Women And the Demons Who Love Them

Scar Tissue-4

Halsey- Colors

    I stopped at the top of the stairs the guilt of what just happened began to settle between the pit of my stomach and right under my chest. I'd like to say that my transformation started off as a Rocky montage, but the truth was something drastic.

    It started off with no eating and then when I did eat I'd throw it back up. When my mom found out she got me help and since I promised I wouldn't do it again, I started to take medication. A near-death experience with those sent me into a coma for six days. It was then that I got a personal trainer and a health consultant. Something that stuck with me is the sickness that boiled in my throat whenever I felt nervous or stressed is this. I ran into the bathroom and released all that I had eaten today. The sour bitter acid came up in chunks that reminded me of what I used to be.

    All those memories rushed through me in an angry assault of no neck Kathryn. She was always there reminding me how pathetic I am. I went to the sink to wash my teeth. She's all I see staring back at me. Sixteen-year-old me hates everyone and everything. The anger of trying to comfort Royce layered on her anger. The disrespect towards my dad, he had done nothing bad in her eyes and she resented what I had just done. Most of all, sixteen-year-old me, hates my mom for being everything she had been. The trophy wife that wore a size two in jeans.

    "You aren't real anymore," I told her. She smiled back at me mocking me for who I am now.

    Don't think because I see that part of me that I have some kind of double personality disorder. I don't, what I have is something a little less scary. She's a memory, the phantom that pushes me to be better. The shadow of pain that I still hold inside of me.

    See, I preach that forgiveness is the key to happiness. Once you let go of what was done life is good. However, like a lot of kids that I have treated, forgiving is easier said than done. Especially when you've run away from those problems the way I had.

    "Sweetheart, are you okay?" I heard my mom ask from the other side of the door.

    "Yeah," I'm not okay, mom. I just don't want you to worry about me right now. Or ever.

    I heard her argue a little with my dad in hushed tones before I heard the front door slam shut. The cruiser was gone when I went downstairs to put my jeep in the driveway as my mom had instructed. I started it up and put some music on. A tap on the window scared the s**t out of me. I lowered the passenger window for him. He looks like hell. He looks the way I had felt for a big portion of my life and I couldn't stand to see it reflected in someone else's eyes even if those eyes belong to him.

    "I just wanted to apologize for earlier," Royce apologized.

    "It's fine. s**t happens," I shrugged, lowering Staind. It is the brutal torture I endured whenever I felt self-destructive. Depressing, angry music is my antidote.

    "I'm not the only miserable one then?" he smirked.

    "I guess not Maxion," I wiped my eyes, unlocking the door. "Never thought I'd ask you this, but you want to go for a drive? Maybe get some deep-fried mushrooms? You still like those right?"

    "Yeah," he smiled getting in the look on his face was one I never thought I'd receive from him.

    I put the car in drive and made my way towards the place where I always saw him eat when we were kids. I avoided the place during certain hours. After some serious drive-thru time, I headed towards the one place I loved to sneak off to and eat. The fishing boat docks. No one ever went there when I was a kid and from the looks of it, no one has been since I left.

    "This is where I used to hide," I shrugged, once we settled at the end of it. I took my sandals off and dipped my feet into the water.

    "I know," he said. "See those palm trees over there? I used to watch you sometimes when we were kids,"

    "What?" I laughed. Initially, it was funny but the look on his face is serious and shock is washing over me as I turned to look at the spot he pointed to. The burning in my face is too shameful for me to look at him. What the f**k Maxion? We were supposed to hate each other, right?

    "Come on, don't act like you didn't know I was crushing on you since we were kids. It's why I loved picking on you. It gave me an opportunity to be around you more often," bastard.

    "I guess that makes sense," I glared, snatching the mushroom from his hand.

    "How have you been, Strawberries?" I smiled remembering he had called me that when we were in kindergarten because of my still very present addiction.

    "Good actually. Until I came home to find that life isn't as black and white as I thought it was,"

    "She used to drink with my mom. It was actually about a couple of months ago that she stopped coming over," he said dipping a fry into a small cup of barbecue sauce.

    "Probably around the time I told her I was coming home," I nodded.

    "I had a girlfriend," he said looking down at the water. He had taken off his shoes as well. "It was my second semester when I had met her. She kind of reminded me of you at first,"

    "Was she over two hundred pounds?" I laughed it stung a little, but joking about it was the only way to get over it.

    "No, she was obsessed with angels and demons like you are with werewolves and vampires," I smiled taking a sip of my milkshake. "A few months after, she got pregnant. It was around the same time my brother proposed to Emma.

    "After I graduated I moved out and I swear I couldn't be happier. His name was Michael. He was a year old when my brother married Emma. A few weeks after their honeymoon, they came over to my mom's house and Emma started yelling at my mom about her drinking. She meant well, but the way she went about it made me want to f*****g throat check her.

    "Elizabeth told her to calm down. Emma shoved my mom and walked out. Beth asked me to take care of my mom who was crying and she went after her. Gray said he would go after them. Beth was arguing with her while she was in the car. I was almost out of the gate when Emma pushed the door open. The buses you know how they never slow down. It hit her and my son, I watched as they were dragged under it. It was a closed casket ceremony,"

    I had tears running down my face my fat appetite is gone with the crashing sounds of the waves under us. No one deserves that. No matter what they have done no one deserves to experience something like that. He continued eating like he hadn't just told me that. The cold dead look in his eyes was there for an instant, but it faded.

    "Why is she still alive?" was what came out of my mouth. He smirked at me knowing damn well that I knew he would have killed her. I had known this boy my entire life and I was always well aware of what he was capable of having been a victim of his attention. Good and bad.

    "She said she didn't know that the bus was coming, that she would never. She had been pregnant and she lost it. The stress of what happened. I forgave her knowing that it had been an accident. I didn't see them until Atari was born. I was grocery shopping and I saw her. Her water broke and I took her to the hospital. I pretended to be my brother so I could stay with her. He was in class," he sighed. "Throughout her pregnancy, she had been taking some kind of antidepressant which is why Atari is blind,"

    "She holds the universe in her eyes," I said remembering those beautiful eyes of her.

    "She does, doesn't she?" he smiled. "I took care of Atari for a long time. The moment she found out her daughter was defective she rejected her. I don't know why he didn't leave her sooner,"

    "He loves her," I said.

    "No, he doesn't the only person to hold his heart held it for a long time and when she left without looking back, Emma slipped into his life and under his skin," there was a nasty bitterness to his words and I smiled to myself knowing he didn't mean that.

    "What?" I asked finally processing what had just come out of his mouth.

    "My brother was in love with you even before I figured out that I kind of liked you. It was pretty bad when you left,"

    I picked up a fried mushroom and began to chew on it. Motherfuckers all of a sudden the two cutest kids in school were in love with me. It made sense that he would like me he was always after me doing something stupid making me insecure about myself. It made sense that he liked me because he would go out of his way to do these things, but the other one. f**k no not the other one.

    "You hurt me a lot, but you were never low key about it. He pretended to be my friend and that hurt more than anything you could have done combined. So sorry if I don't believe that," I scoffed.

    "It's true don't you see the way he looks at you, even now?" he asked looking at me. I don't. I see the way he looks at me. I always have.

    "I wouldn't be able to do it. He's too intense for me," I admitted. 

    "When did you start being this hot, strawberries?"

    "Not long after I left. I had a few hiccups along that road," I said feeling the shame coming over me.

    "Like?" he asked splashing his feet in the water.

    "I... was bulimic for a while. I became addicted to these weight loss pills and overdosed. I was sick for about two years after I left. I dropped eighty pounds in a matter of months. My mom had me watched for an entire year after that O.D. I was in a coma for six days. Once I was better, I found a personal trainer and I decided that I wanted to help people like me so that they don't have to go through the same thing I did,"

    "I am so sorry," he said hugging me. "That is our fault. If we hadn't made fun of you and teased you. You wouldn't have had to do something like that to yourself,"

    I pushed him away and tried not to take his words in too deeply. My entire life was based on what this boy and his friends had done to me. Forgiveness runs hand in hand with regret. One thing I had learned from forgiving is that it can quickly come back and bite you in the ass. Or in Zander's case, it can retaliate and backhand you across the face in front of all your closest friends during Christmas dinner.

    "It's done with," I said brushing him off. "I don't like to be touched. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't do that again,"

    The hurt in his eyes is obvious. He nodded and went back to his box filled with fries and mushrooms. I told him that simply because he had shared something as private as what he had. Now I had to get a reaction out of him.

    "When did you learn to be so cold?" he asked.

    "It was always there," I said looking down at the water that is now an angry abyss of dark water and waves. "I can't fight my emotions those are there too, but it's the cold that sits over all of it. Ignoring all of it. The truth is that you guys didn't exactly do what happened to me. I did it myself. I have a way with f*****g things up even more than they already are. I've based my life on s**t that doesn't matter and it took me to a dark place. A place that was really hard to get out of,"

    "That doesn't make what we did okay," 

    "It doesn't make it okay, it makes it life. Things happen to us for a reason. Take your family for example. Death has favored those around you and it isn't your fault. Our suffering starts when we lose something and it ends when we accept that there isn't s**t we can do to change it. The only thing we can do is take what we do have and move forward with it,"

    This time I looked over and he tried to look away from me, but it was obvious. The tears are there. That's what his fear is. He doesn't want to move forward without them. That's something I can't relate to. I never wanted to move forward with no neck. It wasn't that I hated her it was that everyone else did. When I was her I had been weak and I don't want to feel that anymore.

    "Would she want that? If I would have been the one under that bus would she have moved forward?" I smiled at him and against all of the warnings in me I placed my hand over his briefly.

    "Yes, she would have. Not because of you though, for him. She would be just as you are insecure and heartbroken, but she'd learn to cope and then move forward. Time waits for no one and thoughts of staying in the same place is a waste of it,"

    He sighed and began to wipe away his tears. There was so much emotion in the way he moved. He was lost just like I had been all those years ago. How he had held himself together so well was beyond me. The drive home, he was jamming out to my music and I couldn't help my smile. I f*****g love making people smile. I parked my Jeep in the driveway like my mom had insisted and waited for him to go inside his house.

    My mom used to hate coming into my room when I was younger. She said there had been something evil lurking in it. I think it's because of all the posters along the walls. When I had first put them up they would scare the s**t out of me too, but it was the thought of the monsters on them. A phantom fear of something that didn't exist.

    Over the time of them being there, I came to realize that in this world those things on the wall aren't what we should fear because they aren't real. The monsters are those who surround us. Life is scary. Life tosses us in different directions without so much as a warning. The fear of things like this isn't real, nor should it cause us the fear that they do. A thrill maybe, but not fear.

    I found her on my bed. In her arms, my Wednesday Addams button-eyed doll. She's crying her eyes out. I sat next to her and held her in my arms. Against the waging war inside of me, I began to cry with her. For the first time in my life I wasn't crying for myself I cried for the f****d up s**t that has happened to others. I hurt for them.

    Coming to terms with my life had never seemed so easy before now. I realize that the world is so much bigger than myself. Those people who had hurt me no longer exist. A wave of s**t had come over our lives and it's time to set aside the selfishness I thought I was entitled to. Selfish isn't what I have ever been and it's not fair for me to dishonor no neck because she had been selfless. His words were starting to hit home. 

    When did you become so cold? I don't want to be cold to anyone. It was why it hurt so much back then. I loved them all because I had grown up with them. They had been part of my life as far as I can remember and it hurt me that they had treated me the way they did. My parents had done it too and if it was easy for me to forgive them then they shouldn't be so hard.