Story: Untitled

Chapter 1:
Lullabies

The world I know is beginning to crumble to pieces; everything falling apart, right in front of me. The past seems so distant and yet the present and the future to come is all a blur. Racing thoughts take over my fragile mind, and yet people still wonder why I’m unable to think rationally, not even for a moment’s notice. They still ask why I am the way that I am. And the only thing I’m left to telling them is the cold hard truth; life blows. It’s August; the twenty-fourth. Two days after my nineteenth birthday and a year since my mother died. Here I am, sitting on my bedroom floor. I’m all alone, two empties of good old Jack at my feet, one more to go. About to crack the next bottle and take another swig, I hear footsteps on the other side of the door. “The hell do you want?” I scream. No one answers to my drunken cries so I carry on. I move onto the taste of liquor against my tongue; its smoothness, creaminess, and the familiar yet soothing burn on its way down. I pause for a while then realize that whoever it was has gone away. In my half-drunken state, I suppose I’d better get something decent on, knowing Tara will probably be here any minute. She’s always had a thing for coming over unexpectedly to check on me since mum died and dad was locked away. The only person I have left and she doesn’t even trust me enough to keep out of trouble. Hell, even I wouldn’t trust me on that one. I frantically search my room for clothes, finding nothing but a dirty white t-shirt and a pair of old blue jeans. Good enough, no one said I had to look like I was meeting the president today. Throwing my hair back in a messy bun, I stop to take another look in the mirror. Is that really me? I look into sunken eyes, glaring at the pale, lifeless mess I’ve become. I was never really one to care about how I looked but I was appalled by the state I let myself get to. Nineteen years old and I looked like someone in their nineties, waiting for death to come. I promised mum I wouldn’t drink my sorrows and drug my pain when she was gone, but here I was, wasting away to nothing. There was nothing left to lose, I had lost it all. Everything I ever had and ever wanted was gone. My friends, my family, sports, all succumbed to booze and cocaine, two of my most worthy drugs of choice. And there was no turning back now. My life quickly falling into a deep black void of nothingness, there was no return to sanity, no return to self-respect. I had long since gone away from those aspects of my life. I wish I had never done the things that I did, but sitting here now, partly dressed and partly aware of what’s going on, I wish nothing more than to just disappear. I know that Tara would be the one to find me, and that doesn’t bother me. She’s always been here for me but knowing that I wouldn’t be here for her doesn’t bother me either. The one thing bothering me at this point is the shit storm called life. That’s the one thing that no longer matters to me. It did, back when I had everything I could have ever imagined, but not now, not ever again. Lifting my mattress off its springs, I get my little black box, and then replace the mattress to where it belongs. At least it has a place in this world, I think to myself. Razors, pills, needles, tourniquet; everything I need to make this as painful as I possibly can. Slicing my wrists deeply, I allow the blood to flow over my arms, onto my legs; pooling a dark red on the linoleum floor. I had crushed the pills the night before so that was easy enough. Adding a mixture of water and pure alcohol, I watch the powder fizz and calm. Pulling back on the needle, it fills with a bluish liquid. One more step now, and as I tie the tourniquet around my arm and look for the perfect point, I morbidly smile. This is finally it, the end. It’s over. I stab the biggest vein I find, push down on the needle, and with a stinging sensation, I feel a sense of immediate relief. I crawl into bed, and for forever, I will drift off into a deep, peaceful sleep. Or so I had hoped. My eyelids heavy and my head pounding, I see a figure in the distance, coming closer. The closer it gets, the more I’m able to distinguish what it is. A person, but for now, whoever it is, they’re nothing but a fuzzy outline. They begin to approach me, closer and closer. Shit, it’s Tara, I think to myself. I hear her scream, but I tell myself to focus on her and not her reaction. So I can remember her for who she is and not how she felt. I try to focus my vision, but through clouded eyes I can only make out simple details. I can tell she has her hair pulled back, and she’s wearing a bright pink shirt and black leggings. But that’s about it. I can’t see her deep blue eyes, no facial features, or any expression she makes. All I see is the outline of what used to be. I see her figure walk across the room and then everything goes black. Still taking in the sounds around me, however, I hear Tara’s soft and gentle voice. I hear her fear, her voice trembling in a way that it hardly ever does. The phone rings, and Tara lifts my hand into hers. She tries to ask me questions, and I try to answer, but my brain won’t let me. It’s almost as if I was already dead but still awake, if that makes any sense.
911, what’s your emergency?
“It’s at three Carter’s Avenue.”
What’s your emergency?
“She tried to kill herself; overdose.”
I listen as Tara’s sobbing and the faint voice of the dispatcher begin to fade in and out. I suddenly begin to feel overly sleepy, and I know that it’s the pills taking their course. I let the sleepiness overcome my entire body as I finally drift off for what I hope is a lifetime. Lucidly dreaming, I see Tara at the other end of a meadow, sitting in the grass, picking the bright orange flowers. I see myself doing the same, and I realize that it’s a dream of last summer, two months before my mother was taken by ovarian cancer. Tara and I had planned to go pick flowers and take them up to mum when we went to see her that evening. Tiger lilies were her favourite. But then I posed an awful question to Tara, one that I never should have uttered in the first place. I asked her what would happen when I died. She told me not to be silly, not to ever think of that until I was at least eighty. I never brought it up again. Tara knew that I was depressed, and that it had only gotten worse since my mother’s passing. She saw the cuts on my wrists and the bruises all over but she never ever dared to question anything. Mum dying meant that dad was the one with whom I had to share a common household. He was also the one who drank until the cows came home. Every day, sun up to sun down, dad was glued to the television with a couple beer cases and a few bottles of booze. When he drank, he got nasty. He would hit me and throw me about like the little ragdoll I wasn’t, and when money became an issue, his first idea was to pimp me out for prostitution. I had no choice; I had nowhere else to go. Eighteen years old with no job, and no relatives close enough to call their place home; I was forced to sell my body for my father’s costly addiction. The only time Tara brought anything up was when I showed up to school one day wearing a long-sleeved blouse and a cheap pair of darkened sunglasses. She asked what the get-up was for, but I never answered. Out loud, that is. I pulled her aside, into the ladies’ washroom, and showed her the bruises left from a brutal beating the night before. Well, she called the cops to report his abuse, and he was arrested that night. Sure, she got me out of a bad situation and gave me a place to stay, but I missed my dad, as bad as he was. I never got to see him; maybe once a month, if I was lucky. But that was always through soundproof glass, talking to him on the payphone for no more than ten minutes every time. He was the only family I had left, and she had taken him from me. I didn’t talk to Tara for months. I turned to drugs, alcohol, and the street life of Westville. I took to selling my body for money, because that was the only trade I knew. I slept with strange men, older men. There were some women, but not many. The pay was good but the price was high. The price I paid, anyways. I stripped myself of dignity, of self worth, but what did I care? For all I knew I was just a dirty whore working the streets day in and day out to earn a hot meal and a place to sleep. It’s now, remembering these harsh memories, that I feel a jolt of pain. And here, I thought I was dead. I open my eyes, slowly at first, to see Tara, the doctor, and a few nurses standing over me. I’m not dead yet, I think to myself, but I will be soon. I begin to wiggle my toes, my fingers; wondering how I’m still alive after everything that happened. Sometime after I awake, I begin to regain my sound reception. Unfamiliar sounds ring through my ears, first the machines beeping loudly and then the hiss of the oxygen rushing into my body. Tara reaches down to hold my hand, much like when she found me in the first place. She kisses me on the forehead and I feel that her face is wet with tears. I squeeze her hand to let her know that I’m still here, even though I don’t know why I am or even if I want to be. She holds her breath as if it was a way to hold onto that moment, and I see her eyes smile in a way that I have never seen them smile before. I slowly move my arm and ball my hand into a solid fist, pointing with my index finger to the tube that’s going down my throat. It’s uncomfortable; awkward. And even more so on its way out. I gasp for my first breath of air on my own only to choke and splutter about like a fish out of water. A second try, here goes nothing. Breathing in deeply, I hear Tara sigh with relief, and as I let out my breath she’s at my bedside, arms wrapped around me. “I was so worried you were gone. I missed you, Court.” I just stare at her for a moment before returning the hug; only one arm to do so, as I’ve got an IV line imbedded in my other.
“I’m not sorry; don’t think for a moment that I am.” I say angrily. “I was going to die and I was quite happy about it. You know I’ve got no one left, sometimes not even you.”
“Courtney, I ---”
“No excuses, it’s done now.” I turn to look out the window. Cars passing by in all different colours, a few transports parked in the lay-away off the stretch of highway below. Pretending to be mad at her would only work for so long before she noticed that my anger was actually giving thanks to her. I didn’t want her to save me, not then and not now, but now at least I knew that someone actually gave a shit enough that they didn’t want to see me waste away to nothing and just drop off the face of this earth. After my mother died I was longing to find someone like her that cared about me. Not someone who was just a stepping stone within my life, but a rock. I didn’t want someone who would just come and go as they so pleased, but someone who would stay through thick and thin no matter how tough the going gets. Every time I think about that now, I realize that Tara has done that and so much more, and yet I don’t even care enough about myself to stick around? I shake my head in disgust. “Tara,” I plead. “Don’t leave me.”
“Leave you, never. You’re the one that tried to leave me, silly.” I hear her laugh, snorting. Something I wished I could hear more often. “You were out cold for five days. You must’ve been thinking pretty hard though; brain function was always above average.” I shrug it off as if it’s nothing, yet knowing that she somehow knew of the deep, dark past my mind had brought while I was comatose.
“What can I say; I’m pretty impressive for someone who almost died.” I cruelly joke. Then we go on to our normal conversation, how things have been, what our thoughts were on what had happened, but then we got onto darker subjects like my intentions. I shouldered Tara away, not wanting to go any further into that discussion. Not right now, at least. She understood, and not wanting to pry, she moved onto something else.
“Tuesday your aunt and uncle came all the way from the East coast to see you,” she says. “I told them to come back tonight; I hope that’s alright with you.”
“It’s uh---,” I stop myself from saying ‘no, I don’t want them to see me,’ but instead; I just nod my head in approval. I don’t really want anyone to see me in this mess that I am, not even Tara. I’ve only been at the booze and the cocaine for a year, but a year is long enough. Just the way it handled my body, my face, was enough to turn someone in the other direction. I was stick-thin and sickly looking, having spent all my earnings on my vices before even thinking of my other vital needs. I smoked probably two packs of cigs a day, and adding to that a 26er and a couple grams, I never had enough money for food or rent. I was always going to Tara for money, and when she didn’t have any, I’d just take out of my old man’s funds that he had saved for me to go to college. Well, plans had changed. I wasn’t going to college and I certainly wasn’t going to make it far in life, so here, putting money to good use was all I was after. Or maybe, just maybe, I was after the high. I chased the rush of adrenaline through my veins, and the feeling of invincibility that I so adored. And I would give for anything that kept it going, even if that meant pushing away the only little bits of reality I still clung to. And now, I felt that if life had left me that night, I’d go away to a calmer place, and I’d call it home. But here I am, alive and on the mend, wishing that that night would have been my last. I hear Tara call my name but I raise my hand and wave away her soothing voice. I turn onto my side and I reminisce on the good memories of her and me; before I lost my mum and before I tried to take my own life. Staring at her blankly, I find myself whispering into the air; ‘I love you’ before falling to my senses and heading once again into a warm, comforting blanket of sleep. I don’t try to fight my eyes slowly closing, my awareness slowly fading, and me being succumbed by the Sandman of my dreams. The only thing I’m trying to fight from here on out is myself, nothing more, and nothing less.