This was written for Nata.

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She is a whirlwind, and she flies into her room as such, the door slamming behind her.

It is her sanctuary. The only place which calms her down, the only place she can actually breath.

They’re still yelling outside. Yelling at what a freak they have for a ‘daughter’ and how they should have chosen another one. It’s the only way her parents can deal with her. Convince themselves she was adopted. Chosen. Not related but blessed they had gone out of their way to choose her. It meant she owed them something now.

She knew it wasn’t true. She had been there at the Self Mental Help ‘discussions’, about her of course, so of course she had to be there. How her parents had chosen to take the selfish, cheaters way out of it she’d never know. They were brainwashed. To believe what they wanted to believe. Fools.

She can see the shadow move, back and forth over the walls, her range of different positioned lights creating the shadows of her most favourite possession in the entire world. She doesn’t move from the doorway. She just stands there, her eyes fixed to it’s haunting shadow.

She’s told she is twisted. Totally ‘gone’ in the head. Unstable.

Some just say she can’t cope anymore, not after what happened, and she is to be pitied, not blamed.

But that isn’t it at all. She’s fully aware of everything.

And when she says ‘everything’, she means everything.

She seems to glide across her room, stepping over dirty clothes, books, bags, jewellery, cigarette lighters, coke bottles turned into bongs, still filled with dirty water, a school bag still with text books in them…

She falls down onto her bed and rugs herself up into her blankets and sheets and a doona or two. She’s already dressed in baggy jeans, knee high socks, a shirt over a shirt so she gets a layered effect of blue and green. She should be roasting, but she’s not. She gets cold easily now these days…They say once you’re used to sleeping with someone, sharing their body heat and personal space on such an intimate level, you can never go back. Once you know it’s there, and that it exists, you can never go back to sleeping without it. Well, of course it’s technically physically possible…just not mentally.

You can sleep, and you can doze, but you can never achieve what you’ve now known. Not to the point of a ‘good night’s sleep’. The kind where you sleep so deeply, trapped in warmth. Totally relaxed and secure and just…’at home’, you know? You can never sleep so soundly and completely afterwards, when you know you’re never going to feel that again…

So she curls up, rugs up, trying to keep warm and when she’s satisfied she casts her gaze upwards, to gaze at the item she would die for.

She laughs.

How ironic.

Die for that?

A shiver of thrill passes through her as she looks at it, and she rugs up tighter.

There is an eerie kind of bliss in her eyes, and she fumbles for the curtain cord so she can pull shut the offenders which are letting demon light into her room without having to get up. She then fumbles for the stereo remote control, mashes a few soft buttons and she’s lucky turning on her favourite CD is just automatic with her, otherwise she’d have some difficulty. Everything with her is a fumble, she never really has a good grip on anything. Not anymore.

Music starts playing and she settles into her bed deeper to watch, listen, think, as the sounds of her family are drowned out, the sight of her now only one true love, seemingly magnified above her, in front of her very eyes, and her thoughts turn, clicking over, to him.

She had only been given three months to grieve. Three months! It was insulting just thinking about it. It made her swear and want to punch the counsellor yet again, and punch her father as he tried to hold her back…and punch her sister for laughing...

Three months…

Had it been that long already?

It had been the first day back at school. Her parents had dragged her there, kicking and screaming. Literally. Threatening her with everything under the sun. Trying to tell her they were doing it ‘for’ her, that they were trying to do the right thing, that she’d never be able to go back to school if she let herself get slack and put it off further and further. That it would only get harder and harder to go back the longer she put it off.

So, the day had been full of uncomfortable silences. People looking at her and then looking away. Talking in whispers until she got too close, and then silence, until she passed and got out of earshot again, then, once again, whispers. The kind who just stared at her from a safe distance. Passed notes which avoided her at all costs. Sympathetic and edgy looks from teachers. A call from the counsellor which she avoided.

And then, by the end of the day, the questions. All the questions from the bravest questions, the kind you just can’t ask, even if you’re a best friend of the mourning. Not that she had any anymore, they all avoided her like the plague as well.

But now she was home. School had been a blur of things which hadn’t made sense anyway. But that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be going tomorrow.

A hand sneaked out and she fumbled on her bedside table. She found nothing and groaned. It took her a while to remember the one in her own pocket. Her delicate but scared fingers fished it out and then fumbled the small box from under her pillow, and lit up a cigarette. Vantasges. There was nothing else which were better. She inhaled deeply and felt it burning, filling her lungs with tar, and she exhaled happily. Pain for Pain. But…pain meant you were alive. It let you know you were still breathing and that blood was still pumping, nerves were still twitching and oxygen was still giving her brain life.

Why her? Why not him? He was so much more worthy than she was…

The thing that really killed her was the fact that they had fought. That they had fought just days before everything had come to an end. That secretly, she knew she was to blame. That when everything else in his life was being hard and depressing and horrible to him, the one thing that should have been wonderful had not been, right when he had needed it to be more than ever. Knowing that killed her inside, although she tried to ignore it. They had made up, hadn’t they? It had been his family that killed him, not her, because she couldn’t hurt him if she tried, right? That’s what he had told her…

They had made up. Apologies and bashful smiles. And a movie afterwards and ice cream. He had ordered for them both without having to ask, he just knew. Even though her favourite flavour was strawberry he knew she wanted chocolate that night. They had made up. It had been such a stupid little fight anyway, hadn’t it? Just over what she was doing for her birthday…he wanted to take her out on her actual birthday when she had already agreed to go out with her friends from school. He had already booked a table for them at a restaurant. …She had already promised more than ten of her friends she’d be with them at the beach. You couldn’t say no to that many people, especially when they had asked first, right?

Such a stupid little fight…

She had been so annoyed with him for how he had reacted. Snapping and sulking like a little kid when she had refused to swap plans around so he wouldn’t have to re-book.

Yet, if she had known he would be gone, fully and totally, forever just days after and just days before her birthday then she would have swapped the whole world around if that was what he wanted. She would have done anything. If it had stopped him from hanging himself.

She gazed back up at the noose. It was patched in a place, from where they had cut it off him. But looking almost as good as new. Almost.

Still as beautiful as ever though.

She twisted around in bed, the cigarette dangling delicately from her fingertips as she gazed up at the monster which had stolen her lover from her. Yet it was still so beautiful. It had been made by him, hadn’t it? It brought her closer to him. It was all she had left. His family wouldn’t let her near them in any other way. All she had was the noose and a shirt he’d left there one day. And she didn’t really like the shirt all that much. It was yellow and black and had made him look like some weird, strange, kind of bumblebee or something. Yellow looked horrible on most shirts.

Maybe she should go have a shower. Hot showers cured the world of depression. Or, they were the fountain of blood for those who cut. Hot showers poured the blood away and warmed the wound. Either way, her body ached for one.

Did she deserve one though? Would he ever be having a hot shower again? Or would he be cold and icy and dead…if he were in heaven he’d spend the rest of his life in a hot shower without drowning and without his skin turning wrinkly, but everyone knows when you…commit…suicide…you go straight to hell. For sacrificing the greatest thing ever given, Life.

What a crock of shit. Neither of them had been religious so the rules didn’t apply to them at all. How could they when they didn’t give a damn about religion? Life was too short to live by any rules or guidelines, and who cares what happened to your body or soul or what the fuck ever once you were dead? You couldn’t enjoy it if you were dead now could you?

She finished the cigarette with another drag, drinking on it right down to the butt where you got the most and it tasted the most foul. She flicked it to the side, not caring what it hit, and flung herself out of beg, getting tangled in the sheets and blankets on the way and hitting the ground hard.

FUCK!!

Okay, now she did care where the butt hit, as she had stepped right on it. Swearing and cursing loudly she grabbed a towel and flung herself out her door into the hallway, punching the opposing wall as if it was its fault. She didn’t hear her mothers screamed reprimand. She slammed her way into the bathroom and stood there, facing the mirror, face red and puffy, half from anger, half from sobbing without realising. Eyes bloodshot from the afternoon drugs, blackened from the lack of sleep.

“You can never sleep so soundly and completely afterwards, when you know you’re never going to feel that again…”

She stepped into the shower, fully clothed, and just let herself be drenched in the hot, scalding water. Replacement blades for razors were so conveniently nearby, and she set to cutting her clothes off her body, destructive and now no longer caring for her worthless, material belongings. She turned the hot water on as hard as she could, mixing little cold water with it, watching her skin turn redder and redder from the heat and the small cuts she had caused when misjudging how hard the material would be to get through.

She knew what she had to do.

Nearly an hour afterwards the longest shower of her life (and the last) she walked, naked, like how she had entered the world (and how she would leave it) ignoring the cries from her family to stop acting so fucking weird and to just act normal again, she returned to her room.

“She can see the shadow move, back and forth over the walls, her range of different positioned lights creating the shadows of her most favourite possession in the entire world. She doesn’t move from the doorway. She just stands there, her eyes fixed to it’s haunting shadow.

She’s told she is twisted. Totally ‘gone’ in the head. Unstable.”

And slowly, she climbs up onto her bed. She stacks her pillows, the teddy bear she’s had since she was born, the school bag she’ll never need again so her bitch of a sister can finally fucking have it like she’s always bitched about, and she reaches her most beautiful (and only) possession in the world. And she slips her head in through the tight circle, so much like a scratchy, rough hug, and she smiles.