Fern - Chapter Two

I’m staring at an abundance of large orange pumpkins. There seem to be about six dozen stacked upon one another, taking up several large tables outside the front of the grocery store.
Further down the street at the front of other stores are Halloween decorations. What appears to be a surprisingly high end boutique, with a simple but metallic sign reading, ‘JENNY’S’ holds different Halloween costumes on display at the glass window. The store beside it supplies candles, hundreds, from all colors and sizes with a sign that reads, ‘Halloween Sale. 50% Off’.

“They really take Halloween quite seriously here”, I comment to my mother, unable to take my eyes off all the pumpkins.
“It’s a small town. People get bored”, my mother whispers before stepping inside and grabbing a basket.

We do our usual shopping that consists of primarily fruit and vegetables. I remind my mother to buy cleaning agents and I ask if we can look at the other stores on the small street of this town that is dedicated to shopping so that we can commence our redecorating and give the house some colour other than brown.

We go to the checkout where a middle aged man with glasses stands reading the newspaper. “Good morning, folks”, he smiles when we place our basket on the counter.
I look at his name tag and reply, “good morning, Jeff”.
“Morning”, my mother says sweetly, unpacking the basket.
Jeff begins scanning the groceries and placing them into a paper bag. “You two here for a holiday or something?” he asks.
“We just moved in actually”, my mother replies.
“Oh”, Jeff says, looking up and eying both me and my mother. “Welcome to town then”.
“Thank you”, my mother replies.

We pay for our groceries and a last second Cherry Ripe before we begin out the door with our bags. 

“I almost forgot. Aren’t you going to get yourselves a pumpkin?” Jeff called out to us. “Halloween is just a week away and you’d be surprised how fast they all go”.
My mother turned around to face him. “Oh, we aren’t that big on Halloween”, she said, which despite my many protests was unfortunately true.
“Take one”, Jeff smiled. “It’s on the house”.

I stared at Jeff. Was this supposed to be some sort of house warming gift? And if so, why a pumpkin and not the designer make up they have selling for ten dollars more of what it would be in the city?
“That’s very kind of you”, my mother smiled sweetly before walking over to the enormous pile of pumpkins and picking the closest one to her up.
“And we have a jacko-lantern making class on Saturday morning at the town square”, Jeff added.   

I rolled my eyes in response, leading the way out through the door and back to the car parked meters away. 

“Sometimes I wonder how I created such a rude young person like you”, my mother said lightheartedly.
“You got lucky”, I teased, opening the back door of the car and placing the groceries on the backseat.
“Shall we keep looking?” I asked my mother, gesturing to the dozen shops lining the small street.
“Yeah sure”, my mother answered. “And because I am in a good mood, I’ll give you some funding money for your work on the house”.

Fern

Chapter One

“You just moved in, huh?”
I was picking up the last of my bags from the back seat of my car. They were bloated and bursting with clothes. My hands full, I closed the car door with my hip and glanced to the neighbour’s house where a girl around the same age as me stood on the grass, observing.
Her hair was long, to her waist like my own, only blonde. She had large eyes and she was pretty. Prettier than me; which was saying something. But her face was still, tired, matching the monotone and lack of enthusiasm that she spoke in. She appeared bored, and her boredom has somehow resulted in sarcastically pointing out the obvious so I took her as somewhat snobby and not someone I wanted to associate with.  

I gestured to my bags and didn’t reply. The girl nodded while eying me.

I began for the house, feeling rude but also skeptical about our new neighbor and I wasn’t in much of a conversational mood.
My mother was in the kitchen, already beginning to unpack some of the boxes and place everything disorderly on the bench tops. I passed her with my bags and headed down the short hallway to my bedroom. The house was small but my new room was slightly bigger than my last so I didn’t complain.

I placed the bags in my hands with the boxes and other bags I had already brought in. I considered popping back outside and introducing myself to the neighbors’ properly and to procrastinate from unpacking. But I was in a shitty mood and had been for the past three hours.

Leaving my friends in the city was fine. Leaving the city itself was fine.
I didn’t mind small towns. Sucks we weren’t close to the beach anymore but sacrifices have to be made. I get that. Besides, it was nice driving down the road and having forest on either side of you and large trees growing freely in the backyard as opposed to just garden plants. 

My child self would have killed to have lived here and would have wandered around in her fairy wings, running under the branches and down trails, constantly in search for the fairy kingdom I believed dwelled in forests like these.

But my father didn’t come to say goodbye. I had expected him not to, but expecting is far different from it actually happening. There was still a smidge of hope there that only the event occurring could remove.
And I hated him. I did. He ruined this family. He left my mother and I like we were nothing. And even if he did come to say goodbye I would have only nodded, but he was still supposed to try.

It was beginning to darken when I had set up the main pieces of my room like my dressing table and bed. It was an old house. My window sill was wooden and the window itself had no fly wire. The view outside was of the forest behind us. Thick and dark green. My previous bedroom view had been of our pool and the small rock waterfall my father paid big money to be made. Now it was grass and trees. Just a shit load of green basically. But it was soothing and comforting and I think I liked this one better.

I could get used to it here. I really could. A fresh start was exactly what my mother and I needed.  Where no one knew what went on with our family. No one would give us sympathizing looks and where status didn’t mean everything to everyone.

I unpacked the primary boxes, making a mental note to do the bags tomorrow and walked out from my room and back to the kitchen to check on my mother’s progress. In the few hours that we had been here the boxes in the kitchen were emptied, the benches cleared and the cupboards filled. I smiled at my mother who kneeled on the floor in the lounge room, beginning to unpack another box who reciprocated my gesture. 

My mother was beautiful. Slim, tall, with flaws like everyone but she always told me it was often the flaws in people that encouraged their beauty all the more. After all, it is with the flaws that make people different, she would say, especially when I would point out something about my appearance I didn’t approve of. And then my mother would point out something in her own that I barely noticed and it would put my insecurities at ease; because even my perfect mother wasn’t perfect.

“Need a hand?” I asked my mother who shook her head in response.
“No honey”, she replied, opening the box and removing ornaments and framed photographs, placing them on the 70’s styled brown carpet beside her. Then she stopped, shot her head up at me and smiled. “You can put some jazz on for me though”.
I smiled. Jazz was a special occasion kind of music for my mother. She only played it when she was in a good mood, like one time on her birthday and she was on her fourth glass of red wine and the three of us sat in the lounge room and watched her drunkenly dance. Or on a Sunday morning after a night out with my father before everything turned to shit.

But I guess packing up everything and leaving everyone but your daughter behind to move to a small town in the hopes for another chance at things, was an occasion enough. 

“Okay”, I nodded.
“The stereo is in there”. My mother pointed to a box sitting on the floor beside the lounge. I headed for it, opened it and pulled out the stereo, resting it on the bench top for the time being before plugging the cord into the nearby socket. The iPod was conveniently in the same box.
It had taken some convincing on my behalf to get my mum to use it when my father and I had got it for her one Christmas, several years ago.
My mother wasn’t excited or interested in the new gadgets and technology and was more a woman with simple and what many people would consider an ‘old fashioned’ taste. For instance, we were not allowed televisions in our bedroom. We watched shows and movies together as a family. And Wednesday nights were game nights, where we would play board games or my mother would invite her sister and my cousins over and we would play charades. 
But I had convinced my mother that grabbing an iPod from a fire was far easier than trying to cart a hundred CD’s and records, so she allowed me to transfer all the music over to it and she has used it just about every day since.

I connected the iPod to the stereo and clicked on the playlist titled ‘Jazz’. I hit play, put the iPod down and watched my mother for some time as she hummed and removed more photographs from the box. I smiled at her though she didn’t see, glad to see her quite happy and content. She needed to getaway. She really deserved the best.

I then left her, creeping off back into my room and pulling out a packet of cigarettes that I had hidden in one of my backpacks.

Patting the back pocket of my jeans to make sure my lighter was still there, I crept out from my bedroom, walked down the hall and out the backdoor.

It was dark outside, almost a complete pitch black.
But the light coming through the backdoor allowed me to see the backyard faintly at least, but nothing from the where the line of the forest started and beyond. Only black abyss.

The backyard was large; long and wide. It was much bigger than our small, old alfresco sized yard with a plunge pool that was only suitable if you lived in the city. 

There was pavement where I stood for a couple meters and after that was nothing but grass. Above me was an old wooden patio, with vines wrapping up the pillars and intertwining, creating an enclosed plant ceiling that I knew would only provide shelter to the sun and not the rain. Nevertheless, I knew this place had potential as I pulled out a cigarette and lit it up, taking a deep draw, before sighing contently.

I needed that.

I took another draw as I began to imagine the possibilities of the backyard that mother and I could do. I knew she would be up for it; anything to distract her and DIY projects was something we both had always wanted to do, but any remodeling or decorating of the house was frowned upon.
I began to imagine wrapping the trees with fairy lights. We could get an outdoor setting for beneath the vine patio. Maybe place some sun chairs on the grass and in the summer we could get a plastic above-ground pool and drink cocktails like we would at home.

I took another draw of my cigarette, looking around the backyard and feeling excited for all the things that we could do. 

I walked away from the backdoor and along the grass. I neared the edge of the forest, where pine trees lined the backyards of all the houses on the street that were separated by a small white fence in between that provided only slight privacy as opposed to security; easily able to take a shortcut through the forest in order to enter someone else’s backyard. 
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. There goes my hobby of sun tanning naked in the summer. Hell no was I going to risk someone taking a stroll through the trees seeing me. But at the same time, it must be a nice community for people to be so carefree and open with their homes. I liked that.

I stood between two tall pine trees so that I would no longer be classified to be standing on my own property anymore. I tried to peer through the dense forest, blowing a cloud of smoke into the darkness but it was too dense and not even the light of the moon above could get through the tree tops. I would explore it, I decided, taking a final draw of the cigarette before dropping to the floor and stepping on it with my sneaker. 

“You shouldn’t litter”, a voice stated.
I jumped, turning around and finding the next door neighbor leaning on a tree trunk, watching me curiously.
“Jesus Christ”, I yelped, grabbing my chest with my hand and taking a deep breath. “You scared the shit out of me”, I said unimpressed.

I kept my gaze on her, waiting for her to explain what she was doing but she only smirked, pulling her long blonde hair behind her ears before tucking her hands into the pockets of her grey hoodie.

“You just go around scaring people all the time or what?” I asked snappily.
“Sometimes. Depends what mood I’m in”, she replied, turning her gaze to my house.
“Well, next time you feel like spying on me, I’d rather you didn’t”.
“Aren’t you a bit young to be smoking? Does your mum know?” she asked, returning her gaze to me.

I looked down at my sneakers, tugging my hands into the pockets of my jeans uncomfortably. This girl did not understand basic etiquette and politeness, and also the fact that some things were not of her business and therefore required no comment from her. I wasn’t sure whether it frustrated me or the strangeness of her somewhat different behavior interested me. My automatic reaction was to roll my eyes and tell her to mind her own, but instead I remained standing. There was not much else to do inside anyway.

“I’m nineteen”, I stated. “It’s legal so no, according to the law I am not too young to be smoking and no, my mother does not know. And I would rather keep it that way”.  
The girl nodded. “I’m nineteen too”, she said with a slight smile. “Can I have one?”
I hesitantly reached for the packet in my back pocket before handing it to her. She pulled one out, as well as her own lighter that she had hidden on her body and lit the cigarette up, casting a bright orange glow across her face.

I watched her as she inhaled before slowly blowing out into the space above. The air was still and cold, so the smoke hung above us like a cloud.
“I’m Fern by the way”, the girl outstretched her cigarette-less hand. I shook it, her fingers feeling cold against my own and said, “Cameron. You live next door?”
She took another draw and nodded. 

I tried to peer around the fence to get a look at her house. Their backyard was the same as ours, big and empty and there didn’t seem to be any lights on inside.
“It’s more of a holiday house”, Fern said. “It’s my grandmothers. We just come here when we want to be alone”.
I nod and remember the holiday house we had down south on the beach that my mother gave up in the divorce. “That’s pretty cool. Anyone else with you?”
“Nah”, Fern replied. “Kind of defeats the purpose of being alone”.

I feel slightly uncomfortable. I consider asking why she is bothering me if she wanted to be alone so bad but decide against it. I don’t exactly want to make enemies my first day here.

I watch Fern as stares out into the forest for quite some time. I wonder what a girl as pretty as her would want to get away from. Perhaps it’s her tendency to come across as rude that makes her not very likeable. Strangely, I think I might like this girl. 

Her directness is almost a relief and a good change from the passive-aggressive girls I had grown accustomed to in the city.

I meet her gaze to try and see what has caught her attention but see only darkness. It’s beginning to feel awkward, I think; the strange silence between us that usually tells me it’s either time to fill it with mindless banter or to leave. I decide to leave.

“I’m going to go help my mum”, I tell Fern. She leans up from the tree and bends down, putting out her lit cigarette into the soil and picking up the one I had dropped.
She holds them both in her hand and says with a smile, “shouldn’t litter”.
“Noted”, I say.
Fern continues to stand still by the tree and I wait for several moments for a goodbye or something, but she only continues to stare back.
I turn away and walk back along the grass of my backyard when she calls out, “I’ll see you around?”
I stop and turn around to face her direction. “Yeah”, I smile with a nod, before heading back inside. Strangely I think that I’ll look forward to it.

My mother is still unpacking when I go back inside. She’s humming loudly, swaying slightly as she puts photographs from distant years on the mantelpiece above the fireplace that doesn’t appear to have been used in years.
She places a photograph down of me sitting on Santa’s lap from my 7^th Christmas and then a photograph of me and her both on a swing at the park.
She turns around, sees me and beams. “Cam!” she says smiling while outstretching her hand to me. 
“What?” I asked.
“Dance with me”, she smiled, waving her hand around.
“Mum, no”, I groaned, despite that the sight of my mother being so happy filled me with a similar sensation.
She grabbed my hand anyway, lifting it up and forcing me to twirl around. I laughed and mimicked her, twirling her around and watching her spin gracefully.

I find myself laughing in a way that resembles more of a giggle of which belonged to the nine year old me and not actually the nineteen year old one. The dancing and the music brings feelings of nostalgia of a time I didn’t think I remembered or even missed. But I remember my mother always dancing when I was child, whether it be merely rocking side to side when she held me or breaking out into swing dancing with my father as if they were in a speakeasy club in the twenties and not actually in our lounge room.   
Everyone had been so much happier then. Especially my mother.

We’re lying on the carpet now, our heads side by side and our legs spread out in opposite directions. The carpet feels nice between my toes – a warm sensation as opposed to the marble tiles we used to have.
There’s a bag of Salt and Vinegar chips lying beside us that we had bought for the drive but never got around to eating until now. I’m staring at the ceiling that is an off-white colour from age and wear. I wonder how long until I will get used to staring up at a low ceiling with paint peeling in the corners, after being accustomed to high ceilings and chandeliers.
But there is something comforting about this place. Maybe it’s the isolation. Or the smallness of the house that makes me feel safe and connected. It’s hard to deceive people in such small spaces, I guess.

I wonder how my mother, who had gotten used to a life of luxury and being surrounded by large, expensive things way before I ever even came along will cope. But if I, Cameron, who has never known life any different, can lie on the carpet floor of a house I had never stepped foot inside until today, than my mother should be fine.

“Are you going to miss home?” I ask through a mouthful of chips.
I hear the sound of a chip crunching between her teeth and she replies, “this is home now, and not at all”.
I am not surprised with her response. It would be hard to miss a place that held so much pain. I only wish I was as strong. And despite it all, I find myself still sad that my father never said goodbye. But I am almost sadder that he never said goodbye to my mother.

“Honey?” my mother says. “I know this isn’t the best house and it’s a small town but this isn’t permanent, okay?”
I sit up, turning my neck so that I faced her with a smile and said, “mum, it’s okay. I actually kind of like it here. The house needs a bit of work”, I said, looking around at the old brown cabinets in the kitchen and the old carpet we lied on. “But I like it. And fixing it up could be fun. I always wanted to be on The Block”, I teased.
My mother smiled back at me. I noticed her eyes had begun to glisten and I only hoped they were happy tears, or tears of relief. And not actually the tears that belonged to someone who thinks that they have made a huge mistake.

“I love you, honey”, my mother smiled, peering up at me whilst sliding her hand and holding mine.
“I love you too, mum”.

To be continued...

Laura and Laurelle

I wrote this about a year ago when I was feeling down, hence the pessimistic outlook throughout.

As a warning now, this is not suitable for the young. 

-

Today I’m Laura. I was born Laura. I grew up as Laura. Most of the time I am Laura. 

Laura has dreams to be a director. At first Laura wanted to be an actress. She did acting. In class and at home. Laura would re-enact her favourite films, books and characters in her spare time. But she was shy. She couldn’t go to the auditions because she had stage fright. 

Then she found a new passion being behind the camera. Capturing images and emotions and enhancing them with music. She’d film most things. Her surroundings usually, only filming the good things to create an illusion of her life that wasn’t actually so.

Laura was fun. A dreamer at times. Ambitious. She wanted to travel the world and capture it all in film to make it real. She wanted to direct music videos. To make people feel something. Make them think something. She wanted to be famous. Not for her looks or money but for her ability to erupt things in people.

Laura had friends. A boyfriend too. She was in love. She was happy.

But sometimes she would become Laurelle. Perhaps at her weak moments or when she would lose a grasp on herself. Laurelle was crazy. Laura knew that. Laurelle knew that. Laurelle wanted to self-destruct. She wanted to run away. From it all. But mostly from herself.

Laurelle didn’t feel complete. She felt inadequate. She felt lost. Like a grain of sand in a bowl of sugar. She felt like she couldn’t get out. Sometimes she wanted to die.

Laurelle was ruining Laura’s life. She would drink too much sometimes. She would take too many drugs. Laura would be humiliated of Laurelle’s actions, her words and her thoughts. Laura had to live with Laurelle’s mistakes and when she hurt those closest to Laura.

And she whispers to Laura. Confusing Laura. Trying to drag her into the mess and the world she created for herself.

Laura can’t take it anymore.

Laura’s going to kill Laurelle. She’s going to make her disappear completely. Laura doesn’t want Laurelle to hurt anyone else. Doesn’t want to hurt her friends anymore. Her family. Her boyfriend.

Laura has a handful of pills. She’s going to swallow them. She’s going to kill Laurelle.

Laura’s lying down now. She feels sick. She is in agonizing pain. She can feel the unconsciousness taking her. Taking Laurelle.

At least, Laura thinks. She will leave her films behind. And maybe they will erupt something in people. Maybe they will make people feel something. Think something.

She hopes so.

Laurelle took everything Laura had. But not her hope. Not her dreams. 

The Light

I take a long drag from the cigarette within my shaking fingers and breath it out unsteadily where it hangs like a cloud in the windless night air. It’s bright tonight. A full moon hangs lowly in the sky and the stars and haze of the Milky Way are clear above. They reflect on the still ocean water like a doorway to a parallel universe. My legs dangle over the jetty and my toes skim the cool water, soothing me and giving me the desire to place my whole body in, as if the salty water could cleanse me, or something.

It’s awfully tempting; pushing myself off the wooden planks and swimming as far to the bottom as I can. Even I knew my present mindset after taking three and half pills this evening would make it difficult for my body to reach the surface alive again. I took another long draw of my cigarette before wiping at the water beneath my eyes.

I’m pathetic. I’m confused. I left a party at one in the morning and found myself wandering to the beach by myself yet being alone was the furthest thing from what I wanted to be. But those party goers weren’t exactly much company. I couldn’t talk to them. I don’t even know how I got involved with them in the first place, let alone living with them. No, I remember now. They were all I had. And how sad is that? The only people who were there for me were acquaintances who had sold me pills a few times while I had been out clubbing. They were the ones to take me in. Not my ‘friends’. Not my family.

The people I live with though, don’t get me wrong, are good people. I guess we found each other because we were all lost but yet we didn’t exactly want to be found either. They didn’t talk much but they didn’t have to for me to know they understood. We weren’t cut out for this so called world. A full time job that eats at you piece by piece. At settling down. At thinking five years ahead every moment of everyday. Of conforming to the social norms of society. Of disappointment. It wasn’t for us.
So I didn’t blame them for resulting to drugs at every opportunity they had. God knows I did the same. But it wasn’t enough anymore. The drugs didn’t distract me anymore. I couldn’t run from myself anymore.

I placed my cigarette butt back in the packet and lied down on my back upon the wooden planks. There was nothing and everything ahead of me. Nothing, yet the entire universe. I stretched my arms out to the side and raised them slightly. At the same time a breeze came, whooshing the smell of salt in the air, giving me the sensation that I was flying. I smiled, staring at the infinite stars and endless possibilities. I felt almost weightless if it weren’t for an uneven plank stabbing me in my lower back. The breeze dropped as did my hands and I turned on my side, shifting so that I lied parallel with the jetty, my arm draped over the edge and my fingers grazing the black water.

If you asked me three years ago what I planned to do with my life, I would have given an undelayed answer of my very detailed five-year plan consisting of studying, moving to Sydney and putting a deposit on a house. Only that never happened. Shit changed. That plan doesn’t interest me in the slightest anymore. I don’t know, maybe I’m just lazy. But I don’t want to live that life at all anymore. And my friends? They were too busy making something out of themselves, to have even a spare moment for me. I didn’t blame them though. If I had my shit together I wouldn’t want to involve myself with someone like me. I’d only be a dead weight, a negative energy draining the room. But I never used to be. I used to be the most positive. I had the ability to cheer someone up within moments. I was fun. I was funny. But then suddenly that wasn’t enough. Writing in my spare time wasn’t going to get me anywhere, everyone’s ideas of me changed and I became inadequate, lost, and earned the title of one of those people who were ‘going nowhere with their lives’.

That’s why he left too. “You’re almost twenty years old and you haven’t nearly got your life figured out”, I replay his voice in my mind, and it hurts just as much as hearing it the first time and not actually the 1000^th. “I’m busy figuring out myself”, I had argued back. I thought that was far more important; knowing who I am, not who I should be. He laughed and within days he left from my life, taking my heart and everything I was with him. I wasn’t myself for a long time. I’m perhaps still not.

My mother of all people though, was supposed to be there for me. She wasn’t. She snorted at the news. “You’re too much to deal with”, she had said, ignoring my swollen eyes and my internal pain that was so strong, I was sure anyone in a 100m radius could feel it. “I’m surprised he stuck around this long”.
And she had a point, though I’d hate to admit. I was too much. Too much of something.
Different perhaps. That was when I realised that the world had turned out to be nothing like I had hoped. And everything after that went spiralling downwards into a bottomless pit I felt like I could never climb out of.

I had turned to my mother for help again when things got worse. I told her how I felt. “You’re a teenager. What in the world do you know about depression? You haven’t experienced anything.” Then she waved me away with her hand and I never brought it up to her again. But I thought that was exactly the point. We hadn’t experienced anything. We were hopeful and we have this optimistic perception of the world we know nothing about. We haven’t built ourselves the walls that adults have to protect them and that make us so much more vulnerable to life and the inevitable disappointment it would bring.  

A tear slid off the bridge of my nose and fell into the water, disappearing with the infinite other drops and sending ripples over the surface. I notice something bright from the corner of my eye, but I ignore it, assuming it to be the moon’s distorted twin. Then it flashes again or glows, I’m not sure but I glance into its direction and find a bright pale light in the water, similar to that of the moon; only the moon’s replica is further out in the horizon and not a metre away from me. I sit up, staring at the light, then glance up at the sky and find no bright stars worthy of that reflection from above. I return my gaze to the light and it has moved two metres away from me, but it continues to sit still. Perhaps the drugs are playing tricks on me.

I reach for the light, splashing my hand in the water fast in an attempt to startle it. The water is disrupted, ripples and small waves are sent in every direction, their edges glowing from the moonlight and when it calms again, the light is gone. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, so I continue to watch where the mysterious glow had been but see nothing. I consider slipping into the water again, but instead I pat the ocean surface as if bidding it farewell, when something grabs a hold of my wrist and pulls me into the water.

It took me several long moments to realise what had happened. My wrist is free and as I open my eyes, I notice the surface is metres away. I begin to swim for it, irrationally scared, when something grabs a hold of my ankle. I look down and find a giant forest of seaweed, reaching out from the dark bottom and one of the long thin stems has twisted itself around my ankle. I kick my foot free and attempt for the surface again, reaching for the oxygen my lungs have begun to crave but I’m not getting any closer, my ankles once again restrained.

I look down again into the darkness and see several stems attached to my legs. I claw at their slimy bodies and I can feel their residue getting stuck beneath my nails. I am free again so I kick for the surface in panic, my lungs bursting. I aim for the moon I can see on the other side, its brightness giving me a sense of safety. My fingers reach the air and relief floods over me as my head takes its turn but I am dragged down by my legs, then my waist, much faster than before. The seaweed is alive and I scream, watching their fingers reach from every direction of the darkness, grabbing my wrist and curling itself around my neck.

The surface is so far away now. I have stopped kicking and fighting. This was the moment I had been hoping for after all. I let the salt water fill my lungs. I don’t fight it. Even when the small white light emerges through the forest of seaweed, glowing around a figures neck and hovers only inches away from me. My eyes close as I feel a comforting yet shocking sensation on my lips. My last thought is that everything is going to be okay. Maybe I do belong somewhere.

Home - Story by me

The following is a short story I wrote in 2014 when I suffered from insomnia and my bedtime was never before three in the morning.

It was during the not-so brightest period in my life and was inspired by Caress Your Soul by Sticky Fingers.

The reaction from my friends I went to Uni with for a short while after showing them was priceless.
So, I'll warn you now that it isn't the happiest nor positive story I have ever written. If you read it and are at all shocked/disgusted, don't say I didn't warn you.

Here goes:

My fingers were grasped tightly around her wrist. She didn't bother to wriggle or struggle from my pull as she stumbled behind me, but my anger didn't allow me to loosen my grip. I walked fast away from the music and out through the front door, into the chills of the cold night. "Where are you taking me?" She asked, her voice shaking. "Home. I'm taking you home".

I released my hand as we made it to the car parked under the street lights with the other party goers' cars. I walked to the drivers side and jumped in hastily. I slid the key in ignition, turned the car on and slipped on my seatbelt before realising she was still standing on the sidewalk. She stared into the tinted window at me, and I could tell she was contemplating whether or not to get in. Her hesitation jabbed my heart, joining the already hurt and anger that had found shelter there only moments ago.

She stood still for several moments before finally accompanying me. She was quiet the entire trip home; the low mutterings of the radio the only sound, apart from my heavy breathing. I knew her silence was a result of the guilt she felt; she knew she had done wrong. Wasn't the first time so you'd think she'd learn.

I parked into our driveway and walked to her door, opening it and providing my assistance for her to the house. I wrapped my arm around her and held her as she drunkenly walked inside. We avoided the few unpacked boxes in the hallway that had sat there since we moved in over a month ago and I lead her to our bedroom.

She slumped on the side of the bed and stared at the floor. I stood in front of her and watched her for what seemed like minutes before she whispered, "I'm sorry". I couldn't help it. The anger, jealousy and hurt exploded in a rush of adrenaline and she fell to the floor, the back of my hand stinging. Her hair was sprawled around her head as she leant on her hands and knees, her face buried between her arms and leaning on the wood. The strap of her black dress fell loose revealing her olive skin and her scapula bone that created a small bump on her upper back, giving me the strong urge to kiss it. Her body shook with the sound of her sobs and I fell to my knees beside her, feeling now also angry at myself for touching her like that. I always felt crap after I did.

I picked her up and pulled her to my chest, tears forming in my eyes while she cried into my shirt. "Please don't cry", my voice cracked. My fingers tangled in strands of her hair as I pulled her tightly to me, as if I were able to pull us close enough so that we would become insync; one; or tie our souls together for eternity. But she only cried more and my tears began to leak and fall on to the top of her head.

I pulled her away and in front of me, analysing her face and the mascara streaks that stained her cheeks and eyes. A drop of blood had begun to form on the corner of her mouth, and her hair was rustled and half wet from stray tears. Her sobbing calmed and she looked back at me. I slowly leaned in to her face and kissed and pulled away so gently and quickly her mouth where the blood had been a second ago.

"Why do you do this to me?" I asked frustrated, my fingers still intertwined in her hair. She closed her eyes and shook her head, more tears streaming from beneath her eye lids. "No, please stop crying. Please don't cry", I wiped the water from her face.
"We were just talking", she cried. The anger rushed back and I stood up, resisting the twitch of my hand and instead taking it out on our bedside lamp that now lied in pieces on the floor beside her. "Don't lie to me".
"I swear", she pleaded. "I love you".

I closed my eyes at the sweet sound of those words and stood motionless, being torn by the happiness of the statement and the jealousy that was overbearing. I slowly dropped back down to my knees and cupped her face in my hands, forcing her to look back at me. I lifted her face and pulled her lips to mine, kissing her hard with urgency. She kissed me back lightly and I could feel the passion that lacked on her side. I needed her but I knew; I could feel, she didn't need me the same way.

I tore my lips away and pressed my forehead to hers and said, "and I only hurt you because I love you". She nodded and continued to silently cry more, falling back into my chest. I dug my face into her hair and could smell her strawberry scented shampoo that intoxicated me. I slid my hand away from her across the wooden floorboards and gripped onto a sharp piece of the broken lamp that was still warm under my touch from the light bulb. She cried silently and I whispered for the last time, "I love you", my vision becoming blurry from my tears. I muffled her scream with my hand as blood poured from the stab wound in her back and I sobbed into her neck. She stopped moving and I lied next to her; the view and feel of her soothed the pain from the gash in my neck as our blood created a beautiful puddle around us, our blood coming together in a way I knew our souls never could.