fell asleep before I could bother responding because I couldn't answer it –not then, not now. It truly didn't matter by the time I realized that late night call was the closest I've ever gotten to hearing you talk about the empty-worded emotions flowing through you and the realization that you've been living it...wrong.
Our lives could've been seen as the speck you saw it as, blown away by night winds fast enough for the entire moon to disappear in twenty-four harsh hours. But that's you. I didn't want to hear anymore of this ugliness. I couldn't bear that it's been sticking to me since.
So as the not-one-of-the-first-to-know, I invited Christopher: welcome to the club.
We'd felt strongly that going to your house to check on Chubby was so unpleasant, something I couldn't understand still, even though going there was surely the best place to check. It might've been because Christopher was afraid of being called out on by your mom and named reckless. Or maybe I was afraid your parents wouldn't care if Chubby went missing. Whether either of our opposing fears for this outcome were set and stone in happening, it definitely didn't clear my confusion on why we wouldn't just go there anyway. Perhaps going there once this morning was enough.
It was odd how we were so adamant that heading west felt right -down this avenue, another left, and then onwards and on. It just felt right.
I looked at Christopher, all hate and capriciously impulsive. There were no streetlights around us at the moment, only the occasional flash of car lights shining in our faces, lighting up the wet twigs our shoes snapped as we drew farther and farther away from the city. His brow was set, determined, and there was no smile that could surmount this boulder he perched himself upon.
You said before that when Christopher was angry, he broke whatever was in his grip and his sights were blinded by everything except the very one thing he was angry at. He cooled down as fast as if someone dumped ice cold water on him. He was a mercurial being, one who deserved much more love than you could give anyone. Than you could give me.
We were that much deprived.
There was this time however when the limit in Christopher had snapped, and it was the one time when you were the culprit of it.
"It's people like you who makes me, people like me, feel like there's no way out," You told me you'd said. "And there's this...this monster inside of you, Christopher, that makes me wonder why the hell you haven't even hit me yet."
You said he nearly blew up on you, all his vexation boiling beneath his tongue. The cool he was trying to keep was contained through the tight clenching of his knuckles, turning them white.
Then you'd tried to provoke him. "All you do is keep wrecking yourself and bullshitting the people around you and then ask me why the world was so ugly. You're a good man with shit priorities, Christopher, because, seriously, who the fuck cares about where your mom is anymore?"
He'd shoved you, told you to shut up.
And you'd kept going, said, "You're the only one left who cares, you know? You hold the strongest grudges and then wonder why you feel so hurt, but everything, your pain, your grief for someone who's been dead for so long, absolutely everything, Christopher, is your fault."
You told me you didn't tell him all that because you wanted to give him a reality check and calibrate his priorities on what should or shouldn't hurt him, but because tearing him apart with those words made you feel in control.
"They're -just -words," You assured yourself, defeated. The bags under your eyes were sunken and your eyes were hollow.
There was this power you'd felt from being able to make someone so vulnerable feel ready to shatter, and I assumed wholeheartedly it was because the instability you had on yourself made you project them onto others -to make you feel, for once, powerful.
The morning after, it wasn't that you'd realized what you'd told Christopher, but you ran to his house by the top of the morning, before anyone had the ounce to wake up, and crashed into his arms that were still open for you.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," You wept into him. I didn't mean it, I swear, you lied in your head.
He merely held your cold body against him and allowed your forced apologies to sink into him anyway. Because it had to be okay.
And when you next lashed out on him, your own anger and hate flushing through tears for yourself this time, you said he didn't shout back like before.
"Am I causing you pain, Christopher? Am I agonizing you?"
He didn't shove you away or slam the door in your face or try to shut you up with his own words. He let your own pin his feet to the floor like swords. His face was blank and only put together through fragile strings. He let himself indulge in everything you'd said.
Maybe they were the same words he tells himself when he's staring up at his ceiling at four a.m. and the drafts breathing through the linear cracks of his room made air feel a bit less hostile. Maybe they were the same words you made him learn to believe.
Either way, you bled black and stopped crying, didn't tell me more of anything else, and you believed there was never much in your story before or after anymore.
What do you call night winds? The ones that hit you cold but slide past you warm and hot.
I felt each of them with goosebumps rising on my arms and the crooks of my shoulders.
Chubby had to be somewhere near. It was almost funny how Christopher and I knew. He had to be sheltering somewhere between the hands of tree branch shadows or the lonely road before us, had to be. It would've been greatly just if we could sense where Chubby went off to like he always seemed to be able to do with you.
Like that time when he kept tugging at the bottom of your jeans and barking at the ice cream parlor that one day, when you failed to meet minds with your parents on the atrophy of yourself, and wouldn't stop until you ordered a triple topping sundae because he knew you needed it.
He growled and tried to bite at the thunderstorms that kept you up at night when your parents went away on some far-off business trip without notice whatsoever and tried to fill up the space in your comforter because he knew you wanted presence. When we'd lost you in the amusement park one day many, many years ago, he wouldn't let anyone, not even the police, try to track you down because Chubby was confident and he wanted to play the hero –because finding you was his pleasure.
Through one coat of black and brown fur, two layers of skin, and black and red blood, his heart was with yours and never stopped even when yours did. Chubby loved you so much that Christopher and I dared to charge through this barren ground to see him again.
There was a single bright, white lamp in the distance, planted right smack in the middle, that lit through the filters of these shaded thickets and bushes of leaves. Owls hooted in my ears. Crickets shouted at us to run the other way.
"'The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality'," You quoted from Mary Shelley, sighing. It was midnight, we were rebelliously road tripping to Arizona the week after our final exams, and I was put on the wheel to drive in the pitch dark, terrified.
"Would you level up, Candice?"
"You mean man up."
"No I mean common phrases like these should break out of their masculine pretenses and jump straight into gender-neutral encouragements from video games level up!" You kicked your feet up on the dashboard, spiking the air conditioning until it was colder than it was outside.
I lowered the temperature right after, rubbing my arms one at a time while trying to see through the fog in the headlights.
"I would seriously love to live in one of these stories," You said, going back to your one-sided conversation before.
"Inside Gothic romances?" I asked.
"Shoosh yeah. What did Mrs. Fawner say about these kinds of genres again?"
"That we shouldn't listen to audiobooks of them while driving through cemeteries just to cut short our own runaway?"
"Oh please," You brushed off. "You want me to take the wheel?"
"I'd rather Jesus."
You laughed. "You're not even religious, Candice."
But I believed in the unreal, yeah? I trusted in supernatural forces and learned to never crack open Ouija boards or other horrific phenomenon. You spared nothing on fate and believed you had the keys to your own metal shackles. You loved ghost stories and possessions and flowery graves. You forced me through marathons of horror films and at the age of nine and up demanded me to keep a bag of salt in the house just in case.
Watching these things assured to you that there was a world out there scarier than the one in your head. There was this thrill living inside you from the very beginning that flooded in me, too. So thank you, Sarah.
You've taught me that most horror stories stop at some point but they never really end. There was a difference between those kind of films and the ones we lived in: the claws of trees will start to stiffen the hooks on our backs and the perpetual black rain will strengthen its meaning in fright; but eventually the scary movies will be more pleasant to us than the actuality of everything else because the fear will race our hearts and the terror will make it feel alive and stimulating and awake when thinking about the reality of our story together will scoop out whatever liveliness my heart ever had.
Christopher and I came to a stop where we stood thirteen hours earlier.
Chubby,we found, had his ears over his eyes and his head and nose digging into theground where we all, honestly, let you down. He was crying softly at yourgrave.
-----
ik. this is getting really wordy. but hey. I always thought the type of writing I use for this story was more of a poetic prose, or I guess the more technical term is a prose poem. you know, where the way you're reading it is in a regularly written format but pieces within the story, like the details that some of you guys liked, would represent the 'poetic' part, and that is how I envisioned this story to be like. an elongated poem.
I wrote the first chapter 10:11am months and months ago, planning on making it just like a personal entry of mine in the eyes of someone I made up. but then actual, live human beings saw this story and I guessed, hey, I should expand this, and thus, it was expanded =)
ok sorry for rambling on. I just felt like saying all this. also, yes the wordiness: it stays bc that's the point.
thank you everybody for your votes and comments; I loved and will love hearing what you guys think and feel!!
ps. I just realized that about 3x in this story, I kept changing the character's last names and changing eye colors throughout the story lmao. like, I'd type the chapter up, reread once if I cared enough, and then post it and move on. like, I try not to get hung up on a single chapter or let my 'my-writing-has-to-be-perfecto!!!!' persona get in the way, so by not re-reading what I wrote, I end up forgetting the little details (and sometimes a huge chunk of the storyline) that I had down haaha. gotta go back and change that.
pps. this reminded me that I really, really need to go back and try to edit. bc I just realized too that the scene that's going to happen soon has no foreshadowing whatsoever. you can ignore my updates if you want bc the story from here (even if you weren't foreshadowed) will still KINDA make sense.
ppps. sorry this was the longest ass author's note ever goodbye
<3