Young Writers Society

He leaned on the mausoleum door, coke and rum bottle in one hand, its cold dewy surface leaking through a brown paper bag, and the other wrapped around a crumpled picture. Taking another deep swig from the bottle he looked up into the night sky, trying to imagine her sitting next to him, just watching the stars, like he had dreamt of so many times. He'd lied so many times, hurt himself so much, tried to keep things between him and her just right, too scared to go forward but even more terrified of moving back. He'd seen the craziness, the ticking time bomb that reveled in it's presence on her cool white skin, pale and smooth but for those jagged red scars, some sunken into her skin, dug into her body like the furrows of a trench, some raised and sore, daring reminders of what she'd done, smiling at the world. Some days, she'd recede into herself, melted into her mind and body, absorbed herself in her writing. Those days, he knew better than to disturb her. She needed to forget the world sometimes, to forget everything that had happened, to forget everything she knew would happen. And some days, she'd just explode, like all the tension she'd been trying to escape had finally caught up to her, and those were the days she really scared him, when he knew the truth, relived it over and over. He'd seen it, like a charade played over and over until the message warped and changed; and perhaps it had. It had gone from her telling him in her own crazy way to RUN-as fast and far as he could- to a simple message. She wanted to be saved. At least, that's what he'd thought. Who'd have known it would have ended like this?

They'd been childhood friends since their mothers met in a shopping market over a fight over nappies (details, he thought, that ruined the story). As he recalled it, they'd tugged at the box from opposite ends, looked up to meet each other's eyes, then began to laugh at the hilarity of the situation. She'd been his playmate, his best friend, the girl who shared lunch with him. They'd stuck with each other through primary school, high school, even part of uni. They'd endured the teasing comments, the k-i-s-s-i-n-g rhymes giggled at them, the more relentless tormenting as they went through their older years. She'd taken his first kiss (as a friend, she swore even years later) at eighth-grade camp after a long discussion of the merits of wearing lip balm when kissing. She'd been the first to know about his first girlfriend, she'd comforted him after she'd dumped him for Greg Davison, the most generic guy in the whole school. She'd shared her first bong with him, together on a silent beach as they watched the sun set. And as the sun set, he couldn't help thinking, he just wanted to kiss her, not as a friend but as a something-else. He wanted to reach over and stroke the nape of her neck. He wanted to tell her just how beautiful her green eyes looked, not emerald like some people would have said, but simply green. He wanted to stroke her head and tell her how much he loved her, how he had always loved her, how he'd always secretly wished for the day where she'd say it to him. But he wouldn't. He didn't want to ruin their relationship. And besides, she already knew he loved her; just not like that.

The first time he'd noticed, they'd been in their freshman year. They'd been at a bar and she was wasted. As she slumped across the backseat of his shitty Corolla, she moaned something about being hot.

"Help. Take off my jacket."

It was the most strangely erotic thing he'd ever heard, but he obliged. What he found wasn't exactly what he expected. Her right arm was a crisscross of cuts, most new and raw, little scabheads torn off from the jacket and red tears forming in the shallow indents.

"Helen. What the hell have you done." He almost breathed the sentence, although it wouldn't have mattered if he'd shouted in her ear; she'd already passed out at this point. He sat there for a few minutes in shock: he couldn't imagine her cutting herself. Sure, she had moments where she went all quiet and sombre, but this was different. This was... this was.... he couldn't deal with it.

He left her with her roommate, jacket firmly on. No questions asked.

He never brought it up, for his part, and she didn't visibly change, just because of a revelation. Yeah, he knew something he never had, but she still acted the same around him. And the same goddamn fear that kept him from telling her the truth about his feelings, the fear of change and moving forward, it kept him from talking to her. Instead, he got to watch her sink into the abyss of her own depression, for reasons he'd never understand as long as he lived. She became moodier, colder to everyone except him, and on those days of silence, he could see something in her eyes, a haunted look, like she'd seen things she never wanted to. And eventually, the day came, the inevitable one, where he found her on the bathroom floor, hunched up against the bath, wrist bleeding out slowly and a final smile on her face. He missed that smile now, her laugh, her green eyes. And the memory of what could have been made it so hard. 

For weeks after, he holed up in his room, ordering pizza just to sustain himself. He spent his days with red-rimmed eyes, fitfully sleeping, cracks of sunlight and faint noises reminding him in the most excruciating way that life went on, no matter how much he tried to deny it. He tore down any reminder of her existence, photos, videos, even the poem he'd written her in high school but had never dared to give to her. Time passed by, tick by tick, unacknowledged by his hazy brain. He sank further into his misery. Friends spent hours by the door, trying to get him out. His parents rang incessantly, leaving more and more urgent messages, begging him to come out. So he did.

He cleaned up his act. Shaved his wispy beard, trimmed his hair. Put on his regular polo shirt and went out, into the world. Pretended everything was fine, got back together with his friends, grinning and yelling for the whole world to see, almost like a declaration: I'M FINE! He wasn't though. He still never slept, not properly at least. She haunted him in his dreams, and she was the last person he wanted to see. In his dreams, she was never whole. She never had those bright green eyes, her smile never stretched from cheek to cheek. And her wrist. Oh God. How could he have ignored all those savage claw marks, split wide open and dripping red tears? How could he have just let her sink into nothing? 

On those nights, he left his house for the bar. At first he felt like a stranger, sitting uncomfortably on a barstool. He wasn't one of them, he wasn't the kind of guy to drink his problems away. Except he was. It started with one beer a night, went up to two, three, four. A bottle of vodka in the mix, some gin, some whisky. As long as it kept him in a haze, he was fine with it. He became a regular. Soon though, the costs ramped up, and he began to buy it from liquor stores. The only problem was, where would he go to drink it? He couldn't drink in his room, the stench was too obviously apparent. For a few nights, he collapsed under a tree in the park, hood up, taking large gulps from a bag of goon. That seemed fine until a Friday, when some teenagers came up and started a party. Too much happiness there. 

The next night, he went to her grave. For old times' sake, he kept telling himself. Auld lang syne and all that, she'd always loved a good party. But it was more than that. He missed her so much, and he wouldn't find her in the dregs of wine. He only had one way to get back to her, the one person he really cared about, and that was to follow her. Wow. That... that was really sad. It was true though, and that meant that...

Tonight had to be the night. He'd already prepared everything, a will and letter. He was ready. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, he was going to chase his love, even into death. Forcing out a grim laugh, he wondered when he'd become such a romantic. He took one final swig from the bottle in his hand, tossed it away, then took the razor and began to take his final journey, joining her from then to forevermore in the embrace of death. Who knew, maybe heaven was real. He'd find out, and he'd find her. And when he found her, he'd never let her go.