Heartbeat

I lay myself down on the couch and listen in to the sound of high-volume rock music squeaking out of my headphones while the ball drops closer and closer to the bottom. Hundreds of people in Times Square, one the television, count down from ten as it gets closer and closer to the New Year. Once it reaches the bottom, the neon flashes of the year light up and confetti flies everywhere. People kiss. Hug. Drink wine. Cheer and scream and laugh and smile. I turn off the television and the Walkman, then go back up to my room. It almost makes me laugh, in a way, that so many people would gather around for hours and hours just to watch an immense ball move down a pole for ten seconds. I’m surprised we haven’t thought of anything more creative to do for the new year yet.

I go back to school on Monday with my hood up over my ears to keep the biting cold out. The snow pounds down and makes it hard for everybody to drive correctly without slipping and sliding on the ice. I fall asleep every night to the sound of giant trucks swamping by sprinkling salt on the roads, alongside plow trucks and other cars attempting to make it down the street without their engines dying from the cold or their tires slipping and tripping around on the ice. I have to walk around in the house with a hoodie on and long socks. The gym teachers tell us it isn’t all that bad, even when they made us have gym indoors now that the snow has built up over the roof. It’s so cold outside I can see my breath in the air. Everybody is sick, even teachers. We all come in with red eyes from sneezing and coughing and blowing out noses constantly to get the sinus gunk out. Some of us keep on our boots instead of switching back into our shoes. It’s just easier that way. Kids slide their desks over to the sides of the classrooms that have heaters. My mother takes down the tree and complains to my father about taking down the lights on the house, like she does every year because my father decided to never take them down. Better to leave them up all year round and by the time the next Christmas comes around, all we have to do is flick a switch. Hannah visits all of her Activity Committee buddies and sometimes brings them over to our house. They sit in the living room and dwell on what Special Thing they need to do for Valentine’s Day. I ponder about this. They could give out valentines to all of the lonely single men desperately trolling around for dates over the Internet. Or they could make pink-frosted cupcakes and give them out to stray dogs, or send snowballs and icicles to all the winter-deprived children in California.

I remember Valentine’s Day. It’s always been the same, no matter where you are in the world. In fifth grade, you could either give out valentine’s to everybody or nobody at all because you had to “be fair”. Somebody who was Popular always had a nice mom who had all the time in the world to make pink-frosted cupcakes and brownies and bring in red napkins with hearts on them for the whole class. The teacher would pass out those little candy heart things that said things like ‘Be Mine!’ and ‘I Luv U!’ And then you get older and gets more serious. In middle school, nobody even wants to acknowledge that the holiday exists. That is when your body has just entered into that beautiful little thing called puberty and you’re beginning to grow in certain places and grow hair in embarrassing spots and your forehead is riddled with god-awful acne that won’t ever go away. You’re too embarrassed to walk out of your front door with a pimply-faced expression like that, let alone build up enough courage to go up to the kid you think will be your future lover and give her a valentine. Everybody giggles like little girls on their birthdays whenever they get a valentine, but most of the time, everybody wants to be quiet about it, in fear that they won’t get a valentine and if they don’t get one they’ll get laughed at. And then you get into high school, and they turn it up a notch again. Kissing. Tongue-hockey. Skipping school to go to the park and go sit on the bench where you had your first kiss. Chocolates inside of heart-shaped boxes. Red lipstick. Everybody who doesn’t have a date is withered into the shadows, unseen and unnoticed. They’re forced to sit around at the lunch table with all the kids who do have dates, and watch them add observe in envy. It’s a holiday specifically invented so that those who have no friends can sink even lower on the Food Chain of Adolescent Society. And then the ones who have dates and lovers and kissy-kissy friends with benefits can prance around the school like pink, fluffy unicorns in a bout of joy because their boyfriend just gave them chocolate that came in a red-colored bag.

I walk out into the knifing cold wind once I arrive at school to see several people smiling. Showing their teeth and giggling and whispering to each other about how Blahbblahblah just asked out Yakyakyak and now they’re going to get married and have a bunch of babies and live happily ever after while they hold hands and gallop into a rainbow that sprinkles down chocolate chip cookies.

I hate Valentine’s Day.

I pass by lockers with pink cards taped to them. Mouths attached to ugly rhino faces lather each other against the lockers and doors. Girls squeal and guys tromp around, shoulders up high and mighty. My stomach boils with toxic deadly waste. I look around for Gerard. My stomach calms down a bit when I don’t see him anywhere. My face still stings from the night before. Sex--but I winced at the pain at one point and then a stinging explosion of a big, hard whop across my face and then another reminder of me knowing I like it and am only pretending to not like it to piss him off.

I can look at all the mouths and lips smashing up against each other in a forest of pink paper cutout hearts and chocolate truffles, and it reminds me of some kind of African area with all the animals smashing up against each other, teeth gnawing and claws slicing through flesh and blood curdling up onto the surrounding bushes, while the eagles begin to fly around in circles, hovering over the decomposing carcass.

I am seriously getting weird in the head…

We all wear big, puffy winter jackets so we smash up against each other like we’re in a huge mosh pit. We trip over each other’s boots and slam into the metal of lockers, cursing the coldness out of our throats. The teachers speak in nasally voices against their never-ending colds. Kids get passes to go to the nurse to go home for high fevers. It takes forever for the heater to kick in, because it keeps turning on and off sporadically. Most people get though it, though. They’re too distracted with their joy of Lovey-Dovey bullshit to care about how crappy it is outside.

I watch girls squeal and throw their arms around their boyfriend’s shoulders to give them big, sloppy, wet kisses right on the lips. Some kid wrote how much he loved his girl on the chalkboard in English, so that she would see it when she went in for that class. The teacher thought it was so cute she agreed to keep it on the board for the rest of the day.

I am the only one who isn’t happy on this day?

My stomach gurgles with bitter raw material the entire day. I can’t turn a corner in the hall without leering over my own shoulder, looking for his face and praying to God that I don’t spot it. My legs ache as I walk as the insides of my thighs are bruised from every single night that I come over to his house. I go through my classes by watching the clock move time by one incredibly slow second at time, and clench and unclench my fists occasionally to grit out the pain of the bruises on my wrists and fingers. They faded, once, until I had to go back up onto the countertop in the bathroom and have him hold my wrists again. And then they come back. Just like that. Poof. Magic.

In honor of the Loving Holiday, teachers smile more than often and don’t yell at kids when they catch them doing PDAs. Even the gym teachers aren’t as harsh. This baffles us. We didn’t think gym teachers had souls.

I doodle in English; a stick figure of Principal Somebody talking to himself about how weird he is.

By the time I get to my locker at the end of the day, there are two notes taped to it. My stomach drops down into my butt. I swallow vomit that regurgitates back up my trachea. I peel off the first note, which is nothing more than a simple note card folded once into a card. I open it up and don’t recognize the handwriting. I read the lettering.

‘I wish I could tell you how much I like you…’

I raise an eyebrow. I look all over the card. No signature. No return address. It is most definitely not Gerard’s handwriting.

I look around. Is this a joke? Does anybody even know I exist to be able to pull a prank on me? This is just something one of the football players is doing to make me look stupid. Or some weird, older kid that nobody likes who just goes around freaking people out.

I crumple up the note and toss it into the trash, not wanting to dwell on it. I take the second note. Most definitely Gerard’s. It is not a Valentine’s Day card, or even a card. Simply a folded-up piece of lined paper telling me to come over after school. No scribbled in hearts or smiley faces. Just words. Black pen. I breathe in deep through my nose. Valentine’s Day is for lovers. He doesn’t usually translate things that are for lovers very well.

I grip onto the straps of my backpack and walk towards the doors through the traffic, right up until I feel the neck of my shirt get pulled back so hard the collar chokes me. I gag out and stumble back with the tingling feeling of cold knuckles gripping onto me and pulling me backwards making me shiver. For a second I can see a blur of his face and the mop of greasy jet black hair on top of his head, right before, I see only a flash of daylight right before it shuts out completely and I’m trapped into a dark room that I can’t identify.

“This should be interesting…” I hear him in the dark, but can only see a silhouette of him. I sniff the air. Smells like dog poop and pencil shavings. My breathing whines down to a low gasping as I attempt to adjust my vision to the dark of the janitor’s closet. I hear his hands plant up next to the sides of my head as he leans in and his breath is hot on my lips.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day…” he says softly in a voice that’s so foreign and alien for him I almost wonder if it’s not really him. I hear him step forward so close that our bodies touch, his crotch pressing up against my stomach. He’s to much taller than me that it’s scary.

“How was your Valentine’s Day?” he slithers into my ear, nestling his lips up against my earlobe.

Words trickle up my throat but I can’t translate them in any way for them to come out articulately. I shrug, as an alternative, even when we’re in the dark and he probably can’t see it.

“Not that good?” he says lowly. I can feel him smile up against my jawbone. “You want me to make it better…?”

My ribcage collapses and all of my ribs snap, stabbing into my lungs and making blood spurt out every direction.

I close my eyes and feel the cold of the cement slab floor underneath me as he digs crawly tarantula fingers underneath the waistband of my pants while he fiddles with the zipper. I feel my pants slide down my legs down my legs to my ankles, alongside my boxer shorts. I stop breathing completely as I feel his hands skate back up the inside of my legs and rest on the inside of my thighs, with his breath hot and eerie-feeling on my dick.

“Tell me you love me…” he breaths out.

I try to open my mouth to do as I’m told, but my lips are sewn together. He doesn’t wait for me to answer. He just goes forth with it.

My toes squirm around inside of my shoes as he works with my body. I stare into the darkness, hating the idea that I can’t tell what he’s going to do next because I can’t see him. Eventually, he feel his hands clasp around my thighs as he hoists my legs up onto his shoulders and clasps one hand onto one of my knees and sets the other down onto my stomach. When I feel him go right into me, I scrunch my face up gnaw on my lip and try to focus on something other than the pain. I want to go into my headworld, but every time I close my eyes I go back to that night.

He licks and nibbles at my ear while I feel my own soul leave my body and hover in the vicinity for a moment, inhabiting the darkness and air.

“Tell me you love me,” he says again. I still can’t speak a single word. I feel him inside of me and it makes me dizzy. It makes me feel disgusting and bloated, like the janitor’s closet is nothing more than one big dank hole where he pisses and shits. The cement floor chafes my back every time a thrust makes my body rough upwards, sliding my shirt up, making me have to grab onto the bottom of my shirt and anchor it down every time that happens.

The most commonly used word in the English language is ‘The’.
Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.
Because of its high resistance to radiation, a cockroach is the only creature most likely to survive an atomic blast or nuclear war.
The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the most stolen book from public libraries.

“I missed you all day,” he whispers into my ear as he goes on and on. I continue to hammer my teeth into my bottom lip and scrape off peeling, chapped lip-skin. My heart smashes around inside of my chest, making my ribs rattle around like glass cups clinking together. My tongue swallows down into my throat and cuts off my breathing. The blood rushes through foresting veins inside of my head, branching off into zigzagging arteries like lightning bolts. A ringing sound starts to scream out through my ears and his voices muffles down to a low-pitched fly-buzz. I can hear the sounds of the crickets in the bushes right next to my ears and the branches scraping my face and the smell of the dirt on my skin and the stars like eyes staring down at me and my eyes so heavy and sleepy and the sounds of laughing and talking in the background and my tongue is thick and clumsy inside of my mouth and I can’t articulate any proper words or even whimper. My fingers go numb.

I close my eyes so fast and jerk my head around to try and shake the images out of my head but they won’t away. I open my eyes again and all I see is the darkness and the sound of him standing back up and that god-awful noise of the metal teeth of the zipper clasping back together and the feeling of his cold hand on my cheek as he leans back down and looks down at me in the dark. He gets down onto his knees and leans in real close.

“Happy Valentine’s Day.”

I lay there like I’m about to fall asleep as his lips connect with mine. His teeth clank up against mine and his tongue is rough and gross inside of my mouth. He kisses me hard and rough and hungry for more, but I can’t give him anything else because I can barely stand up, let alone put enough energy into giving a good kiss.

He fashions another kiss from his mouth to mine when he drives me home in the dark. Hard and without mercy. I feel his hand place down on my crotch and just stay there, while he keeps himself leaned in and whispers things I can’t hear into my ear. I get out once I realize that he’s done speaking and sneak into a quiet, dark home.

I turn on the television and continue on as the patient in the hospital in Coldblood D. I bash through fifty-million zombies until I meet with another sane being. An attractive nurse hiding from the zombies in the maternity ward of the hospital. She becomes my accomplice. She follows me around while we sneak through the never-ending halls of the hospital. I use my newly found gun to crank out shotgun shells into the heads of several zombie-doctors. I kill and kill and kill, leaving death and carnage in my bloody footprint-filled path, right up until a light turns on in the hallway and my mother’s voice enters into the vicinity.

“Frank?”

I turn the television off without saving my game and crawl into bed.

“Frank? Are you still up?”

I close my eyes and stay quiet. I listen as she eventually turns the light back off and our house falls back to sleep. Hannah sneaks in an hour later and pokes her head through my door.

“Don’t tell,” she mouths to me. A sibling-to-sibling secret code for “don’t tell mom that I came home late because if I have to suffer through a parental shit-fit because you tattled on me like a five-year-old, I will rip your esophagus right out of your goddamn little throat with my teeth”.

She crawls back into her own bed in the next room over and the world grows quiet again. Dad snores. Mom stirs around and yawns and snores a little herself. Hannah turns from side to side on her bed, her bed frame and mattress creaking around from its weakness. I stare into the darkness of the night and watch the stars watching me.

And the perfect bullshit American family continue to live their perfect bullshit lives perfectly.