Dazzle These Nights Dead

My heart went cold and
Only hollow rhythms
Resounded from within
But then she rose,
Brilliant as the moon in full.
And sank in the burrows of my keep,
And all my armour falling down,
In a pile at my feet.
And my winter giving way to warm,
As I'm singing her to sleep

Four weeks and two days. Seven hundred-twenty hours, forty-three thousand two hundred minutes, two million five-hundred ninety-two thousand seconds since my eyes last graced that stranger girl's translucent skin and an even longer time since I held a burning stick full of tar to my cracked lips. I guess one could say that look she gave me really did have an effect on my habits, as much as I would like to deny it. The thing is though; I've actually felt somewhat… better than I did before our brief contact. No, I really can't say that her presence corrected and cured me from the virus that's become my life, because really that's not the case.

I mean, a few weeks ago they cut off all the power, hot water heater, everything that shows up on a monthly bill, which is when I remembered the only reason I haven't lost the house yet is because Lynz and I already had it paid off before she left. That really left me feeling terrible, I honestly never did try to drain her of her money, really I didn't, but that's the way it feels. I know she put more money into the beauty of this building than I ever did, in fact only rare occasions brought me to provide any form of contribution to this house. This being the case one might assume that due to Lynz’s departure that I probably allowed myself to reduce this foundation to nothing but hollow sheets of stone coated in thick grime and filth seeing as the rest of my life had escaped me in such unkempt ways.

However, to this I can proudly object, for the minute her lovely body swept beneath the door frame for the last time, a vow was made between myself and this monster, one that was strictly abided by. I promised myself that I would put forth all effort into maintaining the beauty of this structure.

Oh, in such a brutish way did my mind react, rapping it’s bony fingers against vital nerves within my brain, threatening to strip them from their locations and cause my much awaited demise if I did not wreck the house. These stale, meritless threats were quickly withdrawn in sudden realization that fatality remained my first priority in this life, an appalling desire in which consumed my every day.

Since those very triumphant moments my fingers have yet to displace or disrupt even a single speck of dust within these well preserved walls. Every object in this house, other than the mangled phone, had been treated as if it were contaminated with nuclear waste, and I dared not touch a thing.

A ragged sigh parted between the crevices in my pale, parched lips as my body remain perched upon a frail, rotting park bench. Messily amongst the seating lie a plethora of damp splinters protruding from their positions, insatiably awaiting the flesh of an unsuspecting pedestrian, longing for nothing more than to eject themselves from their homes so that they can voyage within the twisting pathway of a hosts veins. Such sickening realizations and comparisons could be drawn between me and these slivers of wood as they reluctantly remain rooted beside me, accompanying my rather futile existence with no more interest in my life than an underpaid psychologist has for their patient.

Although the comparisons might be rejected by these splinters, the denial does not prevail in making them untrue. Both of our existences could obviously be deemed as pointless, for our only purpose in life was to lie embedded in a single place until an unlucky soul grazed our surfaces. Though some might seep away from us unscathed, our structures failing to seep into their system, there was still one victim whom would accidentally turn their lives in the wrong direction, plucking us from our homes and plunging us into their skin.

Oh, how they would wail, picking and scratching at our flimsy structures as if we were but a burden, in the process only injecting us farther into their pulsating skin. Such a long time frame often will pass, our disgusting infections corroding the surrounding flesh as our riddance becomes more and more impossible. However, soon they will reject our foreign bodies, spitting us out into the bitter wind of change where we are left with no further purpose.

Our destiny was to burden the lives of those who took us in, corroding them with our infectious antics until we were finally disposable. With such an analogy, it becomes more apparent that I was but a splinter in Lynz’s mistaken life, plucked from her system in disgust, leaving me to lie here once again with not a reason left to live for. Now my body melts within the cracks of this rickety bench, settling beside these revolted slivers of wood as my eyes scan their thin structures in awe and understanding.

“I’m sure this seems absurd to you now, but I promise that soon someone will sweep through and remove you from this dilapidated home. You know, I really feel bad for wishing you such things, it seems I’m just encouraging you to be discarded, but it’s really not like that. You see, unlike me, your tiny little structure is harder to remove; guaranteeing you a long and deserved rendezvous with an army of adoring blood cells. Removal is inevitable, but in order to avoid that you have to avoid any contact at all, and I promise you, no matter how much it hurts in the end, you’ll never regret the moments you did share. You’ll be free soon…” I murmured quietly, intently examining the thinnest fleck wood as it’s serrated edges eagerly tilted upward like outstretched arms awaiting their departure.

“Uhm… sir? Is this seat taken?”

I flinched instinctively, my head snapping in the direction of the seemingly familiar voice as it’s satin waves prickled about my memory, but before my mind could go about it’s own search for identification, her image burned into my irises once again. Before me stood the girl whom had obliterated all my once systematic and organized tactics of my demise, leaving me with nothing more than disheveled fractures of plots that now only brought me dissatisfaction. Swimming emerald eyes scavenged my own cautiously as recognition tinted their spiraling glow. Her soft, pink lips forcefully turned up into an awkward smile as she buried her shaking hands within the pockets of her black jacket, attempting to mask the sudden anxiousness in the situation.

“No, but that doesn’t mean you can sit there,” I muttered bitterly as tore my stare away from her, glaring at the trickle of people in the distance whom were awaiting the New Years fire works, as was I.

“Oh yes, because you’d much rather talk to the bench like you were seconds ago, oh how sorry I am to disrupt you” she retorted mockingly, an apparent smirk seeping through her words as my head whirled back to face her.

“Shut the fuck up, I didn’t ask you to spit out your pathetic opinion on me. I answered your question, so leave me alone,” I spat, disgusted with the fact that she actually thought she could humiliate me. Maybe to others speaking to inanimate objects seemed a bit humorous and eccentric, but to me it was a regular event in which I took part in daily, finding comfort in the fact that no matter how indisposed they were toward my blurt of unrehearsed words, they lacked ability to retort and reject them. Although annoyance might swim through their nonexistent mind, they in no way could make me aware of this nor could prove that they had not been listening to my drunken rambling.

“Would you like to get the stick out of your ass, or what? As far as I’m concerned I’ve done nothing bad to you, nothing that you didn’t want. Buying the pack of cigarettes was the only contact we’ve ever had and even though they are bad, I still bought them for you because you wanted them. Not because I was hoping you would die from them, but because they seemed like a need for you. Now can you please point out my faulty actions in that scenario?” she snapped viciously, eyes glowing with a ravenous rage as her rigid body towered over me, blanketing me in her suffocating, toxic shadow even in the black of night.

For these four weeks my mind has been rolling over the fact that she had been pompous, revolted toward the idea of the very way my life was to be spent. After thousands of times of replaying the scene in my head, what once had been a blank stare settling on her face had seemed to transform into disgust that dripped from every pore, staring my frail body down as if my image was a perfect symbol for pure scum.

However, now the scene reenacts itself with direct precision as my eyes peer into her pools of jade, all my bitter interpretations of her actions withdrawn to leave me with only the raw material of the scenario. Painted upon the exterior of her face lie not a hint of disgust nor pride, in fact there were no emotions flickering upon her canvas like features. I pursed my lips in thought as my eyes remained strung to hers.

“You shouldn’t have bought them for me,” I murmured quietly, eyes flickering away from hers momentarily so not to see the possible explosion that could come in response to such ignorant words.

“But you wanted them! I can’t control the things you ask for, it’s not my fault th-“

“You wasted your money,” I replied dryly, cutting her off mid sentence, not willing to hear the infuriated words of her miscomprehension.

“What?” she questioned quietly, all prior expressions swept clean from her face as she peered at me skeptically, eyes scavenging my face for even the tiniest hint of my next words.

“I never smoked those cigarettes,” I mumbled as my gaze shifted toward the yellow tented grass that coiled around the soles of my shoes, “whatever it was on your face when you left that gas station has been plaguing my thoughts. I couldn’t even pick up a cigarette without seeing your blank expression glaring in at me, it just didn’t seem right.” A small creak of protest escaped the once vacant bench as her body sank into a position that had not been occupied by a human in years. Her sickeningly sweet breath curled across my cheekbones, seeping through the thin curtain of raven hair that had intentionally draped across them.

“But, that’s a good thing isn’t it? You’re mad at me for that?” she mused quietly, the confusion seeping from her words becoming evident as the situation continued to progress to that of one beyond me reach. I shook my head, sighing at my once again failed attempt at explaining things thoroughly without crossing the boundary of my confinement.

“No, no see I thought you had looked at me in disgust or something, but… I was mad because the look screwed up my plans, made it more difficult to achieve what I had worked so hard for…” I whispered weakly, keeping my face ducked toward the ground as it’s outstretched blades of grass leaned away from me, taunting my pathetic actions as I compiled an irritated glare.

“And those plans would be…?”

“Nothing that should concern you,” I replied simply, apprehensively clasping my fidgeting fingers together as my eyes departed from the ground, sweeping across the glowing horizon where stars lie staged magnificently. Encouraging grins seeped through the thick lines of white ink that bled from their luminous forms, urging me to expose to this stranger what had been ensnared within these rotting walls for over eight months now. It seems these swelling embers were the only thing that had not cast a look of aversion upon me. These superlative, dazzling studs lie riveting aimlessly through the on stretching cavities of space, liquefying amongst glittering waves of star dust as they made their voyages throughout the organs of an unknown galaxy.

It has taken but an absolute stranger, completely unaware of my existence, to fully understand that perhaps I was more than a hollow corpse polluting the earths over crowded surface, that maybe, just maybe an actual being lie beneath this thin surface of translucent skin. A small smile spilled across my chapped lips in sudden realization.

“Those plans were my death. I've lost every purpose to go on in life; honestly, I've got nothing left. My wife, my friends, the worlds population all the way down to mere inanimate objects now stare at me as if I am the most horrific scene they’ve ever laid eyes upon, as if I am nothing but a scum bag scraped about the once bustling sidewalk as they pass by. Being here seemed entirely pointless, so I decided to drown myself in toxins. It just seemed so convenient.

“You know, I considered taking up my old drinking habit, but then my body would be raked with consumption until my daily wakening was met with the collision of memories and hangovers. So this was the route I chose; a slow set suicide that no one would suspect... But then, as pathetic as it sounds, you bled into the mosaic background and cleaned these tarnished glass windows, removing from me all capabilities of carrying out these plans…” I explained eagerly, the vowels and consonants dribbling from my lips in sheer desperation to let this stranger onto my secrets as a dry chuckle escaped my lungs.

“I wasn’t disgusted but I was in fact disappointed with you as well as myself for supplying you with the fix for your addiction. But, I am glad to hear that you've changed your mind about things...” she murmured, fully enthralled within the smallest of cracks of this conversation, swelling through these unoccupied canyons in eager bursts of knowledge. My gaze lifted toward her face, stringing a clothesline between our eyes as yet another smile melted across the thin exterior of my lips.

“Thank you…” I whispered rather quietly, indulgently watching as the warm smile was returned, painting itself in shades of light pinks and melted rubies across her glowing face as her emerald eyes swept my face in wonder. Her delicate hands swept across the toothed surface of the bench, enticing the severed wood, however the thinnest splinter, to which I had spoken, caught her silken skin. A tiny yelp escaped her lips as she quickly withdrew her hand from the damp surface, examining the flesh as her tiny fingernails struggled to pick it free. I grabbed her wrists suddenly, wrapping my bony fingers around her smooth hands, momentarily stopping her actions as her eyes snapped my mine in sheer confusion.

“Don’t remove it… just, just let it be for a while longer. It’s only been uprooted for the matter or seconds, just let it thrive for a while longer,” I pleaded quietly, trying to express my reasoning through the concern in my eyes as she gazed in then questioningly. This poor splinter had been the very one that I had made my promise to and my eyes could hardly bare to see it so instantaneously plucked from it’s very freedom when only swimming freely for a mere nine seconds.

She seemed to have read my mind for her fingers discontinued their prying and lie still within my own, radiating their warmth throughout them. Her gaze rested upon our hands as they lie messily entwined, fingers fluidly fitting together as if their shapes were precise in pattern. A small tinge of red flushed across her cheek bones as she removed her hands from mine, rising to her feet quickly.

“How about we go see the fire works, yeah?” she questioned in a rather delicate voice as she kept her pretty face ducked toward the ground. A small smile dripped across my lips as I rose to join her, dusting the flecks of wood away from my pants as I did so.

“That sounds like a lovely idea,” I stated honestly, grinning as we slowly set off in comfortable silence in the direction of the fireworks.

Little did she know she had just swept my splintery form up within her delicate, soft grasp unaware that I soon would infectiously dissolve the contents of her life with my grimy, rogue ways.