à la folie

She actually did it. After all these years, she finally did it.

Admitted maybe I wasn’t quite right.

The desk in front of me was made of cloudy glass and silver metal; a lonely plant pot lingered in one corner of the desk, the plastic plant within a dull faded green, the flower a near invisible shade of cyan. My chair was structured so I had no choice but to sit up-right or face having the annoying curve dig uncomfortably into my spine, it was made from a black plastic which the surface of was smooth in the most irritating of ways.

I couldn’t transfer across how much I hated this room with its disgusting blue walls and obnoxious large windows slanting into the blue oblivion of hell above, how I hated the smell of paint and aerosol; how I hated the way they looked at me.

How I hated that I was noticing all this. Why couldn’t I just drift off, back to my blue/black void with pretty stars I hated and grey smoke choking my mind.

“Fleance?”

What a stupid name. Who gave me that fucking stupid name then ditched me in a hell house to rot and burn in poverty and blood. Then be rejected from one of the people I thought cared, why did they make me drift away from everything and not sleep, or think or just-

“Fleance?” I was getting a headache. My brain hurt. My vision was too blue, what is wrong with my existence. Lives are for living. I just exist.

“You’re time is up, you can go”

I did.

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[Intellectually unbalanced]
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Coffee always tasted better in the mornings, I thought. Of course it always tasted the same, but in the morning the caffeine rush was just so much more refreshing. Cigarettes felt better in the morning to, they got me going and kept me going.

“Fleance?” That sounded familiar. I looked up to be met by the site of Lesley starting at me in surprise, cigarette in between his fingers. A bruise covered one of his cheeks, it was silvery blue and painful looking. He was wearing a green hoodie.

Lesley came and sat down next to me, pulling his legs up onto the bench so he was facing me. He sat still, observing me quietly for a while.

“Where were you?” I eventually asked, resisting the urge to reach out and touch him. I knew I would hate the contact, but I couldn’t help the craving. He leaned back a bit in his position, sucking hard on his cigarette.

“Ill” He let the smoke from his lungs and glanced over at me to see how I would take his answer. Ill. It made sense, kind of.

“Cheek” I said, not needing anymore words to get across to him what I wanted.

“Dizzy, fell over and blacked out, I think I hit it on something but sure as hell does it hurt like a bitch” He let out a bark of laughter, it was bitter and hard and not something I was used to. I flinched. He rubbed his cheek with his lips retracting away from his teeth, then took his hand away and rested it by his side.

“Gerard?” He coughed on the smoke from his cigarette, leaning forward instinctively. I watched him head tilted to the side. He looked so pretty damaged.

Lesley recovered and angrily threw the cigarette to the ground, mumbling something about dying. He shifted his position a little, and then glanced down at the coffee in my hands.

“Wait here a minute will you? I need a dose” I nodded but he was already gone, crossing the square to Barley's with his small legs and hay gold hair.

In a few moments, he returned looking a lot happier, a foam coffee mug nursed between his two hands. He sat down next to me, sitting properly this time, and raised the mug to his lips.

“Shit I missed this coffee. My sister can’t make coffee for her life, it’s like Peter’s Cafes coffee” He took another sip as he hesitated “Well, maybe not that bad, at least it didn’t have rat poison in” I smiled tightly at this, like I was meant to when he made a joke. My cheeks hurt at the unexpected exercise, I hadn’t smiled in a while I guess.

“How have you been Fleance?” Lesley asked, suddenly becoming very intense with the way he was looking at me. I shifted uncomfortably.

“I’m alright” I tugged my sleeves down further down my arm with my fingers, having set my coffee down on the bench. Lesley’s eyes flicked to my wrists then back, some odd light coming into his eyes.

“Can I see your wrists?” My blood was thumping fast. What. I shook my head, picking up my coffee again and pressing my arms further into my sides, so they were harder to access and prise off if he tried that. I didn’t want him to touch me.

“Fleance; let me see your wrists”

“No” I muttered, taking a sip and staring down at my squished cigarette on the broken-brick floor. God, I needed another one.

“Fleance...” He trailed off, I sneaked a glance and his eyes seemed lost in space as he stared at some point behind my head. I hope it wasn’t the space with ugly platinum and yellow stars.

“I guess I can’t make you do something you don’t want to” There was nothing there. Just skin. Why did he want to see that? Ugly, pale skin.

“Okay” Lesley sighed and cast his eyes downwards at the ground.

“You know, I knew this girl once. She was really pretty, one of those girls people die for. Nice too, she couldn’t stop helping people. And her dad, her dad was a drunk idiot, and he wanted his daughter to be pretty and thin, with blonde hair and blue eyes. So this girl, she dyed her hair blonde and wore bright blue contacts, she wouldn’t eat and wore so much make-up, she reminded me a doll.” He paused. I sat, head to the side, confused. “Well, she was so thin, like a stick. But she never thought she was thin enough, you know? Always had a new goal, always a new number”

“Then one day, she didn’t come into school. Then the next, and the next and so on. She never came back into school; no-one ever saw her again. The school closed her file, her house was deserted and her friends knew nothing. Then they found this piece of paper, in her room, when the police finally looked into it. It was something from her diary, and it just crushed me, I can’t explain” he ran his hand through his hair

“It said, word to word: ‘I’m blonde and I have blue eyes. I’m blonde and I have blue eyes and I’m skinny. I’m blonde and I have blue eyes and I’m skinny and I’m pretty’” He choked, then coughed, staring hard at his shoes. “I miss her still, sometimes. I didn’t know her too well, but she would come up to me and tell me my hair was like the sun, and my eyes were like a meadow” Then he stopped talking. And he didn’t carry on, just stared at his shoes and smoked, slowly.

“Why are you telling me this?” he tugged at his belt.

“Don’t disappear, Fleance. Don’t ever disappear”

I nodded, not quite understanding where he had got this from, but over-whelmed by all the words, and the sky, and the noise.

Maybe I wasn’t quite right in the head.