Sid and the Last Five Years

They ordered me to lie down, to just 'sit and try to be calm,' but this was not a placid environment, this was a toxic wasteland of horror and fixed imagination. They treated it as such a grotesque incident, as if what I had just done had permanently marked me as the unattractive, psychologically-fucked-up human being. “I'll be fine,” I promised in a haze. I hadn't quite gathered all my thoughts to know exactly what was happening, everything seemed so foggy. My body was tense, and it burned, the sound of my burnt flesh cooking on medium-high. “I was just joking,” I said hysterically, in a midst of laughter and boiling tears. Aches and pains flooded my body, but I felt as if I had been drugged with the strongest, thickest of opiates. “It was a joke, don't you understand?”

I kept fading in and out of a dream, in and out.

Everyone stood around me, as if I were some caged animal, the latest zoo attraction. They looked taller, leaner, peering over me like skyscrapers. Each set of legs was tooth-pick thin, stretching out for miles. The ceiling appeared higher, I could barely make out their faces in the fog, in the distance. I was lying down, looking up at the godly figures, dressed in suits. Their eyes bulged and bloodshot, their lips curled into their pale, shockingly gray-white face; they all looked as if they hadn't been hydrated for years on end, from what I could make out. It looked like some unnatural Hell that Sid put me in.

“You guys are silly! Why are you looking at me like that?” I was attempting to scream, genuinely trying to communicate, but it was useless, it was almost as if I wasn't alive. I was getting the attention I called for, but no one understood- They looked at me like I was some illiterate fool with nothing better to do than sit in the spiderweb and twitch like the little fly I was. “Please-”

In and out.

Their voices were droned out, the room grew dark. Their porcelain white faces illuminated. I looked over for something to grab, I felt like I was falling into nothing- a hand on my back, a hand on my leg- a whisper in the ear. They were gone, just like Sid had gone when the lights were turned on; they were gone.

Don't eat me, don't eat me.

The hot moisture in my ear, in my head, engulfing it in heat, “You're alright. You're fine. You're safe.” The voice was oddly familiar, the melodic tone it carried in the simplest of conversations, the comfort it held, the nourishment it gave me- It was maternal, it was caring. It wasn't my mother.

Her hand was warm like her breath, soft like creamy milk- or the egg nog you buy at the stores around Christmas and drink with your family around the fire place and watch classic Christmas movies and anticipate the next morning and think about all the presents you're going to get and you're so excited because that egg nog was just too damn great, you want to pause the moment, you don't even want Christmas morning because that egg nog that you sip slowly to savor you want to savor the moment with your family in the room all together because they won't be together next year because there won't be another Christmas because when October fifth comes around you won't even get a Halloween so let's not get too greedy and wish for Christmas already because it's the last fucking Christmas you'll ever have so you better just drink your egg nog before everything happens all at once and you fucking choke. Before I drink too much egg nog, before it's not in season, because alcohol is always in season, and my mother's a very seasonal gal. It all happens so fast, but not fast enough.

And I blinked, Ms. Andreq's larger hands holding mine tightly. “You're going to be fine.” She wasn't on fire, in fact, she was quite cold, she hadn't gone down with Sid- And in fact, neither had I.

“What happened? Where am I?” I questioned like the diluted person I was, as often as most watery, unstable people in “accidents” do. The room still resembled as small and confined as a closet, like the familiar Playground of Sid. Ms. Andreq looked down at me with eyes of admiration, as if I were some wounded hero who had fought for our country ; I wasn't.

“You're in the nurses office,” she replied with a muffled voice, one that sounded distant and unattached. “You took a hard fall, Elli- I'm surprised you're alright.” My hand lingered on hers for a time longer than it should have, but as she retracted from me, I felt myself alone like I was before.

And then, the pain kicked in. A sharp, irritating jolt awoke my body with fire, with electricity. My lips felt as if a needle had been injected into them multiple times, external pain, the skin raw and bloody, peeling away. My nose felt like my lips, Beyond the pain that felt like a few extreme scrapes and cuts, my head pulsed with a vexatious pattern, like a phone that never stopped ringing. Rrrring, pause. Rrrring, pause. Rrrrrrrrrrrring.

I slapped my hand to my face, wiping my lips off, the blood smearing as I did so. It now occurred to me that what I endured, what I saw, was not what everyone else had witnessed- They hadn't seen the fire, felt the heat, they weren't burned, it wasn't real to them; It never happened.

“Oh my fucking God, my head hurts,” I complained, tears uncontrollably falling from my eyes, down my cheeks. The more I talked, the more my voice echoed; the more I spoke, the more it hurt. “I'm sorry,” I apologized, “it hurts.”

Her crystal eyes spoke of sympathy, but were also very direct when she said, “I need to know what happened, Elli. People said you screamed, then fell to the floor- like something, literally picked you up and flung you onto the cafeteria floor. What happened?” My eyes started to adjust the the unnatural lighting in the office, and the room began to shrink back to normal size, the noises were clear, followed by the picture, it was as if I were some old cabled television in stormy weather that couldn't get a proper signal.

“It was a practical joke,” I lied, my teeth not sitting correctly in my mouth when I did so. As I heard myself speak, I had the annoying squeal, like a door where the hinges didn't sit exactly right, and every time it was budged, a loud, long squeak emitting from it. “Sorry, I know you're probably really confused. I, uh-” Stuttering to come up with a straight, believable alibi that wouldn't send me somewhere where the food was blande, dry and gray, along with the people, I found myself stumped, tripping over words.

“I'm not quite sure I understand you, Elli,” Ms. Andreq sighed, as if she had waited for me to get a proper state of mind, and once I finally had it, I was speaking nonsense because- Well, I was.

“You probably won't, I just- The joke wasn't funny, I didn't pull it off right... In the midst, I fell to the floor and hurt my head a little, that's all... What'd my parents say it was when I was little?... Oh yeah, a boo-boo. It was just a boo-boo.” From what I had recollected of this moment, and often I do think of this moment and how I could have said something much more rich, in depth or even a little more detailed to prove I wasn't all that bad, wasn't just another weird teenager with more weird problems, but I didn't- And from what I recollected, I sounded like one who is psychologically wronged. “I don't, nevermind...”

“So you're alright, then?” she asked, placing the back of her hand on my forehead, to check if I had a higher temperature than the typical human being. “You're not running a fever...” She was more motherly to me than my own Mom had ever been. “I don't know if I should send you back to your-”

“Don't send me home, I'll just go back to class. What is it- Middle of fourth period?” But it wasn't the middle of fourth period, or the middle of fifth, it was fifteen minutes until school was out, and I was out, I had been out, for a long time. “I'll just go back to sixth period and wait like everyone else until school gets out. Why should I get proper treatment for a joke that had gone wrong?” It wasn't a joke, I was lying through my gritted teeth, I knew it and Ms. Andreq wasn't half as dimwitted as I made her out to be. She had a puzzled look on her face, deciding whether or not she could keep me for the last quarter of the hour or release me to go ruin things, people and places with my insanity elsewhere.

Ms. Anreq was like a well-read book, the pages frayed, some pages torn, there was even those pages where you spilled something on them and just left it to naturally dry. She had been frayed, torn and got shit spilled on her, basically her whole life. Since she was much younger than the older teachers preaching up into their late fifties and early sixties, she didn't get the respect she should have, and people mistook her for some “rich girl who had it easy” her whole life. I wasn't assuming or making this stereotype up either, all the other kids my age knew, and Ms. Andreq knew it too. So when asked to make a decision, big or small, I felt like she was trying to prove something to herself, that she WAS important, that she DID have responsibility, that people DID need her. Even if it was for something minor to hold me here for the remainder of the day.

“Go, but I'll send someone with you,” she concluded, taking a short, brief step outside the nurse's office to grab a boy, probably sent into the main office for in-school-suspension or something that had to do with trouble, and ushered him into the room. Just as soon as he was ushered in, both of us were ushered out, as if we had been birthed into the new world from a stuffy, sterilized room like we both had been once before.

He was tall and lean, the guy I was forced to walk with. His name was Eric, and I knew a lot about him, not by choice, but I had picked up adjectives from the girls around school, in the halls, in the commons. He didn't do sports, yet he had the social status of the captain of the football team. Every girl swooned over him, as if they were an eager bird just awaiting for the Mama bird to push it off the edge of the large nest overlooking the huge incline, wanting it's chance to fly. Eventually, every girl got their chance to fly; Eric got around. I had eavesdropped and overheard the long, dark love stories about how Eric whisked them away, off their feet to a place like no other and well- took their virginity, screwed them over and damned them to eternal disparity. The tale of joy and love ended there, when he was on with another girl and the other six from the previous month were sitting, sobbing their poor little eyes out because 'he told me he loved me! He told me FOREVER.' He was quite scary and intimidating, but with his good looks, large vocabulary and way around the game, he could play however he wanted to.

His skin was tan, naturally I had assumed, yet he did not appear to be Hispanic, with an off-brown color accenting his green eyes. Black, curly hair grew his head, covered in an army-green bini. “I'm Elli,” I said after the first awkward seconds of silence passed by.

“Eric.”

I kept my eyes pointed at my shoes, my beat up, raggedy, old, mud-encrusted shoes. Boys never talked to me, so what was I doing trying to form a subtle conversation or even small talk, with them? Especially the one that was so well-known, well-liked and hated, why would I even try to communicate with him? He obviously wanted nothing to do with me from the one word answer and the distance as we walked alo-

“I knew your name, you know. We've been going to school together since the sixth grade.” Shit, now I just came off insane, stupid AND rude. I bet he had a few other words he kept to himself about me, words like flat-chested and greasy red hair, words like weird, words like crazy. “It's fine,” he said, answering the words I only thought but never said, “you obviously have a lot more going on at home to be worried about people at school.”

'You know, he's right Elli. You do have too much going on to be worrying about some silly little boy who can't keep his penis to himself. You have me to worry about, don't you? You have your own life, your sanity to worry about. Because how many times have you said 'insane' lately? Count. It'll make you go insane.'