Survival

Gravity was just one of those things. It brought me down enough times, why not the girl on the second level balcony? Why not the crunch of her bones against the cement of the bar floor? There was no reason why she wasn’t to be brought down by gravity, all jiggling boobs and curves like a fine piece of turn of the century furniture; the sixteenth century. In all honesty, had I not been performing, it could have been me, spastically swindling my way through crowds of faceless people, their breathing being my very bane. There was something almost sinister about the girl’s death, though. The black look in her eyes was almost malevolent as I jumped off of the stage, running towards the action while everyone else either ran or looked on in morbid fascination, pushing the tiny lit-up buttons of their cell phones feverishly. Now was not the time to gossip, as her lips turned blue and cyanotic, the tip of her nose cold with sweat, her blue eyes in shades of lavender, cast over lids. She couldn’t feel her legs, she said through gasps as her ability to breathe was lost, and I assumed spinal injury, using a mediocre knowledge of first aid to not move her from that spot.

Of course, there was nothing to be done. A fall like this didn’t kill, not normally, but she landed in just the right position to break one of her topmost vertebrae, leaving her literally breathless. That’s what I kept telling myself, continuously, like a mantra to comfort me in the night. It’s what the coroner told me as she was wheeled away, but despite their careful commendation of the accidental scene, there remained the smallest trace of blood, on my fingers. Like two drag marks from a dead body, a duo of thick red streaks, drying brown on my index finger from where I checked her pulse. Where I checked her pulse. In the heat of the moment the two nearly circular holes were just a hickey to ignore in the greater face of saving her life.

If I had saved her life, if I had been able to do something more than watch and pray to whatever-up-high that this mindless piece of flesh so similar to those that I had been scorned by through high school would live, it would have been forgotten. Unfortunately, her life was extinguished and now my mind raced with questions of her whereabouts and of her untimely demise. Was it a boyfriend? Could it have been a frisk or quickie with a bit of extra inebriation, gone too far? Images like those from television, as if someone else saw them, flipped through my head like flashcards before I landed on the split second sight of the puncture marks. They were less dissimilar to marks made by a barbeque skewer than anything else. Marks like that held a mystery that only the dead girl and the cause of the scarring could show me.

Briefly, I reflected on the mere impossibilities that it could entail before returning to the land of sanity and bad times. It was minutes before I could move, bright orange shock blanket wrapped around my shoulders as I sat in the second ambulance following my interrogation, sorry, questioning. It was an hour after the police had dropped me in an empty home before I realized the worst part of the night: I didn’t even know her name.

Sleep was never an easy bedmate of mine, and this night was no different, except it didn’t come home to my room at all, much like my mother. A deep part of me knew that she was out trying to forget herself and focus on a new life, but the shallowest waters of my emotions swam with sharks of abandonment, feelings of loneliness only increased ten-fold by her absence. Though sanctimony was not my most common feature, my maker was the one person in the world who I could cry to if I needed very much to do so. Right now, I didn’t need to cry so much as I needed a catalyst to make me feel anything at all. The penetrating numbness ran down my fingertips and through each bone segment, settling on an ample pain in my wrists caused by the (though shortened) hours of strumming and fretting that went on. Needless to say, I had forgotten the wonderful feeling of being on stage in the moments of mass chaos, also losing any pride I had in my own accomplishment tonight. All because I could neither save her nor could I solve the mystery of the marks in her neck.

Oh God. I went to the bathroom sink, practically running in my haste, looking at the brick colored gook dried into the little imperfections of skin on my frantic digits. Placing a ginger hand on the faucet, I rinsed off cells that no longer lived, cells borne from a woman, a little girl no less, who now was dead in a world of the living. Tired, and still without shedding a tear, I rubbed patiently with the foaming white bubbles of soap, the amorphous lace that meshed over my hands in basicity as I removed the last traces of blood. Feeling small ringlets of obsidian black hair sticking with a half-adhesive luster to the back of my neck, I decided a shower was in order, a long one. Following that activity, I would most certainly take a bath to soak out the purely emotional aches resulting from the night of trauma.

Twenty minutes later, far past midnight by the roman numerals on the art-deco sunburst clock on the wall, I found a newfangled emotion to intertwine nicely with the others. Guilt besieged me. An impenetrable guilt like fog cast over an ocean coast, cut only by the sound of the fog horn and the blasphemous words from sailor’s dirty mouths. No lighthouse shown in my scenario of guilt. There was no good reason that I should be enjoying the heat of the water in every crevice of my body while the nameless girl enjoyed needles and tests and her intestines being ripped out in autopsy. Then she would take her own bath of a sort, embalming fluid pushing out every once-living bit of blood from her veins, replacing it with its sterile porcelain preserves.

Giving up on the idea of enjoying myself ever again, a sour taste caught in the back of my throat like vomit, I stood up, currents of water running down my skin almost pleasantly. Grievous thoughts tickled my senses, if stabbing were a contemporary of tickling, that is. What if she had killed herself? What if she was being abused? What if…

Stop. Please. I told myself to stop over and over again, letting the counter-wave break down the cinder block wall of what ifs, tearing at the mortar and taking it down in a big old blast of red octagonal stop sign. Letting the knots come out of my back, I stepped back into the bath tub, determined to let my mind wander to the happiest place it had ever been… screw that. I grabbed a cigarette, lit up, and let the nicotine focus my mind on anything but the possibilities.

In growing horror, I watched the girl play at her silly debut, watching the blur of her downward typical strum as she played some boring teeny-bopper song about a boyfriend. I hoped no self-respecting boy would associate with her, but I also hoped that for the sake of the Slayer line. The entire reason the First was back was… well, Buffy. It all started with her flagrant sociality and cheer. From there it turned into sharing the Slayer gift with every Potential. Of course, it wasn’t an immediate discourse to failure, hell; it worked for a few years, Slayers and comrades alike getting vacations up the wazoo. The organization was a worldwide phenomenon, and it worked too. But then there were signs…
Earthquakes selectively occurring beneath Slayer bases, civil wars erupting just over the hill from said bases, and the bombs high tailing over there, they were sights to see. Craters, burned bodies; I worked at the first place to get hit, a reformed hovel in an English village, we thought the disguise would keep us safe, but apparently all the forces of the earth, supernatural and natural, were vying for our blood. Well, not our blood exactly, but the hemoglobin of the Slayers spilt upon the ground was amicable enough for them.

And that’s what the bastards (okay, the essence of evil) got. They killed Buffy, sent the Slayers away from each other, and abolished them all within a few short months. Gaining the scythe from Buffy, the First undid Willow’s magic.

And then it was over. As I sat on the balcony, sipping scotch that had a mustier scent than the Watcher’s Council’s library-that-was, a girl was over too. Over the balcony, her body falling over and the unmistakable scent of her blood laced the air. I did not bother to rush over. I could feel the death already; I had seen enough of it to recognize its friendly face. How am I going to be able to take it if she dies, how will I survive? What if I get as close as I did with the other girls. Oh, god, their bodies. Already sickened at the age old humdrum of humans around one of them that no longer was, I rushed out, ready to hurl. From this, I answered my own questions. I’m not going to survive.

My thoughts on the matter of this girl ceased as another fell from above, a wasted little blonde, falling from the second floor balcony like a waterfall of hair and tits. My head turned immediately to the female on stage, worried at her reaction, if it broke the artist. Needless to say, I was impressed within moments. Rushing over there as if the nameless girl was her own sister (though I knew she had none), she performed rudimentary first aid.

She actually cared. About people. About everyone. That would make her a stronger artist once she gained a fandom. She would be great.

The funny thing is, I started… losing the lyrics. In the bathtub as the water cooled to Luke-warm and the ashes flicked from my cigarette coated the skin of the liquid like an ephemeral lace of charcoal, I lost my mind. I began to sing, to see if my voice had stressed itself, to see if I had some emotional laryngitis. Of course, there was no such thing and my voice was as pleasant as ever, but I couldn’t remember the fucking words. The one song, my own song that I was singing when the girl… when her puppet strings broke and she fell out of the marionette line, the puppeteer that was life losing a disciple. I couldn’t remember the fucking words and my throat started to hurt, the pulling muscle feeling that preceded sobbing. A tingling sensation clicked in the backs of my eyes, the jumbled words becoming stressed as if a ramrod were stuck down my throat. As the water became even colder, warmth unpleasantly akin to blood that consisted of tears rained down my face, hiding in the creases of my eyes and then pouring over.

As I shook my head and blinked as much as I could to rid myself of the translucent streaks they just came down more like the pounding of rain after the showers had left everyone frazzled, frizzy haired, and without umbrellas. I had no umbrella to protect the tears from falling down to my lips, dripping in through my open mouth, the salt bitter against my teeth as my tongue licked up the stinging concoction of death and sadness.
I decided, as the torrent of salt water came with less frequency, that forgetting the words was okay. I didn’t need them anyways.