Filling The Gap.

She curled up in the darkest of corners, willing her mind and heart to empty themselves of emotion. Her eyes were blank, as though someone had skewered a cloudy mass of nothingness to her face; just mere slits of emotionless longing. The girl let out a strangled moan. She had never wanted so badly to be devoid of feeling. She had never wanted to stop existing before. There wasn't any emotional inclination towards this particular "want"; to feel desire was beyond her. She just knew she wanted it.

Let me be a shell, a desolate empty field.
Let me be an empty caucus of depths unrevealed.
Let me cry, let me crackle, let me loosen up;
Let my anguish force its way through my vessels.
Let it leave me be. Let it leave me alone.
Let me grieve. Let me die. Let it leave me be.

Her sorrow was burning up inside her, hacking at her soul. It was like a ball of fire - a great blazing inferno that had settled itself into her chest and was spreading through her bones. Her mind was a kerfuffle, just a dispatched part of the person she had been once. Her mind was not her's to control anymore, because she couldn't think straight, nor keep tack as her brain changed course at the speed of light, shifting from one thread of thought to tugging at another. It was strange: how her insides burned, but reality still filled her veins with its icy touch.

This blend of hot and cold swept through her rattling frame, and she shivered. She could never understand herself; it was like she was two people who couldn't get along- two people trapped within the same body, creating a turmoil that her one brain just couldn't deal with. The confusion tore at her. The pent-up frustration made her want to scream and scream and scream. She wanted to hurt something, to tear everything down into a million pieces; to make others understand what she had to live with every stinking day. So she tore the sheets from her bed. She ripped her pillowcase to shreds. She wailed; she moaned; she cried and yelled to no one in particular. And she kept it up until exhaustion surpassed all other intermingling emotions, and she collapsed on the old mattress.

She ached all over. Her body was confused. The world was fuzzy. Nothing made any sense. She wanted to stop being.
It was infuriating. She didn't know why she was this angry, why she felt so useless and... sad. She didn't know anything, and that made everything much worse. If she hadn't been born, she wouldn't be going through all this. She just wanted to stop the pain. Why couldn't she leave the world? Why couldn't the confusion leave her alone?

I want to die, she thought.

And sorrow spoke to her:
You are trapped within your own mind,
Your heart steers you straight, but you push it away.
You are trapped within your blindness,
You are trapped within your fear,
You are afraid of the truth, but the truth cannot be changed.
Grieve, and do not expect condolences from the world.
The world will help you no more.

"STOP it!" she shrieked, "STOP IT!"

She kicked at the shards of glass that lay scattered across the filthy floorboards. She picked up a bottle and smashed it up against the wall, her bare feet treading on the broken bits of glass as she stomped over to the narrow window. The soles of her feet were bleeding, but she did not notice. She smashed her knuckles into the wall, and the skin split apart, giving way to a fresh flow of blood. The fluid dripped onto the floor - as runny as red wine - but she was blind to the crimson puddles it formed; she was immune to the pain.
Her heart was bleeding inside her, and it couldn't have been any clearer than it was now.

Die already, she thought savagely; her wild - and yet strangely expressionless- eyes sweeping across the tiny room, she searched for something else to break. She didn't care what happened. She - just - didn't - care. Not as long as her heart would stop splintering and shattering, cracking open to the bewildering pain; maladroit and viciously cunning in it's nature.

Let me cry, let me crackle, let me loosen up.

All around her were strewn various articles of disinterest; old, tattered manuscripts in harsh, stiff prints; sketches of black-and-white figures with mutilated faces, all decrepit and withered; glasses and bottles of drink; rubbish and various other paraphernalia.

And perched on the edge of a tottering old desk was a typewriter. It was the old-fashioned kind, the kind that clicks and clacks like the symphony of a thousand dancing skeletons. To any normal person, the sound would be perceived as "annoying." But to a writer - crazed or otherwise - it was the rhythm of life; of dreams and ambitions... of what keeps them hanging onto the world.

Even the soothing sound of typewriters cannot heal heartbreak. They cannot heal the wretchedness that failure brings along with it. And a typewriter certainly cannot cure a young woman whose life has finally driven her to something beyond madness.
She couldn't remember the day before, despite knowing somehow that it was important. She remembered experiencing a searing pain, as though she had been branded with a white-hot mark. She remembered agony and anger. But she couldn't remember what had happened. It was like her brain had blotted out the pain, as though it didn't want to remember.
Well, her mind might not want to remember, but she did.

I am Reine, she told herself with a sudden burst of sanity. I am twenty-five years old. I am writing a novel. It has been rejected eleven times. I feel confused because I can't understand who I'm meant to be. I am alone in the world. All alone. Even my soul is unable to attend to me, to be me. I am angry. I am sad. I am alone.

WHY?

She stepped over a pile of books on the ground, hands flailing agitatedly, with no real purpose whatsoever. Her room was lit dimly with a single light-bulb, and she had to squint to focus at the framed picture hanging on the otherwise bare wall. It showed a group of three people sprawled out in the shade of a huge oak tree. A younger version of herself was smiling up at her, and her mother bore an identical expression of happiness. Her older brother, Ryan, was pulling faces at the camera.

Let my anguish force its way through my vessels.

Pain seized her body again, and she felt furious at the rekindling sense of frustration now welling up inside her. In a fit of rage, she smashed the glass frame, and the photograph fluttered to the floor. She breathed heavily, and whipped around as she heard the door to her apartment creak open.
A woman stood there, an expression of shock and worry unfolding over her soft face. She wore wire-rimmed glasses and was probably well into her forties. Reine recognized the woman as her old neighbour, Mrs. Nelson.

"Reine, dear," she said uncertainly, "It's time to go - for the - the funeral, I mean. But if you don't want to, it's OK. We could just go to my home instead and..."

But Reine hadn't heard a word after "funeral." The reality plunged through her, filling the gap. The void was gone. And she finally remembered.
She remembered that fatal walk - Ryan running across the street after teasingly snatching her scarf from around her neck. She remembered that abomination of a car swerving onto the road, the driver obviously drunk. She remembered her brother's last laugh; a laugh that turned into a piercing scream. She remembered images flashing past, memories of how her brother had comforted her throughout her depression, how he had stopped her from taking drugs. He was the one who convinced her to keep writing after Mother died. And she remembered how he lay broken on the ground that day, gone forever. The snow had been stained red - so very ... red. She remembered grabbing onto his lifeless hand, madness etched across her face and calling to him desperately; hoping that he would somehow wake up. And she remembered the blackness swooping over her, like a rope that coiled itself around her throat, suffocating her, ensnaring her...

Let me grieve. Let me die. Let it leave me be.

And Reine's heart leapt inside her; it beat faster and faster until it wasn't beating at all, taking her to another world where heartache and misery did not exist. She smiled as she flew, knowing that she wouldn't have to face the darkness any more.

She didn't hear Mrs. Nelson's shriek as her limp body thudded towards the ground. She didn't comprehend the possibility that there would be a double funeral that day. She had got what she wanted. The gap had been filled.

She was free.