Suburbia

I don’t know how long I ran for, all I know is every time my panting, aching body begged me to stop I could see the black tar dripping behind my lids and I kept running. I ran until my muscles cried in anguish and my lungs burned holes through my rib cage.

And then I stopped.

My whole body seems to wheeze up and down and I clutch my hand to my side to hold my stitch which is threatening to unravel my body. Then I look around me: Eve’s house, I have run to Eve.

The night is quiet and all I can hear is the faint rushing of wind through leaves and the soft tinkle of a wind chime some distance away. I peer up at Eve’s bedroom window that seems to wink at me in the moonlight.

I can feel him. As the wind wraps around my body and rustles through my hair I can feel him. His soft heartbeat echoes quietly next to mine and if I listen closely I can hear his calm words sailing in the wind, the quiet backdrop that was always there. He is here, I knew he couldn’t really be gone, not really, not Craig.

I feel understanding break over me like a wave and I have to tell someone, no, not someone: Eve. I lift a pebble from the floor by my feet and throw it up to hit the glass of her window. Nothing. I throw another and then another but no ghostly white figure appears at her window frame.

Where is she? Doesn’t she understand how important this is? Doesn’t she understand that she needs to know, everyone needs to know!

“Eve! Eve I need to show you something!” I call up to her, half whispering, half crying. “He’s here Eve, he’s here! He’s all around us! I saw him on the road but it wasn’t him, it was a creature but that doesn’t matter now because he’s all around us, he’s in the air, he’s in our lungs!”

Still her soft, willow figure doesn’t appear and I become desperate, she has to know, I have to tell someone.

“Eve! I can hear him! I can hear him, Eve! Listen and tell me I’m not crazy!” my cries are becoming desperate but then I hear a sudden rustling behind me.

I turn and Eve is stood there, a strange look on her face.

“There you are! Did you not here me? He’s here, he’s all around us! Can’t you feel him? He’s everywhere, he’s not gone, he’s been with us the whole time, listen and you’ll hear him, he’s talking, always talking, just like he used to!” I let out a peel of laughter that echoes down the silent road. I can feel a hot steam of elation, rising through my body, lifting me up into the atmosphere.

“So you really are as crazy as they say.”

My feverish panting suddenly catches in my throat and my heart drops with a leaden clunk.

Vanessa.

I can see it now in here cat like prowling and twisted eyes.

“God, I didn’t know whether to believe it before but you sure can put on a show, Leland!”

I stare at her a few moments, Eve so close yet so far away, like cruel salvation dangled out of reach.

“Are you gonna say something or just stare?”

I choke as I try to cough out my words, “Can I just talk to Eve? I need her right now,” I pause before uttering, “Please.”

“Aw come on Leland, I just got here! We have so much to talk about! Tell me, what were you saying about Craig being here?” Vanessa purrs softly, “You can’t really believe that Leland, you of all people? I mean you pretty much saw the life go out of him, some might say you even took it out of him.”
I swallow the tennis ball that seems to have lodged itself into my throat, “Please,” my voice wavers,

“Not now, I just need Eve right now, just please not now.”

Vanessa pulls her face closer to mine and sighs deeply, her hot breath rushing over me like a waterfall from her lips, “God, I just love it when you beg… do it again.”

“Please,” I shiver in the cold that has suddenly rushed over me.

“Mmm,” Vanessa moans, closing her eyes, “I really could just eat you up, Leland.”

Suddenly her eyes snap open, “Why aren’t you happy to see me, huh? I’m much better than prudish little Eve, come on baby, tell me your secrets, tell me about Craig.”

“I don’t want to.” I tell her, turning my face away.

“Come on, you were positively bursting a second ago!” she purrs as she strokes my hair back from my face.

“No” I tell her forcefully, “I won’t.”

Vanessa’s eyes turn cold and her acid sweetness evaporates as she pushes me to the ground with a force I don’t think even Jackson has. I fall back onto the mossy grass and try to push myself back to standing with my elbows but suddenly Vanessa is on top of me, pinning me to the ground with her thighs.

“I said tell me about Craig or do I have to remind you of our little discussion about Eve the other night?”

I swallow nervously as Vanessa brings her face next to mine, as she whispers, her lips brushing against mine, “Now Mr. Matthews,” She whispers seductively, “describe in detail the events of last Saturday night…”

Last Saturday night, was it really only then that my life was ripped open and spilled gushing to the floor?

Vanessa waits for me to speak but I don’t say anything; I only turn my face away from hers. She instead turns to my neck and starts to bite and tease it with her lips and teeth.

“What were the last words you ever said to him, huh?” Vanessa purrs, “Come on, you can at least tell me that, no gory details there is there? Go on, I’m dying to know.”

“I don’t know,” I manage to gasp out.

“Sure you do, you’ve got to have been running them through your minds over and over, right? Isn’t that the traditional mourning status quo?” Vanessa brings her hands to my chest and starts to unbutton the shirt Eve gave to me earlier, “Or have you not been mourning? Is it true what people are saying? That you knew? That it was a suicide pact? Hey, if you end up doing it, can I watch?”

Suddenly, Vanessa’s nails dig into my chest hard enough to draw blood. I had been lying there as if I were a corpse but suddenly my veins seem to be rushing with such speed I can feel it thrumming beneath my skin, my mind thrown into such frenzy as for me to see colours swimming behind my vision. I suddenly roll to the side, so quickly that Vanessa hasn’t time to clamp her legs tighter around me and I jump to my feet and I start to run.

I run away from Vanessa and I run away from Eve, I run away from torment and I run away from salvation. I can’t have one without the other and my mind splits in two as I try to choose.

I run without turning back and I hear a static in my ear that is louder than silence and I run and run and run. I am always running, always running away and I have nowhere to go.