Part 1 of Cryptic Nightmares

Cold grey eyes burn through my soul. Pressing my heart deep into the ground. My feet stand heavy on the edge of a rooftop. Seven stories below me, a burning fire rises inches per second. A hawk, manipulates his way across a gravel parking lot. The fire continues to rise behind me, heating my back, the hawk takes air. Earth’s atmosphere tints purple and all shadows fade from the ground. A buzzing ring rises from the flames and the hawk disappears into them. He burns into smoke in a blink of an eye and spreads along the streets of an abandoned city. I stand on the top of a parking tower. Thick dense fog dances to my feet. As it climbs my body I become numb, drowning each second once it reaches my face and the sky goes black. I’m out. Cold.

+ + +

My eyelids are lead but the smell is familiar. I am here often and I know exactly where I am. The icy tiles. The sticky sock bottoms. The beeps. Inhale, beep, exhale. Inhale, beep, exhale. Inhale, I hold it in. My lungs feel as though they are going to condense to the beeping monitor. Unsynchronized beeps follow. The room floods with running feet. And I swallow it. Huge releases of air from my nose and once again. I’m asleep.

This time when I wake, my eyes are the first thing that makes me aware. My position hasn’t changed and neither has the beeping. Once again I’m alone. No one to comfort me. No one to care. Just the television, the dead flowers. All the power in the room is off--the lights, the heated blanket--only the monitor remains beeping. A tray that sits on my knees holding eggs and bacon, orange juice and a glass of milk. I cannot stay here. Here they watch me. Here they can do what they need to do. They can make me eat. They can keep me awake. They can keep me alive. I cannot stay here.

A brunette woman walks in with her hair tied back and silver glasses, magnifying her eyes. A white cloak skims her body and cuts off at the knees. She says something but it sounds muffled and my face clearly shows the confusion so she writes on a white board nailed to the bathroom door, ‘I’ll come back later, give you a chance to wake up.’ This statement makes it clear I have been asleep for days. I also can tell because the board has documented, ‘Patient slept-48 hours.’ That is way too long for me to be out. Who knows what could be helping my bloodstream right now. Strengthening my stomach. Rebuilding muscles. The feeling of hunger I have placed for months, gone. It’s too safe here. All the time I spent, gone. I have no choice but to restart my collateral damage, tear open the exit.

When she arrives again she suggests I eat something and watch a movie, claiming that it’s better than sitting alone in silence. I lift of the remote and lower my head. My neck is stiff and my arms are weak but I still manage to press the button without making a sound. The talk show that is playing, I am unaware of but I listen to it anyway. Rarely do I get to choose the channel at home so I deal with what’s on. Many star struck celebrities make applauded appearances. They all have strange names, half only initials, half only first names. Today’s fame goes too quick to the head. Which allows them to float up to cloud nine. Then they find drugs and fall, hard.

A new man enters the room and introduces himself as Dr. Smitt, he has black hair with grey strands and is so tall he has to duck through the door.

“Ms. Cohen, is it? Do you remember why you are here? Was this your intention?” After a moment of cold stares, he breaks a smile of the edge of his mouth but I can only think of how much that comment didn’t amuse me. Instead I keep my eyes locked on his as though questioning him. Then I vow to myself that I will not say a word, not now, not ever to this man. This man is trying to keep me from leaving, not just the building. Every time I come here they give me a new doctor, a new prescription. Every time I come back, I’m unconscious and begging for an escape. Every time I come here I earn to leave and every time I leave I come back. I stare into his eyes, squinting a little, hinting him to lay off. His pupils dilate in and out making me dizzy. I un-focus.

“Okay, I see.” He tilts down his head look at me over his glasses. “It’s dinner time anyway.” In some way I think he is teasing me. He retrieves the plate of breakfast from the tray by my feet and carries a glass cylinder over to my IV. The IV has many attachments, most going to the rack of bags above my head, but one empty screw, to which he secures the vile. Rushes of fluid flow down my arm but vanishes by my fingertips. “You would think, after 88 times you would want to stop coming back.”

Have I really been here that many times? Have I really seen that many doctors and used that many prescriptions? There are only so many thing you can do, can try, until you’re done. Until the suffering is over and the struggle is complete. No more hospital trips. No more lonely nights or invisible parents.

Yes, they do physically exist. Mentally, tobacco and alcohol are their best friends. They are always drunk or stoned and abusive. But they aren’t even the beginning of my problems.

I know how I get home from this hell hole, but I don’t know how I got here. Obviously my parents would not bring me. They are only aware of their actions a small percentage of the time. But seriously, how did I even get here. There is no one in my dysfunctional house who cares enough to drive me and I can’t walk if I’m unconscious. Can I? No I think I can eliminate that form of transportation. This is not the time to question that though it’s the time to get out of here. Before I can press the red button above my head to call the nurse into the room, I burst into tears. There is no reason I should be crying. I’m not in pain. I’m trying to get out of here. But the feeling of exhaustion pulls over my eyelids so hard crying is my only escape. This cannot stop me from walking ten miles of twisty roads back to my house.

A nurse peers through the door almost before the button I press is completely into the wall. She has assisted me in the past and knows well-enough by the time I wake up, I’m ready to leave. I get dealt a new prescription again and dismissed with the paperwork filed by Dr. Smitt.

It is mid-spring so in Florida the walk isn’t completely unbearable. By the time I reach my front door both my parents are passed out by a blow-up kiddie pool on the lawn that I have never seen before in a day of my life. Creaking throughout the house filled with smoke when I rush to my bed and slam the door behind me. Nothing can wake my parents in this form of slumber. My iPhone 4S is waiting for me where it always is, on the dock next to my pillow and below a green lamp that nowhere near matches my teal room. As assumed I have about fifty text message saying you aren’t doing anyone a favor by living till tomorrow. Or how I am a selfish little bitch whose main priority in life is being an attention whore.

It is people in this world like them, the mean cheerleaders, who have nothing better to do but assist at causing a suffering 16 year old to go to the hospital eighty-nine times. To avoid being a hypocritical nerd I would like to mention that not all cheerleaders are completely soulless, just the ones who find my number and cyber-bully me.

My fingernails find the prescription bottle in my hoodies pocket. The dose is to take three daily with breakfast. Well that’s a problem. Breakfast is a non-existent meal. Mastering the child safety cap has become a habit, even when I open regular jars I find myself pressing down on the cap. Dry pills over-ride my mouth and I gulp them down with my eyes wide. No water. Not but before that I must squeeze in at least one deep cut to do damage while I am out. In the container filled with razor blades, scissors, pencil sharpeners, and any other sharp object left hanging around the house. Once I even used a bottle cap. But today I pick up the first thing my eyes find, a piece of scrap metal from a broken necklace. The room becomes unsteady and the walls seem to be spinning. Cold and sharp I press the broken necklace on my wrist and draw a curvy line of red. Tons of boulders seem to be rolling out of my wrists and slipping to my thigh. With a cut like this one I can feel other scars re-opening without assistance. A forearm is no longer visible it has resulted into a river of thick ketchup.

+++

The feeling of the ocean doesn’t leave. My body adrift mid-storm. The rise and fall made by the massive waves that carry me. And then I wash to shore, but the movement doesn’t end. I am not still on the broken shell filled sands. And then, a wave hits. Pain floods my wrists and my eyes refuse to open. Sun rays don’t go unnoticed, burning my skin until night falls. The sand below my back falls and I cannot control going with it. Eyes closed, but final still. This time I am not moving, but whatever is moving around me is so loud my eyes open. I know they are open. I know they are, yet I see nothing all that is in front of me is white. I lift up my hands before me and they are there, I see them, yet whiteness surrounds them. Maybe I am finally dead, maybe this is finally over. I close my eyes and let my body drift away. Good-Bye world.

+++

When my eyes reopen I feel a sense of disappointment. Once again I am lying in the hospital. But this time, no beeping machines or IV’s or any of that stuff. I’m just here, with blood red gauze. It didn’t take forever to get out of there and make my way to Melbourne High School, home to the Mel-hi Bulldogs. When I reach Algebra II with my late pass, a light green sweatshirt un-zipped in the front, and carrying no books of course everyone is staring at me.

“Do you have a pass, Miss. Cohen?” Mr. Mahoney, ah, Mr. Mahoney. Definitely the most attractive teacher in this school, but he is a giant butt head, let me tell ya.

“Ummm.” I look down at my hand and my mind completely blanked. Is this the pass? I eventually hold it to his hand level. “Yeah, here.”

“Miss. Cohen?” He stops me before I can reach my seat in the back of the classroom. “Do you have your backpack today?”

I just stare him in the eyes with a blank face and shake my head. He replies with an unsettling face and gestures to my seat.

I made my arrival at school right as third period was starting and three fourths of the way throw we have lunch. Lunch isn’t all that bad if I make it to a table before any of the mutts find me. The mutts are the mean cheerleader. I made up that nickname myself because they are mean, annoying, versions of what were supposed to be Bulldogs. Today is not my lucky day.

“Hey, Maci where were you this morning.” I hear a snort from behind me. Turn to find Nicole Mason, head cheerleader, dating the hottest guy in school. I am not one to associate myself with her; sometimes I just can’t help it. She is followed by the rest of her pack as she hisses stepping closer towards me. “We missed you in homeroom. Were you sick?”

“Ummmm.” I try not to glance down at my wrist but she sees my confusion and before I noticed they were after me. One of them grabs at my bandages pulling them up with my sleeve.

“She has something on her arm! Under her jacket! Get her.” Why do they care so much? Are they getting something out of chasing me down into the bathroom (which is the last place I should have gone considering there is only one exit, where we entered). I don’t want to cause any more stitches to rip or any more pain so I remove my thin sweatshirt and leave it to them. All of their mouths fall open and they stare into the bandage until one of them begins to laugh. A minute later I’m surrounded by weaseling mutts, it feels like it’s pulled right from a movie. But it’s not; the throb in my wrist keeps reminding me of that.

Then the bell rings giving us a five minute warning for class to resume. I expect them to back out snapping their finger but instead they turn, flipping their hair, and walk away lifting their feet up high as the step.

After the final bell I went back to the class I missed in the morning and got the work I missed. Days like this come too often and my teachers are used to it. Because I left my backpack at my house I had to carry the papers home. As I was exiting the main office, I noticed a boy staring at me. I recognized him, Nicole’s boyfriend.

“Hey.” Brayden Comstock. His name matches his body type, fit and hot. But surely enough he knows what his girlfriend does to me.

“What do you want?” I replay a little too snarky and kind of regret it.

“Woah, I didn’t expect that from someone your size.” Someone my size? My size!

“What is that supposed to mean!” Did I just say that out loud?

“Okay so I come over to try and make a friend. I don’t even know what’s happening anymore.” I can’t even think straight right now. I’m too full of anger towards his girlfriend. What does he even see in her? Does he know what kind of girl she is?

“I’m sorry. Why are you even talking to me, I don’t think Nicole wouldn’t approve.”

“What does Nicole have to do with this? We have been broken up for weeks now?” Is this true? They aren’t together anymore? He is single! She has been telling everyone they are still seeing each other. Okay, why am I thinking this part.

“She has been telling everyone you guys are still together.” He doesn’t reply just kind of shakes his head and erases the thought. His deep blue eyes are linked with mine in an awkward way, like, I want to look away, but I don’t.

“I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name? I’m Brayden Anthony Comstock, but I think you knew that.”

“Well, if we are going by full names then I’m Maci Sophia Cohen.” And then he says something that makes me forget everything that happened already today.

“Do you, um, wanna come over for soda or something?” At this point I can barely think, he seems so nervous. He couldn’t possibly be into me. Nah, not possible. But I don’t reject the offer and he drives us to his house. We are both sixteen but he is in eleventh grade and I am in tenth. Being born November 15 will get you put back a year. His car is probably the weirdest place I have ever been. Most likely because I have never been in a car or a house with a guy by choice like this. I only stayed at his house long enough to drink a can of root beer. Then he drove me home, or to the end of my street because I don’t exactly know where they are or what my parents are doing.

“Uh,” he strokes his hand through his short hair, “I know we just met and all. But do you think I could, like, maybe, uh,” My inside are screaming JUST SPIT IT OUT! but the outside of me is just looking at his eyes which are focused on his hand. “Have your number.” He holds out his phone and I take it from him. He already has a contact made and opened to be edited:

Maci Sophia

Cohen

I type in my number and visually scan it a thousand times to make sure it’s right. His phone was warm, probably from being in his back pocket all day, and he had this case on it that made it twice as wide but didn’t affect the weight. When I gave it back, he just put it down and waved. And for a moment I almost forgot the parents waiting for me behind that door.

The door was open and they were watching me as I made my way to the house. The kiddie pool was gone (they probably “borrowed” it from a neighbor for some reason.) and they didn’t move. They just stood there leaning against different walls and chairs. Not one word is spoken; I just walk to my room with my head down. They don’t look satisfied. Before I could reach my room, my father grabs my wrist and turns me around. He swings a punch and hits my face and I fall to the ground. The worst place to be. Kicks hit my ribs and my head. Why does everyone hate me? It was over when I woke up in the hallway. My cuts exposed and alive again. My brain throbs against my skull, ribs bruised and maybe even broken. I only assume its midnight by the moon outside. Unbearable pain takes over me and I let myself fall back asleep.

I go back to the hospital nine more times that month.