The Speed of Pain

John's screaming at Ginger, who's got his face buried in his hands. He's sobbing and John just yells louder. I don't even know what they're talking about, but I guess it's something Ginger did wrong. I turn my eyes away like I have been for the past few weeks.

Pogo's just sitting there, fiddling around on his keyboard. He glances up once in a while and looks at John as he keeps ragging on Ginger. He'll grimace, shake his head, and look back down. Sometimes, he'll grip the bridge of his nose with trembling fingers and breathe really deep.

And I sit here and watch. Sometimes John will get so pissed off that he'll leave and come back with food and we can eat something good for once. No one else wants to leave. No one wants to face another sobbing fan or ecstatic Christian. No one wants to look at anything - even a mere stairwell - and think, 'Remember when...?'

"Y'know what? Fuck you all!" John yells as he slams the door shut. Ginger starts crying harder into his fists, rubbing his eyes like it would stop the waterworks.

"T-Twiggy?" he sniffles, looking up at me with swollen, red eyes. "Can I come sit with you?"

I nod and scoot over on the couch. Ginger gets up and stumbles over to me. He plops down next to me and I wrap an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close to me. I don't say anything. I haven't said much for a while, anyway. I think the silence is a nice alternative to the yelling.

"I can still see it, Twiggy," he whispers in a voice wrecked and raw from all his wailing. "I can see his face. I can see the bottles. I can see the-"

"Ginger," Pogo says in a soft voice that I'd never heard him use before. "I don't think any of us want to hear that. Especially Twiggy."

I would've said that it didn't matter. That it didn't hurt all that much anymore. But talking took too much work. I probably wouldn't recognize my own voice anymore, either. Pogo flipped the switch on his keyboard to turn it on, but nothing happened.

"Fuck this," he growled, shoving the keyboard the the floor. He turned on his heels and stormed off to somewhere deep in the house. None of us really left the living room very much. We camped out on the couches and chairs. The rest of the house seemed so empty.

There's this hollow hole in my stomach, like I'm hungry, only I know I'm not. I didn't know how much emptiness you filled inside of me until now, when you took it all with you. It feels like someone carved out my insides and left me with nothing but a brain, forcing me to live an empty life.

You should've told me. I would've gone with you.

The door swings open slowly and Ginger slides out from under my arm, scurrying back to the chair he was sitting at before. John walks in, his face utterly downcast.

"Ginger, I'm sorry," he murmurs. He walks over to Ginger and hugs him tightly, then lets go and sits down. We sit silently until Pogo comes back, the room too dark to see his face. He sniffs deeply, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve. Either he just did cocaine or he was crying. At any other time, the first one would seem more probable, but we didn't have enough money for drugs anymore.

That's right. I'm coping all by myself. I don't have the drugs to help me like you did. I really wish I do.

You held us together. When we bickered, you'd stop it dead in its tracks. You kept us under control. You were always there. Was it the pressure that made you do it? Maybe it was the names that everyone called you, even though it's odd to think that silly words like 'satanist,' 'fag,' and 'pervert' could put you to the edge.

You didn't leave a note, a diary, or a single written record of what drove you to overdose on absinthe and pills. You burned every picture, story, song, and memory we ever shared in the fireplace in your living room. You drowned out the last of our innocence in alcohol and numbed our happiness with pills.

If someone drove you to do this, you should have said something. I would have killed them for you.

Do you know what it's like to mourn the suicide of your best friend, your lover, for nine weeks? Do you know what it's like to touch the white makeup smears on my dresses that I got from you and feel nothing but emptiness? Do you know what it's like to see your best friends haunted with the images you left in their minds? Do you know what it's like to want to tear out you hair and cut out your eyes and rip off your skin because you just don't know what to do with yourself anymore?

Of course you don't, Marilyn. You were too busy dying to notice.