To Oblivion

A life. I’m giving up on it, painting the walls with crimson blood. A slash along the wrists is expulsing the precious liquid, spilling it over my hand and the razorblade in it. I close my eyes as I lie down, my back sinking into the softness of my bed. I wanted that bed to be the last thing I touched. Since I can’t touch you anymore. And this is the last place we were together. Before it was over. All over.

I remember this one time, the park in the commercial district, you sitting at a bench staring out over the pond. I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever see and I must have stared at you for over 10 minutes before you looked up. I flustered and walked away, tripping over my own clumsy feet. The frozen ground was hard and unrelenting. I chafed my knees and hands trying to catch myself.  Then you were there, picking me up and asking me if I was okay. I was lost from that moment on.

A smile plays over my face, chased by a sharp sting of pain as the cold air of the night brushes past the deep welts on my arm. I’m lightheaded already. It can’t be much longer before I fade into blackness and then, eventually, into obscurity.  I reach for the remote to my stereo and smear blood on the table before I finally find it. It’s all set, I just need to press play. I press the button, feeling the buttons becoming slick with blood. The song it plays is by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, called Your Guardian Angel. I wanted to be your guardian angel, I tried so hard…

Darkness fills my vision but I hear footsteps in the hallway. My parents. They’re not supposed to be home for at least 2 more hours. I pray that they won’t find me, that the door to my room is locked and that they won’t break it open. Just a few more seconds and I’ll lose consciousness. I want to hold on to my last memory before I do that though.

I went over to your place. It was too late, your parents would be home soon, but I had to see you. My biopsy results came back and…it wasn’t good. Without chemo, I’d certainly die within a few months, maybe a year. With chemo, there was a small chance of survival and I would live about a year or 2, maybe 3. I refused the chemo. I refused life. I chose death. I wanted to tell you that our time would be cut short and the knowledge that waiting another day brought the ending of us another day closer filled me with a sense of urgency.

Your house was as it has been all the previous times I visited. Small, but cozy with small intimate rooms with worn down furniture and heirlooms in a small glass cupboard. A small kitchen combined with a dining room. There’s a small pan on the stove,  probably your food of the night. I small tomato’s and I guess you had pasta. You always were addicted to pasta.

Even the creaks of the stairs are precious to me, as they remind me of all the times this stair was the beginning of hours of blissful rapture. In a certain fashion it was my stairway to heaven. Now, it’s a highway to hell. The room of your parents, with its large mahogany doors and copper doorknob. Walking past it I see that your door is ajar and there’s music coming from your room. You’re playing guitar. Acoustic. The song that was playing when I first kissed you.

Tears are running down my face as I run into the room, startling you. You ask me what’s wrong and I want to tell you but the words aren’t coming. Only more tears to add to the torrent. You put the guitar down and walk up to me, pulling you into your strong embrace. It hurts me beyond belief, knowing that this will all fade far too soon. But it is more valuable to me because of just that reason. Every second of your attention is now a valuable commodity, that I need to buy my soul’s solace.

It isn’t long before clothes are but heaps on the floor and the temperature in the room is elevated. You moan, I smile. You grin and with one swift motion turn us around. Gentle yet fiercely you ravage my soon-to-be diseased form. You have no idea of the ticking timebomb hidden only inches from your fingers. My headaches are getting worse already, a sign that the tumor is growing fast. I fight it off, focusing on the here and now. It’s all I can do.

A door slams but I’m just approaching the spectacular ending of this episode and choose to ignore it. It proves to be my undoing as your mother stands there, her mouth gaping, her eyes wide in shock. The next few hours are a blur. Of arguments, accusations, hatred and disgust. I am told to leave, and never to return to this house. I look at you, but your eyes are glued to the floor and simply nod in agreement. My heart breaks, and I run home.

One week later I find out that the tumor is growing faster than expected. Without chemo, I’ll live a month, tops. My skin is turning pale and the headaches are almost too severe to treat without morphine. I’m in a drugged haze most of the time. I don’t want the morphine. Yet I inject myself each time, to be free of pain. Not of that in my head, but of that in heart.

A letter for me. Your girly handwriting on a white lined page. Another page, and 2 more. An entire layout of your future. Which if you wrote the truth, will begin in 10 minutes. Your backpack. Stones, gathered in the course of last week. The pond where we met. Your future on the light-forsaken bottom of its depths.

Word of your death reaches me the next day, and the sorrow I couldn’t feel due to the morphine the day before floods over me. I reach for the syringe, but I stop mid motion. Instead, I get up, nearly fainting. The pain in my head is a soothing comfort as I stumble across the room towards the bathroom. My dad’s razor. One of the blades, which I take out of it. I collapse to the floor, but refuse to end here. With an effort I thought beyond myself I end up in my bed once more. I sit up and look at the gleam of the blade in the light. The sun is setting, the alarm on my nightstand says it’s 6 PM. 2  more hours before my parents and sister return. Time aplenty.

The blade is cold to my skin, akin to liquid nitrogen. Or my temperature is too high, a blasting furnace in my body fueled too much. I wait for a stab of pain. When a lancet of agony slices away fabrics of my life I press down on the blade. Warmth engulfs my hand, but I must persist.
I let the blade travel down its deadly path, and pull it out of my arm. For the next one there is no need to hesitate. In seconds it is done.

You came to my house, after your parents had forbidden you to do so. I loved you as never before, and proved it many times over. When you left, I told you. That I would die soon. You simply nodded and told me you knew already. I asked you how. You smiled a sad smile and said that he could tell from the look in my eyes. I didn’t believe him. He grinned and told me he had overheard my parents arguing whether or not to force me to take the chemo. He had deducted that I was dying.
I should have know. Your intelligence had always put me in difficult positions. The pun escapes me.

The last bit of blood needed to bleed out my consciounsness runs out over the sheets, a large stain forming beneath me. I close my eyes. I’m on my way. To you. To eternal happiness. To oblivion.