Red August.

My dreams were peaceful once, just me slipping away to my slumbering conscious. I dreamt of forgetting my heinous endured life, and start on anew; that’s how my dreams worked for me, just letting go and starting again. I dreamt of lights all around me, keeping the good and washing out the flow of the bad.
They were not plastered by nightmare and ruled by unbearable pictures of Holly, dead and motionless. The sound of her piercing scream calling out for me, was absolute torture; knowing it was a dream, knowing I was too weak to stop it, knowing I was alone forever. Or sometimes I’d dream of me falling through an eternal abyss, as shadowy hands formed through the darkness would tear me apart, limb from limb. Or the often reoccur, I’d dream that it was me being smashed to bits, dying, feeling a pool of my own blood start to flow beneath my paralysed body, and finally I’d hear a croak that I could only interpret as my final breath.
When I’d wake, I’d often be startled of my surroundings; not knowing where I was, swearing my innards had been torn apart. I’d eventually calm down, but never sleep again throughout the entire night.
Tonight my guts had been spilled by the hands again. I watched as a part of me being swallowed by darkness, blood spurting out along with the rest of my organs. It terrified me in heart jolting way, though I could not scream; I was like when the news of Holly confronted me, numb. God, what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I be normal? Those questions stayed with me as I was merely thrown away into the abyss, like a vulture does with the ugly poor remains of its weak prey.
The drops of my own sweat were like needles draining me; God, even my own fluids forming its way out of me were painful, I was weak. The pints of water drops hitting themselves on my window were like hammer against cloth, the sound searing against my eardrums driving me to the depths my sanity. I grabbed the silk pillow drenched in my own sweat, curled it and placed my head in the middle of the curl and pressed the fabric into my eardrums.
I wanted to scream all my anger, loss, fear, weakness out, but I couldn’t; another fuck up I made. That’s all my life had been; a giant mishap, a fuck up. Holly was the perfect one, she was perfect inside and out. They took the wrong girl.
Was I that broken? Was I that despicable? So weak and undesirable even for death? The one thing I needed the most: Death. Death had wrapped me into its own cold hands around my fragile body, forced me to play its game. Was there no end? No prize at my last breath? It took away something I needed most. I felt so cheated.
My eyes flickered over to my alarm clock. The hands seemed almost motionless in the shade of night, hiding its true purpose in the dark. Time was lucky; it was almost eternal, unlike poor Holly and like death, no one could stop it.
I watched as the morning mist transformed the glass to an unseeable haze. Since her death, my vision had done the same to like a mist does to a simple glass and I became lost in it. I then saw, in this vision I only saw people as the truly were; leaches, merely mooching off one another for their own personal gain. I saw through their lies of what they were, and saw the truth down among the surface. They were not ‘sorry’ for Holly, hell, they barely even knew her. Their apologies seemed stiff and forced, that even a failure like me can see through them. But I didn’t let them know I was on to them, they would be too blind, that they wouldn’t understand what I was getting at anyway.
Throughout the night, the pictures of my dreams began rapidity take form into moving pictures. Frame by frame, the horror, the blood, my organs, became more agonizing as goosebumps rose in my skin. I begged it to end, but my mind was locked. My heart was jumping out of its place at an alarming rate, my breathing turned ragged and for a minute later for some reason I couldn’t breathe. I saw pictures of Holly’s face; her eyes were not shimmering with regular beauty, instead the vacancy in them tore at my chest in a twisting bittersweet agony. Her skin was not perfect and vibrant; instead it seemed drained of all life that was once there. Her beauty had been sucked out by the mysterious hooded figure we all must face at the end.
I felt my nails dig into the skin of my palms as I clamped my hands. I felt the sting of tears forming in my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall; promised myself I wouldn’t let them fall. The flashes still repeating It’s self over and over with no sign of ending. I scream all the time in my head, I scream louder and louder; but today nothing. The anger burning in my chest was too strong, I didn’t know what to do with it. So instead I sat wallowing in my emotional filth like a scumbag. The only sound I heard – the only sound I wanted to hear was my heart pounding against my chest.
I felt the blood flowing out of my palms as my nails burrowed further into my skin. I had drawn my own blood out of anger. I felt the tears begin to overflow in the back of my eyes. I let out a small yelp as I allowed my hands clamp themselves my mouth. I shivered as I tasted the feign aroma of blood against my dry tongue.
I let out a sob as I tried to get out of my bed and on to my feet. I had no idea where I was going or why I was trying to get there, I just knew I had to get out of here. Once I had found feet, I ran. I ran harder and faster than ever. I ran past the front door, into the outside, past my house’s block, then – I don’t know. I was running so fast and so wild, I lost wherever I was going to. But I didn’t care. Swarms of buzzing energy rushed through my head; I had lost my way of thinking, finally, nothing no voices, no grief just nothing.
Adrenaline was pumping its self through my veins spreading excitement and anticipation of what was going to happen next. The adrenaline had only made me see objects and people as speeding blurs.
Stop here.
This voice seemed ghostly, gentle, a whisper going along the winds of the horizon. I didn’t want to follow this order, but part of me did, because wherever this voice was leading me to, I knew I was going to find Holly. I felt the strings in my frail body bringing me to my fate, pulling me towards train tracks.
Its going to be over soon, I promise.
It promised it was going to be over, ok. But I somehow didn’t believe it, I knew somehow, someway it was telling me sweet lies. But I did its bidding, because like someone of the brink of suicidal thoughts, I needed out.
Underneath the rubble and in the middle damp winds, I sat myself down on the tracks, waiting for my call to salvation. I heard the clacks, yet I remained calm. I heard the clicks. I did not think what was going to happen to my body, how destroyed it was going to be. I heard the whistle. I did not think about the pain. The train was drawing closer I felt the rubble underneath me start to shudder, the sound of the whistle becoming the wind around me. I could stop seeing her face, not my mother but Holly. It had always been her. The curves of her cheeks were so perfect, the way her eyes lit up against the blue of her eyes; beautiful, her smile was a part of her soul itself. Her hair was like beautiful liquid gold. I breathed in the faint smell of coal before the fatal hit me.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep
“August.”
My eyes searched the room as best they could, but they seemed stiff; too wary to do anything. I was quite aware everything was like looking through water, everything was distorted. I felt trapped, not knowing where I was sent my heart to rapid rhythm. I could hear the beats clearly banging against my chest as if it was pressed against my ear. Where was I? Was I in heaven or was I in hell? Where was Holly?
“August? Honey?” I felt a hand push my bangs out of my face.
The voice was not Holly. The voice was soft, but more hoarse than soft. I strained my eyes to open wider and got instantly blinded by a searing light. I saw two recognizable faces mold into one.
“Mom..”
It was both with disappointment and fear that I realised the inevitable truth. I was still alive. I felt the emptiness returning, flowing through my veins like it had before. Nothing had changed. Nothing, If anything, I felt weaker than I ever had before. I built myself up just so I could tear myself down, I was stupid. Each breath felt wasted like it did before, it felt like I was inhaling fire sparks and it burnt each pore of me. Each beat of my heart felt more of a burden than an action; it was unbearable how the thing keeping me alive was also killing me.
I felt my mother’s weak arms wrap around me as my stomach began to churn. It was only up this close that I observed my mother was so painfully pale; she looked nearly drained of her vibrancy. Her face was covered bruises and it scared me. It was undoubtable that he was behind this, got mad when he heard about my attempt, and knowing my mother; who was completely innocent in this could end up like this I didn’t want to know what he’d do to me. “Don’t you ever do that again!” she giggled in my ear softly.
“Oh, honey, you scared me to death.” She said, burrowing her face into my head “I love you.” She whispered.
It made me feel sick that a vermin like me was trapped by the ones that ‘loved’ them. If they loved me couldn’t they see I was in pain? Couldn’t they see through it all? My nightmares were becoming my reality and they were making worse.
“Yeah, you really did a number on us.” I felt my body start to cringe when I heard his voice.
Ross stood in the corner, sober as ever. He made every fibre of my being want to disappear knowing he was here. His mask seemed be only thing that made him put down the bottle, but too soon it crumble when there weren’t as many eyes piercing their way through to him. Soon, we’d be back to drunkenly lies and shattered bottles, but only behind closed doors, of course.
I could see it in him; the anger eating away at him, but strangely enough the only windows I’m able to see it in is his cold blue eyes. Not like the eyes I knew before, they were not heavily induced by bourbon and filled with regret, but they were once filled with something else, a longing to change. Not to become the drunkenly man I barely knew, but to become a better man than himself. I was confident that he could become that man, but each bottle he drained, drained me in turn.
I shivered when I felt his icy touch on my shoulder. I felt the tension in his hands; it felt so unreal because like the hands carved from nightmares and shadows, they were longing to rip me apart; longing to whither me to nothing but a brittle skeleton. Fear was pulling at my chest as every pore of me felt an odd stabbing sensation, like I had been struck with a knife and bleeding out everything I would be; stabbed and been wronged of my former shell. But I wasn’t stabbed; I was merely in pain like a dying animal wanting to be put out of its misery.
Ross was now crouching to my stature and said something that curled my stomach. “Do that again, you little slut and I’ll slit your mother’s throat.”
My mother; the giver of life to me, yet she saw no pain into the only daughter she had. But now she was staring out the window, watching ambulances go by so wholly oblivious to the daunting reality that surrounded her now. My mother’s head was far beyond the clouds to the point she was living in her own worriless world completely of her own, and so my cry was left unheard.