#gditask001

CJ sat on the floor of his loft, curled into the furthest, darkest corner he could find. Not that the light would matter, he couldn’t see anything but a forest flashing by in his mind’s eye, and the sound of screams echoing through his head. 

They were gone. Again. His family was taken from him once more and he had nothing left. No will to try and pretend he was okay. No strength to get him through another funeral. He just wanted to be with them. Why wasn’t he with them? Why hadn’t he been killed all those years with his actual family? Now, the one family that had cared enough about him to take him in is gone, and he has nothing left. Charles let out a soft sob and he curled into himself even more. 

Time meant nothing to him since he got the call telling him his adoptive parents were dead. Killed instantly in a car accident.. It could have been weeks, and he wouldn’t know. CJ felt like he hadn’t slept in years, and he wanted nothing more than to just go to sleep for a long time.

After a moment, Charles remembered that he could do just that. He stumbled up out of his hiding place and went for the bathroom, wiping his face to clear his vision. Squinting at the harsh lights as he flipped them on, CJ immediately went for the medicine cabinet, pulling down a bottle. He’d gotten the pills for when the nightmares of the night wouldn’t let him sleep. More often than not, he’d just laying awake, guilt washing over him as he wondered why he didn’t die with them. 

Taking the bottle, CJ headed for the kitchen and filled a glass, before pouring out a decent amount of the pills. He looked down at them for a moment, knowing they were the only thing that could get him to where he wanted. Popping them all into his mouth, he downed them with half of the glass of water. Charles felt relieved after swallowing the last of the handful, knowing he would be with his family soon. 

Grabbing the bottle with the remainder of the pills and the glass, CJ made his way back to his dark corner, mind surprisingly quiet. He sat there, waiting, listening to his own breathing. He needed it now. The peace of sleep. So he downed the rest of the bottle, and laid back, clutching the empty bottle as he stared up at the ceiling. 

As he started to feel the effects at last, Charles reached for the phone on the floor next to him, dialing the number for his parent’s house. Sobbing in relief, he smiled and began talking, not realizing that someone had actually picked up the phone. 

i.

you’re six.

the scent was hefty-rapped oolong tea before you closed your eyes, jasmine, tired cigars, like your father’s rim of mouth and your mother’s craggy thumbs and your brother’s shoulder and your sister’s maroon teeth. a bogus mother nature you chiseled yourself for the ones who drink the outside world with a smothered pair of lungs –- this, this is the ambience that you wanted to glue before a nine o’clock’s good-night. solitude, you think, scalpels beneath your fingertips to recall tranquility before wars begin to gallop again in the morning.

you realize you’re failing, second time, third time, tenth time, when you wake up.

you can’t remember why you’re awake in the kitchen instead of your own bed, your mother’s crying, wailing, your sister’s hands are in trembles.

you can’t remember the reason behind jagged scraps in your throat.

but you do remember who you are.

ii.

you’re ten.

you are hungry for something that you’ve never-ever experienced.  you gargle sour water every night in hopes of finding something to remember, to dream, like full-freckled jamie thompson in your class who rolls mud on his tongue just to brandish the t-rexs behind closed windows. you are a stone desperate to catapult into the ocean. head-first, sinking, heart-open. you long for adventures unlike your sister’s. something that won’t hurt.  

something, something, something.

you wake up around lazy grass. a garden of your neighbor’s – impishly dramatic. you’re not even disappointed anymore. there’s a hole in your ribcage that’s learned not to turn hands into a stack of beggars. you let your mother wipe your cheeks. you let her nails bite, lips to tell how long you’ve screamed earlier. you let your sister pick you up, hoist you onto her back. you let your father sigh. you let your brother pretend nothing’s happened. you let and you let and you let.

you forgot to let them know you couldn’t even recall your own name amongst all the chaotic i love yous and you’re okays.

iii.

you’re thirteen.

your stories have become thin.

they’ve become as wonted as your father’s surly chaps now. you sleep and you scream and you wake. you walk – like a ghost, donning cold-metal sweats. you have a pattern, a language only you and your sister speak. she chooses to sleep in the middle of hot-scalding sun, and stays awake when you don’t.

( you don’t consider it sleeping. it’s a lapse. you’re a lot more jaded after it. )

you disintegrate. a knot in your head. worn-out. a split second where you can’t recognize, just a frightening jolt and your sister uncurling herself.

so she sings you a new song, her fingers crook, as raw as her wounds.

“you’re sam. samantha.”

iv.

you’re fifteen.

you don’t fall anymore. you crumble.

you’ll walk again, they say, and that’s the harsh-cold truth. it’s not the evanescent terror of losing two-stick legs that haunts you, it’s everything that collapses after. your father hollers - he never cared, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t take this opportunity to bludger more. more of you. more of her. more of them. your mother sews her mouth shut. your brother isn’t your brother. you don’t count him as someone who shares your blood anymore. neither does he.

you flinch at fingers on your leg. at stairs. at a coup of spectral darkness. at everyone.

you and your sister don’t speak the same language anymore. there’s heaviness, skepticism, a cylical protection that you don’t bother to thank anymore. you love her but she’s a catalyst, and you’re just something ghostly left in the wake.

you’re broken and you’re oddly relishing that.

v.

you wake up. your sister’s no longer there. you bend your cracked ribcage yourself.

“i’m sam. samantha.”