Heartbeat

Inside my closet lair, the air is warm and the clothes smell good. I sit on the floor in the black dark, stuffed in between pancake layers of long shirts on hangers, like it’s the wardrobe into Narnia, and breathe in and breathe out. I glance down at my old best friend before clutching him even harder in my hand. My palm sweats. Zero shakes around in my hand as I my fingers tremble. I figured this would be comforting, but it isn’t. I haven’t seen Zero in years. My old stuffed giraffe. It brings back memories of dragging him everywhere I went and sitting right next to the washing machine for a full hour, just waiting my mother to be finished giving him a laundry bath. I miss those days, as stupid as that sounds. I really do.

Inside the closet, the air is insulated and my breath vibrates off of the material of the clothing, sending warm air right back at my face. I can feel my heart inside of my chest, thumping around my ribcage, rattling my bones like china shaking around inside of a cupboard during an earthquake. My skull starts to crack as I thump my head against the wall. I hold my knees up to my chest and stuff my mouth and nose into my knees, tasting the cloth of my jeans for a moment. I shake like I’m about to go into a seizure.

I feel my fingers, scratchy-feeling and cold. Dried blood and dust streaks my fingers, making it look like I’ve gnawed right through the flesh of my wrist and ripped out veins and arteries like I was pulling chords and wires out of the back of a computer.

Outside, rains is beginning to pound down onto the window. I don’t even dare to come out of the closet to see if he’s driven away. I stay inside, locked onto the floor, chained to the walls, superglued in by an invisible force. With my ear up close to the wall, I can hear Hannah punching buttons on her cell phone, pretending to be asleep. My father snores in the other room until it wakes up my mother who then kicks my father who groans and moves around on the bed and makes the bed creak until my mother gets up, goes out into the hall and sneaks downstairs for a Tylenol. Zero falls to the floor in a pitiful heap of worn cotton-stuffing and broken eyeballs. The padding on one of his feet is ripping off. He has ripped holes on his butt. Just looking at him makes me feel guilty. I can’t tell if he’s been torn to shreds from my constant childhood horseplay, or if he’s just dilapidated himself from years and years of dark-closet dormancy. Either it way, though, it wouldn’t matter. He looks dead, no matter what.

Once the rain starts coming down so hard, it’s almost complicated to concentrate on my own thoughts, I use Zero as a pillow and lay down in the congested space of the closet, draping an old dress shirt over myself as a blanket.

In the compact confinements of my dream, Mikey and I sit at desks in a classroom and linger. My wings are gray and fluffy and drape over my shoulders, falling and flattening out onto the surface of the desk, lifeless. His wings are pure; static-white and full of zeal. They stand up, broad and tall on his shoulders as we sit at the desks, directly facing each other and staring at each other. His glasses are different, looking metallic and chrome-esque, instead of the white-on-black pair he usually wears. We sit there, silent for a moment, until I notice the bandages.

I don’t notice them until Mikey finds them. He looks at my neck and his face contorts into a look of confusion.

“What’s that?” he asks, and then thrusts and pointing finger towards my throat with his arm stretching out far enough for him to be able to touch my skin. And then I feel it there on my neck, bandages wrapping around my throat like a choker necklace, only it feels too tight and stings underneath. I bring a hand up to the bandage and feel around the felt of it, but can’t feel it for too long before Mikey’s fingers are on the edge of it, peeling it off until it spirals off of my neck, revealing one slick, perfectly straight red line. “Why’d you do that?” Mikey asks, looking at the slit and the bandage with the dried blood staining it. And I feel the slit on my neck that stings when I touch it, but doesn’t bleed at all. “I’m sorry,” I hear Mikey say, right before reaching over again and slapping the bandage back on, just like that. It stays. And then I smile for some reason, and it feels weird, feeling my lips curl and stretch into a smile, like I’ve forgotten when it physically feels like to grin. Mikey smiles back and his wings flutter a bit, like dog ears perking up when the dog gets excited. And then all of a sudden, behind Mikey, the classroom door swings open and there’s a tall silhouette of a figure for a moment, before that somebody steps in, and stays in the dark, shadowed over, until he steps into the circular ray of a light, exposing himself.

“I think we need to talk,” Gerard says. His eyes narrow and my stomach caves in on itself. And then, out of nowhere, his hand is lunging at my throat and I feel his fingers curl around the bandage, tearing it off again, only it’s okay for him to do that because I know it won’t bleed. But then it feels wet, and I look down at my shirt that was white before and is now stained in crimson and feels damp, with little rivers of dark blood trickling out of seven different spots on the slit. It’s gone back to bleeding and the bandage is withered with the blood that it falls apart right there on the desk. My wings fall off, raining soft feathers down onto the linoleum floor, until there’s nothing but pitiful skeletons of perished wings, attempting to flap around pathetically on my shoulder blades. A lightning bolt of disappointment flares through me as I watch the feathers pile up over my shoes, right up until half of the floor underneath the desk is flooded in feathers, some wet with blood; right up until my shirt is so wet with blood that I’m shivering from the cold feeling of it; right up until the closet floods with light when my mother finds me on the floor.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

Ray’s of sunlight peaking through the cement-colored clouds outside reflect off of the pure-white snow and shine directly into my retinas, blinding me until I can turn my head away from the window.

“Get dressed. And wear something nice. We’re going out,” she says quickly, right before leaving me there in the closet to choke on the silence.

I stand in front of my mirror in some old pair of black jeans and the nicest shirt I could find. My mother comes back in and takes one look at me, before reaching over to fix my hair, which is hopeless.

“Screw it,” she mutters, after finally realizing that my hair will not do what she wants it to, but will just flop in front of my face, no matter what.

In the back of my father’s car, we sit silently, pretending like nothing is wrong and nothing is about to go wrong. My father’s jaws glue together and sit still and square like they’ve been stuck together with cement. My mother blinks long and hard, examining the dusty stains on the glove compartment. My mother’s cell phone vibrates inside of her purse, but she doesn’t pick it up. Neither of them tell me where we’re going. No words are said.

When we arrive at our destination, my mother flashes me a brief, weak smile in some desperate attempt to convince that whatever they’re doing is for the best and I should embrace it because it’s a good choice, no matter how horrible it looks. I say nothing. Her smile doesn’t look like it fits her at all, like somebody just drew a smiley face on a piece of crumpled up paper and taped it over her mouth.

My father drives in a quiet solitude until we reach the place. The hospital. The other kind of hospital; the doctor hospital with emergency rooms and dead people attached to machines. When we enter inside, my father says some type of code-speak to the lady at the front desk, and they communicate privately until my father knows what to do. My mother wraps a hand over my shoulder and they lead me silently into a certain room on the second floor where a middle-aged lady with glasses brings me inside of her examination room. My parents wait outside. I think, for a minute, they’re giving me away. Or I’m dying. Or they’re dying.

The nice-looking lady tells me to sit on top of the exam table. I hop up onto it and hear the paper draped over it crunch and tear a bit underneath my butt. I sink down into its surface and the leather farts, sounding like the cow it was before they ripped its skin off to make the bench. I read the name on her hospital ID. Dr. Melfi. She stands only slightly taller than me, frameless glasses floating lightly on her nose, with a clipboard in one hand, and an expensive-looking fountain pen in the other. She takes a seat on a stool with wheels, and tosses me a too-kind-looking smile. She tells me that she just wants me to answer some of her questions.

I say nothing back.

She asks me if I have any hobbies. Specifically, hobbies I used to have and are no longer interested in.

She asks me if I feel downhearted and blue a majority of the time.
She asks me if I am glad to be living right now.
She asks me when the last time I cried was.
She asks me if I fear the future.
She asks me if I fear the past.
She asks me if I get upset easily.
She asks me if I think somebody is out to get me.
She asks me if I’ve ever thought about my own death.

I shrug. I can’t open my mouth. My answers are minimal. She scribbles notes onto her clipboard. She asks me if I know why I’m here. I feel my head nod, moving up and down. Her happy expressions oozes away, dripping down her neck and revealing a newer, unhappier look. She approaches me with tools and examines my insides. When she stares into my brain through my ear, I close my eyes tight and view the horror movie a bit: Blue-white lightning bolts stab down from disappointed-looking clouds in the sky. People cry and scream. It is some mass hysteria. The world is coming to an end. I sit up high on the thick branch of a tree and examine the chaos. The wind is blowing everywhere, making the tree groan in pain. The leaves rustle and fly everywhere, getting in my hair. I don’t open my eyes until the doctor’s hand is on my shoulder, asking me if I feel dizzy.

Back in my father’s car, my parents mutter-argue with each other. I sit near the window and feel my skull bump on the glass. My eyes are closed, examining the comforting darkness behind my eyelids; they think I’m asleep.

“I don’t want him on medication,” my father hisses, glaring at my mother. “That’s ridiculous. He doesn’t need it. He’s just a teenager. He has angst; he’ll get over it eventually. He’s just being dramatic.”

My mother turns her head slightly towards my father, looking like she wants to rip the skin off his face with her bare hands.

I wash the dried blood off of my fingertips when we arrive home. The too-bright light of the upstairs bathroom reveals every detail of my face; every pimple, every freckle, every reddening mark. I touch one of the marks and it aches out, making my left eyelid twitch. When my alarm clock goes off the next morning, I’m only halfway out of bed before I remember that this is not any other day. I check out the living room window and his car is nowhere to be seen. It’s almost a miracle. Like he thinks not giving me rides is a bad thing. I get my mother to drive me. The experience is hostile, though. She stays silent, only when she’s really driving. She speaks up when we reach stoplights at intersections, where she can yell at the driver in front of us, who doesn’t hear her anyway. And then her car is moving again and she’s quieter. When we reach the school, she doesn’t even say goodbye.

My mother’s lack of communication weirds me out. It’s odd, though, in a way. We never speak anyway, but it’s never been an upsetting thing before. But the ride to school was considerate. And she isn’t Gerard. Stepping out of her car is like stepping out of a limo with two guards at my side, wielding guns, ready to protect me at any one moment. A feeling of safety and calmness.

And then I see him. He’s in the halls. Between a untamed forest of long legs, I see his shoes, and he’s standing there up against some guy’s locker, talking to a telephone pole dressed in Junior ROTC uniform. His right eye is darker than the other. Swollen. He’s grinning. They’re laughing. They punch fists like they’re been best friends since grade school. Their mouths move and they talk some more. They trade cigarettes when they think teachers aren’t looking.

And then his head turns. Our eyes connect. His smile falls off.

His lips are parting, saying some to me, at me, but I the buzzing sound of blood flooding the gaps in my brain is draining out the noise and I can’t understand him. My ability to read lips only spans so far, and the most I can comprehend is multiple profanities strung together, saying something threatening, something lethal.

I bolt. I’m running so fast that my speed is creating gusts of wind that push people away from me as I pass by them, creating a clear sprinting track towards the bathrooms, where I can lock myself into a stall and live inside of the compact cubicle until the bell rings. I’m late for my first class, but it doesn’t matter. My stomach is lurching too much. I don’t want to risk going to class. I’d throw up all over the teacher. I plant myself down on the toilet and pick at the cuticles until they bleed. I wipe the blood away with shredded ribbons of toilet paper, watching the red fuel of my own body become absorbed into the thin material. It stings.

When the Second Block bell rings after approximately an hour and twenty-five minutes, I retreat from the bathroom, smelling faintly of human waste and cleaning supplies. I sandwich in between strangers in the hall, pushing and struggling to get through the halls. My stomach folds in and unfurls repeatedly. My heart thumps around so hard that it hurts. My palms sweat, making my skin so damp, it’s hard to hold my books without dropping them all over the floor. By the time third block rolls around, eating lunch is hopeless.

He’s there again in the halls at the end of the day. He’s there and he’s found me. He stares. Not a blank stare. Not an apologetic look. His stayed lowered, looking up at me through the hair covering his face, his expression locked into a single vicious look. His hair parts a bit and his swollen eye is exposed. It almost makes me cringe, but I can’t look at him long enough to pull that off. I belt off through the front doors and cut through unknown streets and small neighborhoods to get home. I think, for a minute, my house is salvation. But I step through the front doors; my family’s silence scares me. Neither of my parents refuse to make eye contact with me. They don’t speak. The hushed environment makes my skin crawl--I find my bedroom as fast as possible.

Zero is waiting for me, back in my closet. I ditch my homework completely. Outside, it’s raining again, sloshing the snow away and making the roads so muddy that cars are getting into accidents everywhere, with their tires sinking into the wet dirt like they’re drowning in their own graves. My parents crawl into their own cave and hibernate for the night. My sister is wherever. I sit in the confined space of my closet and shoot myself back to childhood. I hug Zero so close it almost feels like he’s hugging back. His fur is wet and soggy on my chin and it takes a minute to figure out why it feels wet. My cheeks stain with the paths of the tears, looking like rivers and creeks flowing down my skin. I want to feel like I’m four years old again. It is a secret, almost as bad as the first; the exact kind of secret you don’t even tell your closest friend. You keep it so deep down inside of you that you can physically feel it eat away at your insides.

I saw the doctor hand my mother a pamphlet about “Pre-Adult Emotional Issues”, back at the hospital. My mother threw on a polite silicone smile, then held herself together in the car long enough to survive the ride home without breaking down. My father said nothing, probably thinking about killing me himself, so I wouldn’t even have to bother.

And then it’s in my head and I feel my blood flow back to a normal level. Death. I think about every facet of it. Every way it could be done, self-induced or not. If I tell the doctor about this, I’m afraid she might shock my mother so much that she goes into a coma. But I can’t get it out of my head. It’s like porn. You’re not supposed to think about it, but once the thought is in your head, it won’t leave.

I can see myself with a match and gas can, showering myself with the oil in my own bedroom, then lighting a match and lighting up faster than a Christmas tree. I can envision my shoes on my feet hanging limply, attached to my body that dangles off of a rope attached to the railing in my closet. I can imagine myself behind the wheel of my own car, sweaty palms clutching the jerky steering wheel, both feet pressing down on the gas until the gas pedal touches the floor and I’m belting so fast through the roads, going ninety to one-hundred, until I can see the guardrail snapping and I’m careening right off of the road, over the cliff and I’m fallingfalling until the front of the car connects with the ground and my body is crushed, sandwiched in between broken windshield glass and metal car parts, with the foul smell of burning alternative fuels stinking up the vicinity, my organs and inners splattered and crushed inside of my body with my head halfway through the windshield, my bones cracked and crumbled into powder underneath my skin.

I think about it like it’s an infection of the brain, and my headworld comes to be quickly and nice. I disappear deep inside of it, so deep, that no one can see me.

Gone.