Whispers of Reverie.

Yesterday, I put a cherrybomb in my mouth.
I lit it up. I tasted blood.
And here I am.
With a dead cherrybomb in my mouth. I tried to swallow it before I exploded, but it didn't fit my throat. I knew I should've bought the smaller bright pink one. It's a pretty soft color, but I had to buy the red one. I thought its remains would've been lost in all my blood. Not lost really, hidden. Hidden is a better word.
Yeah. I put a cherrybomb in my mouth, lit it up, and it went boom. That's what a kid would say. If he had a mouth after that.
I still had mine, don't worry. It's just jagged and useless now. Don't fret, reader. You're wondering why this crazy girl did what she did?
Well, it started with me loving her who loved him who loved me. Confused yet?

It's about to get uglier.

*

"You alright?" No, I'm not. That's what I thought at the time, but I couldn't say it out loud. I didn't have the guts. Not really, I just didn't want her to ask more questions. She didn't think much of my answers anyways, she was going to cheer me up regardless. And I just don't feel like cheering the hell up.
Let me mope.

"I'm fine." is what I said. And she kept quiet for now.

"You fine?" She's asking him now.

"No," he says. He has all the guts in the world, is what ran through my mind. I really hated that about him. His mouth never spilt a lie. Mine never stopped. And she's just caught up between us trying to figure lies from truths. She still can't figure out truth or fiction. Stupid-girl-that-I-fell-in-love-with.

Three people. In a room. With The Devil. He's whispering to me to lie, he's whispering to him to give me those looks, he's whispering to her to keep pestering us. The Devil's whispering evil things into her mind, into mine, into his. He's telling us to kill each other. Me to strangle him, her to shoot me, him to stab her. It's a circle of death that only that sneaky sneaky Devil could weave.

"Why you not fine?" She's wearing her sympathetic eyes and holding his hands while I'm glaring at them. That way no-one'd know who I was jealous of. Him or her?

"Not well. Not feelin' well." He lets out heavy warm breaths on her hands. He lifts her green-ink-stained fingers to his cheeks and looks down. He's not feeling well, I can tell. He's not lying.

"Where?" She's fawning all over him and shivering at the touch of his skin, wishing she washed her dirty hands before she came into this suffocating room.

"My chest, my head and in this room. 'M really not feelin' well." He slips a look at me then looks back at her stained fingers. He gets up, she gets up as well, and he goes to face that old black and white TV set. His eyes are on the screen now, he's watching his reflection. No, he's watching everything moving in the background of the screen.

It was strange. Seeing us like this. It's like we're stuck in a snow globe. No progress whatsoever. Whenever you shake it the fake little dots of white keep coming back to the ground. Imagine what they feel: no chance of ever becoming real snowflakes. They're not cold, not really snow-white, not water.
We're stuck in a snow globe.
All transparent and you can see the glass barrier. We can never get up another level. We always come to the ground with our little palms pitifully feeling up the warm glass and pressing, pressing, pressing with no avail. We only make transparent tear-shaped prints. We just have longing looks for a dream-reality confined behind a barrier.

We always come back to the ground.

We're best friends, right? Best friends should know better than this. Two girls and a boy. If it was the other way around it would've been better. We'd be able to shut our feelings out, 'cause that's what boys do, right? Right? Girls tear each other’s insides through smiles and under-surface jealousy. But we can't bottle it up for too long.

We're lighting up our firecracker looks with each and every whisper Mr. Devil slips in our minds.

She's wearing her masque and sliding next to my skin. Clinging to my arm and telling me, "You're not okay, are you?"

"I'm okay; stop asking over and over." Just go fucking ask him over and over. He won't mind answering you. You know he won't.
The Devil's whispering more things. And we keep on listening. Three people in a room with Mr. Devil.

"If I don't ask over and over you'd just keep quiet. I want to hear your voice." You want to hear his more than mine, but you can't say that out loud, can you?

"Why can't I get you to cling to me like that?" He says, a little too loud. We both know who he means, but we're pressing it in our chests and being oh-so-stupid-and-ditzy.

"'Cause not all girls are that desperate." And you know that. She's looking at me with puppy-dog eyes and I'm ignoring her. Had to be said, it had to be said, even for all the wrong reasons.

This is a heartwrenching situation that you should thank God, or whatever it is up there, that you're not involved in. It's a sad sad fact, but truth is we're all like little boys and girls getting pissy over our favorite toy; the one we wanted the most while window-shopping with our mommies and daddies. Maybe it isn't love, maybe it is. What is love anyways? It's just a word with no substance. They say you know it when it slaps you in the face offgaurd. They say it's these feelings scrunched up in your chest, waiting for to explode once you see that person. And they say it's when you want someone bad.
And I think I have those feelings. I think. But I wasn't going to let them go.
And I want her.

I just do. But she doesn't want me. Truth's a bitch, we all knew that. She and life are sisters, didn't you hear?

The room's drowning in heavy sluggish breaths and stares stuck to the floor and sewn to the air. It's a sad sad place to be where your chest just hurts; you're not choking, I know I wasn't. You're not being strangled, my neck's hands-free. You're not fifty and carrying fatty clogged arteries, my heart's still red. You're just stuck, with me, in this suffocating room that won't let us be. You're stuck with me, her, him and The Devil.

The Devil's sweetly telling her to melt into my arms and tangle her hot sanguine fingers into mine. Can you hear my heartbeat? It's pounding in my ears, my neck, my ribs and my shoulderblades. And he can see that. He can see my heartbeat as he twines his legs together and keeps wearing that pokerface of his. He can't say anything or he'd just start World War Three. We'd just starting tearing at each other's limbs and throats.
You know when your little sisters fight over that poor pathetic Barbie doll and they start shredding her to pieces just so the other one doesn't get to play with it? If I can't have it, no-one can?

Well, we're all just poor pathetic Barbie dolls. The three of us, sitting with The Devil.

"What would you do if you wanted something you couldn't get?" he asks, "just a question. What would you do if you wanted something you couldn't get?" And he waits for an answer. He needs to be gutted right now. I want him to be. Can't keep his mouth shut, show-off.

She brings her legs up to her chest and lets go of my arm. And she thinks. She tilts her head, looks at nothingness, twirls her hair, and I'm just watching her. "Would it be something that I can't get my hands on for good?"

"Yeah," he answers, still keeping up that pokerface. I can see the Kings, Queens and Jacks all dancing and frolicking in his eyes. And I just want to: shoot the Queen, shoot the King, shoot the Jack and let the Joker live.

"I guess I'd just . . . give up. Then move on." She smiles at him with her eyes, with her dark imaginary maple lips with those black little cracks like spider webs scattered across her imaginary mouth. "But I'm sure I'd get my hands on what I really want."

"And you?" The dead Queens, Kings and Jacks are smiling at me through his temples once again. Only the Joker is frightened to death, backed in the corner of the whites of his eyes.

"I'd rather hear what you have to say first." They stopped smiling for a second. They're all huddled into one big red and black lump, debating what they should do next.

Then they grinned. One nasty gut-twisting grin. But I didn't really give a damn. I already shot them all: what's to be happy about?

"I'd keep wanting it," he replies calm as a the dawn-sea; the still sleepy sea that was still a virgin to waves. "I'd keep chasing it; even if it doesn't want me back."

"I'd ignore it." But I'm not now. What I want is less than a footstep away. I'd ignore it if I knew I wouldn't get it. I would.

"You'd ignore what you want most?"

"Yeah. I'm not a little girl; not anymore. Ponies don't come flying from mommy and daddy's pocket. Everything you want has a price." And her price tag included World War Three and severing all ties with you and your stupid stupid guts.
And she's just staring at me with those sickeningly big puppy-dog eyes screaming don't be mean! SHUTUP! It's like watching a bunny bare its fangs and start nibbling on your fingerbones.

And I just want to strangle her right here. I love you to death, but right now I can't even stand your breaths next to mine.
I don't want to kill you, so I'll just ignore you.

"But the best things in life are free," she says with everything she has, just to sound a bit assertive.

"My ass," I say, "that only means you don't have to pay in bills and coins. You have to shed sweat, waste time, wear down your body just to maintain those free things."

"Why so optimistic?" His voice is simmering in sarcasm, But I just ignore him as well. I'll ignore everyone in this room and listen to me and me alone. Screw The Devil; I'm so much worse than you, Mr. Made Out of Fire.

The room's in anomie. But we're ritualists. Just on the edge really.
We're giving up on what we want, rejecting it, but we're okay. On the outside. We'll make each other think that we're okay.

But we're really not.

It's just like this: ilikeyoualotilikeyoualotican'tstopthis then it progresses to: iwantyouiwantyou then to: ihateyouidon'twantyoubuti'mlyingandyoudon'tneedtoknowthat.

But it all comes down to this state of anomie our brains are swimming in. No, we're not drowning, we're swimming in it, we wanted to; we just don't know where to stop now.

We is getting sort of annoying. It's just me in this head, right? It's just me and always will be me. So I guess it's better with I. I'm only listening to me now, I already said that. My tongue's twisted over we and it's a stupid thing to think about while he's just waiting for an answer and she's just waiting and pining for him, chest unstable and clenched.

That's no excuse for a cherrybomb in my mouth, right?

But she's just looking at him and making me boil and he's looking at me and making her boil and I'm hearing veins crack as he's smiling, no, smirking at me.

Anger, yearning and apathy all slowcooking in this room, stirred by The Devil's naughty hands.

It's all so FRUSTRATING.

The Devil's melting away every nerve and piece of civility left in the air, I'm ready to tear out a throat, ready to tell them to fuck off, ready to off them myself. I want to break the Barbie before anyone touches it.

It's anomie. RIGHT. IN. THIS. ROOM.
I don't care about we. I care about us. You and me.

Anomie makes you suicidal. I'm so confused already. I know it's wrong to want to die. But anomie is making me stupid, a little five year old tossed into anarchy.

He's the perfect Ken you want for your Barbie when you're ten, she's the smart Barbie you want when you're thirteen, I'm the defected Barbie that never leaves the production line. I'm missing a leg and big chunk of shiny quasi-real hair.

I'm never going to be happy being the Barbie that other Barbies are made of.
The Devil knows that.

I feel sorry for him. The Devil's more human than most of us; better than most of us. He only hurts you; you hurt yourself and everyone around you.
He's only talking to me now. The other two are so far away up their own asses, they don't need The Devil anymore. Dancing volcanoes about to erupt into emotional debris.

The Queens and Jacks are playing catch with the Kings in his eyes; she has carcinogenic tears ready to spread to her whole face; I have The Devil chatting with me.

All doing our own thing between these compact four walls. See? No-one even listens to The poor Devil anymore. Only people like me who think he's a poor pathetic thing.
This room's a pressure cooker with anomie tossed in the mix. The Devil's a great cook.

I can hear the bones snapping in my head. I can hear their little cracks spilling and flooding my mind; hot-wax insanity pouring through my brain and congealing over my eyes. It's blocking my eyesight, it's blocking them, it's anomie and it's making me feel so alone. And I'm full of pathos for the Devil as he's tearing up this thick sheet of camaraderie between these three people, poking holes and pulling the leftover shreds over each pair of eyes. My eyes are already drenched with red wax, they're sealed shut and all I can see is red.

I don't know about her and him but this amorous longing is burning within my neck as camaraderie sheets are being stuffed in my throat. My brain's already dipped in crimson and nothing's real except those sheets bulging from my larynx. It doesn't hurt, but it's tight, it's too tight for my words and answers.

I bet she's still sending those looks at him and he's still looking at me, but I'm in anomie; and my anomie is for me alone.
I can kill you and feel no regret. I can walk naked down the street and light a family on fire and laugh about it.
Anomie is making me crazy. It makes people crazy; just like the Devil's cooking.

"I feel like crying."
It was him.

"Heh. Boys don't cry." Silence seemed to die with that. Like it was never born. He made it suffer, I gave it the lethal injection.

"Neither should girls." He was looking at her. With her stupidly big pretty eyes and fragile neck twisted, tilted at the angle that would make his heart strings just burn up for her. Hopeful stupid girl.
He wants me. But I want you. And you make me want to beat it in your brain. He wants me. I want you. You love him you stupid idiot.
But he'll never love you back. He doesn't know what that's like. I don't know what that's like.

More camaraderie sheets are being shoved in our throats and they hurt like hell. I think I need a whole roll of them to fill the dead void in my chest. Use a scalpel please, Mr. Devil.

You don't even know how pointless love is. You don't know what it even stands for. You're like me and him, but you have the nerve to flutter those eyelashes and hold those tears back. You're holding those tears back at him and pissing me off. Love is just you not wanting to be lonely and needing someone to hug you when you're sad. Love is wanting a best friend, a mother and a saint all rolled in one.
I thought you're smarter than that. I thought you'd pick Want over Love.

I can hear The Devil whispering and camaraderie sheets snapping in my throat and reason cracking like the red wax all over my eyes. I guess some screws are setting themselves free; all thanks to my anomie.

My anomie's making my mind chew my muffled thoughts on its own. It's draining away all my morals and wants; it's making me wear my lacy underwear to Church and pray pray pray for The Devil to stop whispering.

I'm praying in my head; a new my mind is my own church, so thanks Thomas Paine. Thanks a lot. I'm praying, I've been praying since the sun was young, and hell I'm not making any sense anymore since I started using I, right?

Camaraderie sheets and Devil aside, they're thinking. Both of them; did they have a look at their own minds, their own insides? No?
I bet they did. I bet they fell deep deep and The Devil was the one who shoved them. They're too hollow so that's why they're not back yet.

They're too hallow, they needed something to fill them up. Smart people choose Want, naive ones choose Love. Want is more stripped down, abstract and straightforward; it doesn't need fuel because there's no fire. Love needs wood; it needs patience, it needs a strong heart so the flame won't die down. The bigger the flame, the worse the burns after its put out. Smart people choose the easy way out. Not-so-smart . . . stupid people confuse Want with Love.

They're too shallow and lonely and that's why they want; that's why they love. They've been told they need to love to cure that disease called Loneliness; some of us just choose to die draped in ribbons and ribbons of Loneliness. Others fight them off by tooth and claw.

She's sharpening her teeth and he's just an inch of honing his claws and The Devil's buying me blades of refrain, engraved with denial. you see. denial. is the way. denial. is what you should. denial. The Devil's my good friend and he doesn't really care what I want. The Devil doesn't want me, doesn't love me, The Devil's the perfect friend. Your best friend if you give him the chance.

"You're being strange." Like you aren't, little miss Bigtears. Just go and talk to your brain, keep loving him while I sigh.

"Yeah. You're quiet," he mutters, following her remark, eyes downward. Well, talking to The Devil does take time.

"Stop being insane, doll. It won't do ya any good." And I'm looking at where that came from: Mr. Devil with hands stained with molten camaraderie silk.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Devil. They just won't shut up with their Love and Want," I reply, wearing a tawdry smile, tawdry as my anomie sounds. Like ribbons and other pretty fabrics such as gossamer and tulle; anomie sounds like a fabric. And I'm wrapped and wrapped in sheets of anomie and laced with ribbons of camaraderie. Mr. Devil's playing reverie tunes and I'm trying not to suffocate on camaraderie and anomie.

"Repent, girlie. Repent." Mr. Devil's singing the blues and all the tunes are printed on skin rags hung to dry in my mind; right under the blazing thoughts feeding my not-so-sensible common-sense. I should repent. Repent. REPENT. I'm friends with Mr. Devil so I should repent. Even he said so.

Miss Cancer Tears and Mr. Pokerface are looking at me and The Devil with eyes as wide as drained swimming pools.

"Why're you staring?" It's not that strange.

"'Cause you're being weird." she repeats, frightened out of her little mind; all in her big-drained-pool, and I smile, smirk at her.

"I'm not being weird." I just realized that I may not want her that much. I want to listen and bob my head to The Devil's tunes and reverie; he's the perfect friend. He's the one feeding me anomie. My anomie.

"Where're you goin'?" he asks, watching my frame wriggle off the chair and push her love-stained body away. I'm not even thinking about him, his Want, or hers when I walk out of the room with Mr. Devil trotting behind me, waving back at the girl with the ready-made tears and the boy with the wild Jokers and Jacks in his eyes. Rolling in and rolling out of my mind, The Devil smiles, walking, tossing, turning and twisting in the spaces surrounding me and my mind.

He follows me and she follows him and I'm following Mr. Devil into the street. It's so beautiful, my anomie, that is. It is. I'm eating it up like a baby on dope.
"Stop running away from me!" he shouts, upset; he's upset that I'm running away obviously. That my Want is not like his. It's not that easy to decipher; my Want is useless as her Love. He wants-loves me; I only see want. I only want. To want doesn't require being wanted back, it's irrelevant. To be wanted and wanted back, that's Love. Hell and even being loved is not the same as loving. It's all a confusing jumble of words that doesn't make any sense to me. Who the hell decided what meaning we should attach to each word? Why does his Want have to be like my Want? Why does her Love have to be different from his Want? Why do we have to be different at all? We can call all these coquettish words, these brilliant words that're put on pedestals through ages, we can call them 'stupid'. Just plain stupid. They do not mean the same, but they are all named the same. It's like taking all humanity under one roof and deeming it, worthless-and it is worthless. It is.

Mr. Devil is laughing at my thoughts now. He's happy that I finally have some common sense; so I laugh with him. Ha ha ha ha ha.

"Why the hell r'you laughin'?" His eyes are burning up, torching all the Jokers and Kings, making all the Queens shrill out of their minds, and beat themselves into the walls just to put themselves out. It's chaos inside his head and I'm the blame. The Devil's patting my shoulder now.

Those camaraderie sheets are bleached with my anomie: they have holes in them, too. And I'm pulling and he's pulling and she's just sitting in a corner keeping her own pretty embroidered piece of camaraderie all to herself.

"You," she's softly speaking now, looking at him, me, nothing, "you. I love you." Her pretty piece of camaraderie is all torn now. She tore it herself. She tore it with her barefoot confession and her feelings of loss. She's losing both her anchors, both her back-stones so she tries to pull on one of them, to hell with the other; just as long as she doesn't stray from her goal.

"Who?" he spoke and my chest panged. He spoke and The Devil went cackling and landed on my hair, tussling it around with his overtly dainty fingers. "Who?" he repeated.
But she wasn't there. Only the churned out scraps of her piece and our muddled feelings remained. Her bare feet carried her away from the stench of camaraderie vomit.

"WHO?" I'm shouting at no-one and he's looking at me with that fire in his eyes. But I don't care. I keep shouting at her shadow that's still glued to the prickly ground of the street. All I hear back is the reflection of my own arrogant loud voice mirrored in mouse-shriek versions of my words. The fire in his eyes gobbled up all the Queens and the Kings and royalty.

"IT'S NOT YOU!" he yells at me and my desperate words. I'm treading the thin line that I've worked so hard to avoid. Maybe I didn't want her at all. Not Want. Not Want. God, not Want.

Maybe it was Love. I think, with those ardent camaraderie sheets sneaking into my chest and separating my ribs one at a time. It's painful. I think once more, trying to suck in the feelings that're banging banging banging against the sternum wanting a way out. The Devil's pressure cooker exploded. And I got a piece of debris sticking out of my gut.

"IT'S NOT YOU!" he clamored, words twisting that piece of debris deep into my vertebrae, splitting each one away from the other; just like what those camaraderie sheets did to my ribs. They're breaking apart my bones and my mind, The Devil's working on my mind right now. He's smiling and patting my back just like he did when the Queens and Jacks burnt. Ya gotta peel a few chestbones to find a beating heart, girlie. Too bad you ain't got one. And he laughs and cackles and pats my back.

And I just saw it. A flash: I'm a part of The Devil's textile of lies set to hang each one of us away from the other. This triangle's broken up now. We're just lines. Lonely hermit lines feeding on letters of Love and Want and the ashes of royalty. He's -The Devil- smiling to himself, tossing around in my hair, counting his hits on his dainty little fingers; and I'm smiling; counting my misses on my ass, sleeping on the dirty ground. My head's trapped between my buckled knees now and my regrets are crashing to the dirt, letting baby-mud drops roll fresh.

And him, the one with the dead Aces, Hearts, Clubs and Spades in his eyes, is looking down on me and pulling at his hair. "You-you-you . . . it's broken up. Our triangle . . . broken up. Did you have to love? Did you?" he's pleading with his fingers in his eyes, "did you have to?"
My mouth just froze. It went to sleep. I can't talk about my anomie without him calling me crazy, I can't speak about Mr. Devil who screwed me over, I can't say nothing.

It started with me wantingloving her who loved him who wanted me. That's the correct introduction.

I walked away from him, still weeping with pleas, and kept walking and hearing firecrackers mixed with tunes of reverie in my ears. My anomie is here. I need it, and it's stronger than ever. The Devil's forsaken me, his sheets are blocking off my chest, it's blocking the feelings decomposing inside. Mr. Devil told me to REPENT REPENT. But I never did mean to.

I never did mean to listen to the perfect friend. He's ephemeral. Just like Love and Want. I didn't want or love the perfect friend.

"Who're you talking to?" I hear his shouts, his plea-shouts, as I keep walking.

"The Devil," I reply, my mouth still asleep, words and letters merging together in a delicious mess. It tasted so good in my mouth. The Devil. The dee, the vee and the elle.

He's crying back there, listening to me as he walks, as he runs towards the other way, eyes dripping toxic camaraderie tears out of his system. He's beginning to see things more clearly now: away from this wicked triangle. He's sober. And I'm still drunk on the thoughts of, the differences between Love and Want. Her is still nowhere to be found, he's shouting at her as he runs but she's nowhere to be found. I bet she's dead somewhere thanks to her bad blood, poisoned with too much Love for him. She's probably gazing at the deep skyline that's bleeding a mixture of indigo, cherry-red and rich orange, and he's staring at the same skyline flustered and in tears.

And I'm just here. Fighting with my hair to catch The Devil and struggling not to say what I really feel, all while I hear firecrackers imploding within my ear drums reminding me of summer nights when I, the little girl I used to be, played around with the pitiful skinny sticks of gray powder that shimmered into brilliant extravagant sparks and blazes when we set them aflame. Me, him and her. We loved those things that gave those spark their all for a few seconds, less that thirty, then died out quietly. Just like our feelings. She's the peach-pink one that swirls and makes a commotion all over the floor. He's the lethargic rocket that needs a lighter, just a flame, to set itself to space and blow up. And I'm the cherry-bomb: the one that you have to run when it's lit, the peaceful looking one that wrecks everyone, everything around it with a big BOOM with no discrimination.

Now you understand why I put the cherry-bomb in my mouth? I'm the cherrybomb.I'm the cherrybomb. I'm the cherrybomb.

And it's all thanks to my mouth.