They say time heals. But time doesn't truly live here.
It doesn't move here in this shredded part of the paradox I lie tethered on. It rots, catches moulds and plunges out any sign of life. Anything and everything except for actually healing.
Anything.
The walls around me don't talk. They wail out loud.
Their screams petrified any sleep that could be left in me every night. The light never shifts. Always draped in its usual black; a darkness too complete to wear anything else.
Constantly reminding me how big of a chasm cascaded me around from all sides.
All I'm left as is no more than a barely breathing soul, coffined in a silence too compact to escape. Even I can't stand the hounding monsters I've placed all around me.
A place where I was the only capable being — the only one who could hear my heart ripping out, soul bruised and battered, crawling out of my body with a plethora of shrieks and screeches, hoping at least one would be loud enough to free me from the hell I never knew I was incarcerating myself in.
And just as I said it; everything fell revoltingly silent. Again.
A place where even my lungs refused to pump enough air to keep me sane.
Only ever just enough to convince the Holter machines to call me lucky. Lucky, because I was still breathing. . .
Even if that breath was barely tethered to anything remotely alive beneath this lifeless, immobile body.
Rain needled through the window like it was trying to dig me out; it never stopped. Dig me out. Unearth whatever's left of me before the world forgets I was even here.
Excavate my defuncted demis, denouncing to the world so they would finally stop slaughtering me every second more I am borrowing from death.
My predestined death.
The world buzzed beyond me. Machines whining. Nurses murmuring. But none of it ever touched me.
Not really.
My hand rested over the phone.
It was always there, the last thing that still somewhat felt like him. The closest to him.
The world outside kept spinning ceaselessly.
And though none noticed, or even cared enough to know, I was still standing stranded at the edge.
At the edge of the resounding rain outside.
Of the relentless dark.
Of that blessed aisle six.
The blackout hadn't really started that night.
It started when he left. When I lost him for the last time, unknowingly forever.
The first time I ever saw him bleeding, he wasn't just bleeding; he was ready to disappear.
***
It was exactly 1:24 am.
It had started with a blackout.
And a goddamn bottle of sleeping pills.
Citywide outage. Rain flooding the sidewalks. Thunder growling like a beast in the clouds. The 24-hour pharmacy was a flickering cave of red emergency lights; dim, eerie, surreal.
Rain deluged the sidewalk outside. My footsteps drudgingly collided with the thunder; loud, clumsy, like even the storm wanted to fall apart.
Every breath felt too loud inside it.
The door chimed when I stepped in. My silver jewelled heels clicked unsteadily against the wet tiles inside. I was drenched, and surely mascara streaked down my cheekbones. Still wearing the dress. Still with the stupid tiara on my head. A crude signal to anyone looking that I am the birthday girl, without a doubt.
My migraine was at its worst it had ever been, and I wasn't sure if I had any meds left at my house. I clearly didn't wanna round back to a pharmacy in case I did not have one.
So even though I didn't want to go. I went anyway.
The aisles were hollow like the store had exhaled everyone else.
Then I heard the crash.
I should've turned around. I should've walked the hell out.
But something in that sound…
It wasn't just rage. It was a tenebrous end.
The kind of sound you make not when you're trying to survive anymore — but when you're already halfway gone. Or perhaps even beyond just that.
Shattering.
Then a thud.
Something metal groaned.
I turned the corner —
And saw him.
Zane Carter.
Not that I knew his name yet. All I saw was a boy, maybe just a few years older. Blood on his hands. in a dark hoodie, soaked through. Kneeling in shattered glass. His knuckles were split wide open; skin shredded, blood dripping into the puddles near the fridge aisle.
A rack had been knocked sideways. Shelves emptied. A big plastic bag beside him containing some five to six vodka bottles. Glass scattered like snow.
He was hunched over, fists clenched, trembling. There was an open box of razors on the floor, right next to his knee.
His face wasn't crying. It was vacant.
And his chest moved like every breath was defying him
But something about him was louder than screaming.
He held a half-empty bottle of pills in one hand. In the other, a crushed vodka bottle, shaking. He brought it to his lips —
Something in me shook. And I ran forward.
My palm hit the bottle before he could drink. It skidded hard across the floor.
He turned — wild eyes, red and rimmed, already pretty lost.
"What the fuck are you doing?" His voice was slurred, but dangerous.
I don't know what I thought I was doing.
My hand still hovered where the bottle used to be.
My throat was dry. My heart was screaming.
But I didn't move.
Didn't run.
Didn't say sorry.
"Vodka and pills? That's a hell of a cocktail." My voice sounded too carefully blunt with slight expressions of tiredness than what I had expected to show.
At that moment, it felt like he was stunned. Not much, for I bet he did not want to bother even. But more like my response and especially perhaps my attitude was the least of things he might have expected.
He did not answer.
And it made my heart beat faster.
His bloodshot eyes lifelessly stared at mine with a fierceness which could surely kill. His breath hitched loud enough, like my words hurt more than I could have intended.
He just muttered one word.
"Leave."
Pausing ever so slightly I shrugged, trying my best to look as unbothered as I possibly could, "If I was going to, I would've."
"Who are you?"
"You think that matters?"
A pause.
He's staring right at me. More like straight into me.
Eyes so hollow I swear they could swallow me whole at right this moment.
"Don't act like you care."
"I don't." I tried whispering as softly as I could. "But if you do this here, now. . . I'll be the one who finds you." Trying my best to have my voice sound, steady and unwavering. "So maybe don't?"
There was a long dreaded silence following this. His eyes deadpanned on me harder, and deeper and darker each second.
"The fuck do you want."
I responded, quietly, "Nothing."
Seeing he was not saying anything, I slowly took a few steps towards him. And then I sat. At a distance from him, but close enough for him to still hear me whisper. I did not want to look at him directly at first.
Looking down at my drenched fairy dusted dress, I started fidgeting with the transparent thin fabric sprinkled with glitter on it.
Because after all, what on earth was I even doing here?
Sitting beside a boy amidst a ruin of a thousand glass shards, half-finished and some fully finished alcohol bottles- some half broken some completely.
And a huge pile of pills everywhere. Looking around the packets, there were all sorts of painkillers- Paracetamol, Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen and many more. And a whole bunch of sleeping pills too.
I should've left.
I should've run.
But I didn't.
I sat there.
Because he looked like a scream that had no one left to echo.
And maybe, just maybe, I needed to hear it too.
When I finally had the nerve to glance sideways, he wasn't looking at me.
Not even close.
He was staring at the spot I'd stood in a moment ago — like he hadn't noticed I'd moved.
Like he was still talking to the idea of me. Not the real thing.
I cleared my throat.
"It was my birthday today."
My voice cracked, stupidly.
"My parents are out of the country. They're both doctors and both happened to have important surgeries and seminars to attend. You know. . . more important than cake and candles, I guess."
He didn't react.
"I still had a party. My boyfriend. . ." i paused. I looked down. Picked at the glitter on my dress. "He pretty much made it count i guess." I quickly added, "But more credit goes to all my friends, it wouldn't be mildly as fun as it was, without them."
Still no answer.
"The cake was great. Chocolate fudge with coffee frosting." I smiled a little, still having the taste of the mocha flavour, "My favourite."
"I think I ate half of it myself. Kinda selfish. But I mean, screw it. It's my birthday, right?" I let out a nervous laugh. It disappeared right into the buzz of the emergency lights.
He didn't move.
Didn't shift.
Didn't blink.
Just sat there with his knuckles bleeding into the glass, head tilted back against the fridge door like it was the only thing holding him up.
"Maybe I'll buy another one tomorrow. And—"
Then, his voice, flat, cracked, like it had to crawl its way out of his throat — "You keep saying things like they matter."
A beat.
"But I can't tell if you're trying to distract me…"
He turned his head slightly now, eyes meeting mine — not curious. Not grateful. Just tired.
"…or just from noticing you're alive and breathing this loud."
At that moment I did not know what to say, at all. My mouth was still slightly open, from the unsaid words I could not say earlier, thanks to him suddenly interrupting me.
But even though I wanted to retort back to what he had just said, I closed my mouth because I just couldn't.
"You've been sitting here talking nonsense." His dry yet husky voice blurted, "But you fucking saw everything, didnt you."
He gestured vaguely to the ruin around him. The vodka, the blood. His ruined hands."And you still sat down like this was. . . worth anything."
He laughed; dry, hollow, like something splintered.
"Why?" He continued, pausing for a breath or two. "Why would anyone stay?"
Another pause.
"Unless you're just as fucking broken. Or a bloody duffer."
I could not say anything. I really could not. And at this point, I did not even know clearly what I should be saying.
"I didn't stay because I thought I could fix you." I quietly mumbled.
I was looking at my hands now, fingers twitching in my lap.
"I stayed because I-I," I didn't know what to say. Because he was right, why'd I sit beside a stranger like him, who obviously could be great danger to me. Someone who was a danger to himself could very easily harm me too.
I could hear the rain titter tattering harder on the side windows more clearly now.
The flickering light from the backup generator above us had started buzzing somewhere along the way, and I hadn't quite noticed exactly when until now.
"I don't know, but" I whispered slow and soft, like if I were to be a little less fragile I might just end up breaking a glass too hard on him. "I just wanted to."
He didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
Because of the silence he left me with… it never stopped ringing.
Not even now.
The room wasn't that quiet anymore.
It just wasn't screaming that loud anymore.
More like it had forgotten how. Or maybe it was too ravaged to even try.
Because silence doesn't always soothe.
Sometimes it slashes, more profoundly than any blaring screeches, sharper than any disaggregated glass.
And the worst part is, you hear it anyway.
I was back.
Morbidly marooned in a body that would never leave that aisle.
Entangled with a string of heartbeats stitched to a cage of memories.
A girl still dressed in glitter, still trying to cling onto whatever lingering souvenirs of her once so colourful past.
And maybe I never really left that night.
Maybe a small part of me had stayed back in that blackout with him —
Desperately trying to keep him breathing long enough to realize he was still alive.