Reality

We all have dreams. We all have emotion. But I write. And when I write I envision flowing clothes, passionate love, millions said in one simple glance. And of course, life isn’t that beautiful, it’s cruel, black, and greedy. One can’t see a million things in the eyes of a crush, we can’t see ‘little sparks,’ though I am guilty of writing we can.

After all, what is fiction but a reality we all want, crave, and need?

“Danny, dinner!” One of my dreams is that one day I will be able to do what I want when I want, not be beholden to ‘mother dearest.’ Otherwise known as the bane of my existence. “Coming,” that is all I can manage, I still refreshingly weak from blood loss. Each cuts a little deeper than the last.

I have to sit up cautiously, so that world doesn’t spin too badly, the sink and bathtub become my supports, and I can’t stand without them. Each time I rise from where I lay on the floor, I see myself in the mirror. I look worse each time. I have a dream that some day I won’t cut, or maybe I wish that I would cut too deep.

A single drop flows from the already scabbing wounds. My bodies gotten faster at stopping the blood flow…it makes me cut deeper. Why can’t we all live a life where our knight in shining armor comes? Where we break down and share our lives stories? Why can’t I have someone to keep me safe at night? To love?

A single look in the mirror shows that my writing just sets me up for failure. I have black-dyed hair; it hangs limply at my shoulders. My eyes…my eyes are nearly black; I think I remember them being blue once. My reflection laughs at me as I take stock of the wispy being that I have become, with too pale skin and many a piercing. A butterfly tattoo on my left cheek just below my eye. Cliché, but it drags in customers.

Self consciously, even after all these years, I slip down the sleeve of my black shirt, so that it covers my new cuts and my old. It still provides comfort in this barren world, the black sleeve keeping me away from it. Where is my redeemer? I have a dream that he will show some day…at least he will be able to liberate me from this world that haunts so much. Mistake me for the monster I am, and slay me were I stand.

“Danny! Dinner!” My reflection still laughs at me as it drowns in blood. This is the reality we all try to make better with our romances, with our fictions. How intelligent is it to set ourselves up for death of our souls? No more smart than befitting a human.

I feel my mouth shape itself into a sneer. A snub on all of the pathetic species I must call my own. Who set themselves up at every turn for emotional shit. Emotional. Humans are emotional aren’t they? Even if it’s feeling suicidal, it’s still a feeling…is that a qualification for being human? Feeling?

I have a dream that someday people won’t judge, won’t try to help and pretend. I have a dream that they will have a sip of the dark poison. Maybe then we can all be liberated. A world united in the living of a life.

Yes. That’s what I want.

“For God’s sake, get down here, Danny!” How can one like her still believe in God? How can they say God forgives all who repent, and not even let me into a Church?

There is a new feeling, am I human yet? I can feel it moving in me, determination? Am I finally giving up? It feels like hope, but how would I know what that is? There is no shining knight for me, no angel of light, and no guardian spirit to make an appearance and save me. Not that they would, once they learn what kind of creature I am.

“No, mother, I won’t.” I whisper, feeling as if I am missing something. This awkward…thing, the one I want to be rid off, it hurts. I can feel my teeth begin to bite my lip, I hope I draw blood soon; the taste of it always calms me.

It comes, the salty liquid that humans consider so precious.

When did it start tasting good?

I have another dream, a dream where someone finds me cutting, passed out on the floor. In that reality, I meet my liberator. In that reality, that dream, he comes to me, and he knows, he knows…And we collapse on the bathroom floor, and my mother dies so he takes me away to his home. I couldn’t care if it’s a singly flat, or a mansion. I need only his eyes to wall me away from the outside.

In that dream, life is perfect. I see the magical ‘spark,’ the tell-tale signs we write so much about. Reality isn’t perfect, though, obviously. It’s just a dream…of a dream, of a dream from some long ago mind in a cave. A worthless piece of essentiality made by a delusional consciousness. How kind fate is. To take away hope and give us imagination, the head for a different reality that corrects all that is wrong.

I know what my final dream is.

I want to be…free.

-

Danny squeezed his hand around the blade still held in his hand, staring at the thin line of blood being drawn on his palm. With practiced ease he slips up the sleeves on his turtle neck. Finds the veins already so depleted of blood they’ve collapsed long ago. But it’s second nature for him to know where they are.

The door is locked, but Danny’s mother couldn’t care less if he kills himself, she already knows about the cutting.

He presses the blade as deep as it will go; crying out softly, Danny pulls it harshly along the thin vein at his wrist, then, committed. Already the blood flows more smoothly and intoxicating than before. Danny’s body feels the dizziness right away, his sickly body not taking two new, deep, cuts into his wrists well, at all. Danny’s body crumples to the floor within minutes.

The red is a welcome stain against the pristine white tiled floor.

--

Leo read the newspaper headlines, laughing at their duplicity. When she’s done mocking them for the hundredth time, she moved on to the obituaries, her favorite section, taking a deep drag from her illegal cigarette. Housten, Larielle; Jack, Derek; Uzimaka, Kimiko; Gasreon, Jacquelyn…hell, if my name was ‘Jacquelyn’ I’d have killed myself! These were people she didn’t know, but she liked reading about how the press fucked up their deaths. A different kind of mocking.

5 to 1 Larielle’s hubby had just broken up with her after he had been cheating. As for the ‘Derek’ character…well for fucks sake! His name was Derek Jack. Leo was aware of people staring at her; she gave them good reason too. She had long black hair on one side of her head; on the other was a lime green braid down her shoulder, almost to her waist. On top was a red-dyed faux Mohawk.

That wasn’t even counting her the rings in her ears, lips, or eyebrow, clothes, or tattoos… Leo just laughed at them all and pulled herself a little bit farther from everyone else. Everyone except Danny, Virgo, of course. They were buds in depression and rebellion. Consequently Leo wasn’t surprised to see Virgo’s name in the paper. Only a matter of time.

Of course there he was ‘Daniel Aaron Masen. Beloved child, successful student…’ the list went on and on. Died of natural causes my ass. And who exactly went to school around here? Leo snorted, and slapped the paper down onto the vendors stall, not caring that she shouldn’t have read it without paying.

Leo had decided to pay the Masen home a little visit. She’d actually never set foot inside the death trap, but she could make a concession for the special occasion. Nothing like a fresh death to really make you bold.

It took all of five minutes to reach the Masen residency, just because Leo had never entered it, didn’t mean she hadn’t ever been to pick up Virgo. Leo didn’t even have to knock; her stomps on the wooden steps leading to the house alerted the ever wary demon inside.

“Ms. Virgo’s mom,” Leo deliberately used Danny’s name at the bar, when the door opened. Leo knew that it made Virgo’s mother pissed. And that was just a bonus, Virgo was not Danny in her mind.

“For the last time, Maria! Danny’s name is D-a-n-i-e-l, not Virgo.” Leo just gave her trade-mark cocky grin, “Maria?” She asked confusedly. Was the bitch not aware that she had just contradicted herself? Calling him Danny while saying his name was Daniel.

“He may have been Danny everywhere it didn’t matter, but his… costumers knew him as Virgo.” Leo leaned foreword as if whispering a deep secret, “The Zodiac is going to miss the only male prostitute…”

“Your mother-” Speaking of mothers, this one was livid. Leo laughed.

“Right now or ever, I don’t care what my mother said she had wanted, needed, or thought she had still felt. I want to see Virgo’s computer.” Not bothering to wait for a reply from the angry mother, she pushed in and went tromping up to Virgo’s bedroom. Stomping and twisting her combat boots to get as much dirt as possible in the white carpets. White carpets, seriously.

Leo found the computer easily. The only thing different was that the room had been cleaned of everything Virgo, obviously. Since when would Virgo have a flower quilt or pink throws? “What a little ‘tard, you had for a mum, Virgo, least mine had the grace to die, yours didn’t even wait a full day before she erased you!”

Leo hoped Virgo’s mother heard that.

Moving towards the computer, she pulled down everything she could to make the room more comfortable. Throwing pillows of the bed, finding a candle to light with her Faithful, and dropping hot wax and ash over the carpet. Virgo had always had it in a mess, so now it was home. The computer was already logged on; there was an alert right in the middle of the screen. “Confirm Delete: Are you sure you wish to send ‘The Story’ to the Recycle Bin?”

Yes, no.

Leo nearly lost what little control she had over her…amazing…anger. Virgo had been family for virtually their entire lives; she had even helped Virgo deal with some of his pain when he got fucked by the guys he thought loved him. Even if normally, naïves like that sent her screaming. That was the reason Leo had been originally drawn to him, they had both been checking out the same guy. Ever since then, she had been helping Virgo chronicle his, their, life. In The Story.

Which his mother so callously wished to delete.

She clicked out of the alert message and The Story popped up. She glanced briefly at the amount of pages, 342… “Well, Virgo, you certainly can type with motivation.” When had the little bugger even learned to type? No matter, though, this was exactly what she had come for. Leo had glanced over the stories a few times, most of them Virgo had been in tears at her dead mother’s place. Printed off the Library computers.

Hard to believe they even had a library.

The Story was one of what Virgo liked to call, ‘the realities we all wish weren’t true.’ He was a philosophical type, guess that was just his cope style. As Leo stared at the open page, 234, she wondered just what she was going to do with it. And how. First, obviously, transfer document. Ah, lifted USB device, perfect.

Waiting for that to register on the computer, Leo took to wondering around The Story. “I wonder, Virgo, if I should take some of your other stories…” Leo quickly looked at all the document names, and one caught her eye among the rest, ‘Hope.’

“That’s certainly odd…Virgo doesn’t hope for shit…and I know he doesn’t like writing about it…” She double clicked on it and found only a small paragraph.

‘Heh, I knew you would find this on, Leo, in all the rest, is it you that is predictable or me? Oh never mind…well by now I imagine you know what this is…don’t let Mother have it or The Story. You can take all the rest of the stories, but they are obviously only pieces of drivel and shit. The stories that are finished are obviously The Story, it was originally done with all our names but I changed them before I decided to write this. And the suicide note always comes right before the suicide. Well, I think you could take ‘Amen Row,’ ‘Bloody Mercy,’ and/or ‘Parthenon of Odium.’

Love you always, Virgo.

-signing off. BBQ will rule the world.’

Leo couldn’t help but smile at Virgo’s thoughts written into the suicide note, if nothing else, the shit that flew from his mouth was entertaining.

“Heh, that’s my Virgo, BBQ will so rule the world…”

Epilogue

The Story and Amen Row made Best Seller within months of publishing, which surprisingly wasn’t the hard part. Leo Parker, as a respectably well off young woman gave most of the money to orphanages that she knew personally would use it, keeping only enough too stay alive another few years before she joined Danny-girl.

In the mean time she was still at the same little town, the same fucking house, and in the same clothes. Only flaunting gold studs, this time.

This round, she was content that Virgo, friend and heart-broken, former, prostitute, had his face forever on the back of his books. A somber 9th grade picture, the last they all had of him alive, though he would have been almost done with senior year the day he died, to stare at you when you finished his chilling books.

BBQ will rule the world.