Night Has Words

I want to love her, I do, but she hides whenever I look for her.

I know her name, and I'm sure you can guess it,

But everything else about her remains a mystery.

I see the things moved that show where she's been

And I see her belongings scattered to show where she lives

And I see her creations which hold her thoughts,

But I can never quite find her, despite all signs she's here.

I'm moving soon, is the thing, and I know she'll come along.

I might second guess what I know about her,

Or worry that she isn't there at all and I only imagined her,

But I know in my bones that she'll be there when I arrive.

For the very first time, it'll be just her and me,

Alone together.

I find myself frightened, I think.

I hope this will, maybe, let me get to know her,

And my fight or flight is active

I could disembowel myself on the floor

I think my blood would work better than the ink

Summary: That time Johnny charmed some extras into joining our lake trip

Series: 20 minute challenges

Notes: I'm doing a thing where I challenge myself to write something in 20 minutes and see what comes out. This is almost entirely unedited, all I did was removed the last three words because it wasn't a complete sentence. Otherwise, this was all done in those 20 mins.

Been a while, but here's a taglist if y'all still interested:

@prettyvampy

Full story text below the cut:

Here is the monster

Don't you get it?

My ribcage is armor.

Should I be able to feel it like stone?

Lean against it like a wall

I can't tell if I want

Bunches of little pathways

Branching out smaller and smaller and smaller

Until they reach a tiny little pocket that fills with air

Sometimes, when I breathe, I can feel every single one of them

Like a weed

The lamp above you flickers once. You sigh and lean back against it's post. Behind you, the school sits empty, abandoned. The doors are locked and the windows are boarded up. The stoplights change, and the sign across the street starts blinking for you to start walking. You don't move.

The lights used to change their timing based on the time of year, the time of day. Long red lights at the start and end of the school day, so the kiddos would have plenty of time to walk across. Shorter, almost nonexistent, red lights the rest of the time, to keep the traffic flowing. Somewhere along the line, something must have fritzed in their programming. They act like school has just let out, no matter what happens. Always stopping traffic so the kids can cross, even in the middle of night, in the middle of summer.

The light blinks at you that it's time to cross the street, patiently signalling for children that haven't been here for years.

By now, all the cars around know not to drive through here. It's quicker by far to just go around, take another route, so the street is empty in front of you. You've been standing here for a good while now, soaking yourself to the bone, and not a single car has come by. It's just you, the lights, and the rain.

It's not like you mind the rain. It's warm for once, big, fat drops that don't immediately cut you to the core with their cold. If you were just a touch younger, or maybe just a touch less tired, you might even enjoy it. You might jump in the puddles, or stick out your tongue and try to catch the raindrops.

But you aren't, so you don't. You lean against the lamppost, watching the streetlights reflect off the wet pavement and the ripples in the puddles, until Jack finally walks up from behind you.

"Ready to go?" He asks.

You sigh. You straighten up and take one last look around. Red, yellow, green streaks stretch across the ground. The rain is starting to get heavier as the night cools down.

"Yeah," you say, "I'm ready."

"Should we stop trying then?"

And find yourself thinking: "Man,

That sounds exhausting"?

There's supposed to be something better than this,

There's supposed to be something that will

Make me want to wake up in the morning,

Will wake me up in the morning, energize me

Better than the coffee and the caffiene.

Being so awake all the time sounds like

Such a chore, though.

Can't I want to rest?

But the thought of resting forever feels

So incredibly unfufilling.

There has to be something more than this,

There has to be something more than numb acceptance

of the day to day.

There has to be a way to live actively,

I don't want to sleepwalk for eternity,

But the thought of waking up makes me want to go back to sleep.

When the idea of purpose is exhausting,

And the feeling of the lack is suffocating,

There is a terror in my soul

That prevents me being bitter.

You did your best by me

But the lab rat mentality

Made me unfit for polite society,

Left me stageless but still an actor,

Lineless but for a show no one knows,

And if i think too hard on it

I find my fingers wanting to snap and fall apart.

I find my bones constricted in

Unfitting flesh,

Or my flesh strung up on unyielding bones,

A coat hanger silhouette monstrosity.

I feel unclean.

I feel like a misshapen symphony,

Frankenstein's monster has nothing on me

All parts fit perfectly to make the doctor scream,

A tune told laughing in a minor key and

You

Were the one who did this to me.

I can't take it back.

I can not take it back, not given the choice.

For where would I be in the alphabet

Without the ordering of the lettering, arbitrary

In execution, but fundamental to organization?

I was a creature who should not have existed

But in front of god I was told worship,

So i guess that makes me ordained.

I am an abomination, made without even the

Courtesy not to blame for the pain

Of mine own misfiring lungs.

How disappointing, my claws, my teeth, my bite

Worse than my bark, silent unhelpful.

Still,

It is me.

Here is a prison: wrapped in electrical impulses

And confined to the body of but one human being

Made to be the test for this sort of thing.

Don't ask it what comes after, don't let it ask you.

This isn't a sentence, but here's the punishment

In the place of the clause, noun to phrase

It says:

It will continue to be itself, for the rest of eternity.

And it will continue to claw for itself,

For the rest of eternity.

Look at how it clings to itself, how it can't let go

Of even the worst of-

I

Find myself bitter,

Despite-

Here is another path

And there is another path

And here is a choice they made for you

And there is a choice you wish they had made

And when given the option of paths to walk,

Given the start, the over, the do again,

Here is the flinch from the path untaken.

There's a monster down the path.

They look like me.

They would be me, if i took the path

And left myself behind at the crossroads

With the mosquitoes.

Here is the sin that has been done to me,

Blameless in all it's glory, naked in Eden.

You ever so wanted the best for me.

Where do I put the hazelnuts?

I cannot devour them, nor

Should I make you, nor

Could I make you.

The best apology is behavior that is changed,

But I am the behavior and the change is not

Wearing my clothes.

On the side that faces inwards, to my heart

From my ribs, drips smoke trails like caressing syrup,

Cold as the liquid nitrogen grave.

I am the failed project that you made,

But I am the failed project that you made.

Though agony I can't convey

Lives vicariously in my marrow,

I lack recognition or even insight into

The funhouse mirror I could have been.

I find myself flinching from the uncanny valley

Of a myself who is not fractured.

Here so goes:

Some sort of manufacturer error

Made at the factory

That never did get recalled.

(Or if it did, I never heard of it)

Oh, it runs just fine,

But it costs me a small fortune

To do the chores and errands.

It gets to the point where

I skip some,

Just until tomorrow.

Just until payday.

But then tomorrow comes

And the errands still need to get done,

So up and down the street I go,

Watching the tank tick down

To empty

Sooner than yesterday.

Picking pennies out of my pockets

To pay for more,

'Til my rainy day change runs out.

Fine, I think, I guess I'll have to do

What's left

Tomorrow,

When I get paid.

The check seems smaller

And the list of chores get longer,

Some are late, others are too late.

Fine, fine, it's all fine,

I put myself into debt at the gas station

Taking out more than I can afford

Because I have to get this done,

Deadlines biting my heels.

It's fine, the truck runs fine,

But payday hasn't come in a while,

And the overdraft fees are

Starting to kill me,

Spending all my time driving

Up and up and up the street,

And the garbage hasn't been taken out.

And the homework isn't done.

And there's not enough hours in the day.

Not enough gas in the tank.

In the end my reward

I've been sitting across a room from myself

And I am all the things I hate about me.

I glare myself down from across the room

Forced to reckon with the disgusting comfort

That if I wanted me gone

To her, he said, "How do you do?"

She turned and she sighed,

delivered a white lie,

Words words words, where have my words gone?

I kissed the blarney stone, stood in line as I climbed through the castle. Leaned out over the ledge as my friends took a picture, my lips against the castle wall, trying to channel an Irish blessing.

I'm a writer, I'm a writer, I'm a writer, so why will my pen not move?

My parents love me. I know this in a logical, intellectual way. They love me, and they worry about me, and I'm not sure they know anything about me. I text them if I'm going somewhere, and when I'm at school, my mom tries to call once a week. My parents love me.

Ever since I learned it was an option, I've looked forward to moving out of the house. One of the things I was looking forward to most was being able to be anywhere in the house without worrying about being watched. The house became an apartment once I got old enough to understand finances, but the want to exist in a space free from eyes stayed.

I've never lived on my own. I've lived in the dorms, and I had roommates then. I've lived in my childhood home, and I had siblings and parents then. I have never had a living space that was solely and totally mine.

I don't anticipate breaking up with my partner. No one ever does, but that's not the point. I'm realistic, I know I should wait until we can be together in person for a while before we do anything, but I think I want to marry them. I'm giving it six months, at least, I'm waiting that long to make sure, but I think I could marry them. I think I want to spend the rest of my life with them.

I don't think I've ever been given the space to be alone.

My parents like to joke about how I never come out of my room. They ask why they never see me in the living room, or laugh about how strange it is to see me in the kitchen.