I Know That You Wouldn't Fall for That

Most people imagine their minds to be like a storage cupboard. All your thoughts and memories sealed in one place, unable to be accessed by any other. Most people think their brain is their safe place. The unhackable computer. The unbreakable bond. The unlimited bank of storage. Alex wasn't most people. In fact, Alex thought most people were foolish.
Alex thought of his mind as a monster. Pulsating flesh that sneered and growled inside your head. A monster who's skin was built by your own self loathing. The more you hated yourself, the more this monster inside your head grew, larger and larger, till all the soldiers fighting for peace inside of your head were dead.
Dead. Such a definate term. Alex was fascinated by it. Do we really go through the seemingly endless, long days we call our lives just for our reward to be black nothingness? What happens after death? Can it really just be lights out for us like the push of a button? Are we all just candles wired up with fancy flesh organs, spending our life slowly burning out? What's the difference between wax and muscle tissue anyway? We live, we die, we know that much. But, is that it?
I hope so.
Alex snarled at the monster under his skull. Such unpleasant thoughts which tore down his plaster walls of happiness. Alex didn't like to overthink things too much. He thought of his thoughts like food, and separated them into pleasant and unpleasant catagories. For him, the monster in his head chews and swallows the unpleasant, spitting out the pleasant as he filtered through. That was why Alex couldn't remember the good. It had been washed away. Only the bad stayed behind in his monster-mind to haunt him. Talk about food for thought.
Alex often wondered whether it was just him. Maybe there was something wrong with him. Maybe he's not normal. He hated to think it, but maybe everyone was right about him. He was a freak.
Alex's eyes spilled over and fresh tears leaked. Alex hated crying, it made him feel weak. But in the end, that's what he was. Alex was weak. He was weak, he was stupid and most of all, he was a freak. F, R, E, A, K. Freak.
Alex often wondered whether he was stuck in a reverie. Whether life was real, or all just a daydream. How can we know the difference between what's real and what's fantasy? Because we feel it. It feels different. Real life seems more certain, we know when we're awake. We control our fantasies, yet real life is just set in stone, we're just walking down the pathway. Or is it? Do we make our own paths, or does a higher power know what's going to happen in the future? Is real life really out of our control?
What happens when you're in the reverie for so long it feels like normal? It feels real. What if you lose control of the dream and you fall into a state of constant dreaming. What if what we're doing right now is just an imagination, and our real lives are waiting for us to wake up. What if we didn't wake up? What happens when the reverie collapses? Is there anyone in the real world waiting to pull us out of the wreckage? Or are we completely, and truly alone?
Alex shook his head. No. To be in a reverie is to be in a pleasant state of mind, lost in your thoughts and your dreams. Alex was lost in someone else's dream, and it was anything but pleasant. He had everything someone else would want, but Alex didn't want any of it. He wanted what everyone else had. In the words of the old American President himself, a return to 'normalcy' with a chicken in every pot. But if Alex ever found normalcy, it would most definitely not be with a return ticket. Alex has always been this way. His normalcy has always been abnormal.
Alex's eyes flickered over to the bottle of sleeping pills by his bunk. Just one too many. That's all it would take. You'd just fall asleep, and you wouldn't wake up.
Alex reached forward to take the pills when purple, black and red flashed in front of his eyes. The crying lady, looking for her son was screaming at him. He dropped the pills in shock. No, he couldn't do that. Not ever. He couldn't sleep forever. Could he? Alex wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of anything anymore. Everything he thought was indefinite. He was scared someone was controlling his thoughts. Was everything he thought really the work of his own monstrous mind? Was he really capable of considering something like that? He sat on his bunk on the empty tourbus and let his head fall into his hands. Then a thought welcomly flowed into his head. Tay.
Alex liked Tay, she made him smile. Really, smile. Alex hadn't really smiled for anyone in such a long time. When he was with her he forgot about everything else. She consumed him when they were together, and he found himself lost in her words and the way she acted. He noticed things about her, things nobody else would notice unless you studied her. She breathed heavier when she was worried, and when she was tired she would blink slowly, like her eyelashes were really heavy. Her pupils sparkled in the light and her smile was brighter than the sun. He noticed how when she was angry she crossed her legs, and how when she was relaxed she was slumped. He noticed how she looked up into the sky when she was talking about her past.
He smiled in memory of her. She made him forget. Alex wanted to forget. He wanted to forget right now. Speeding up the deterioriation of his candle life was one way to forget, but it was indefinate. Alex could just fall asleep and experience the same nightmare over and over again, except this time he was unable to open his eyes use life as an escape from the dream, and his dream as an escape from life. Alex didn't find this idea at all appealing. Tay was definate. She was his escape. He didn't know how or why she could do it, but she made him forget. He smiled, dropping the pills onto his bed and grabbing his phone, texting her.
*My bus. Now.*
He waited a second for the reply, and when he got it, his heart palpitated exactly 3 beats. He counted, and then opened the text. Alex was excited to forget. Atleast, that's what he convinced himself he was excited for.
*Busy.*
Alex frowned at the text.
*It's urgent. An emergency. Please, I need you.*
Alex knew Tay saw through him. Alex knew that Tay could see something was wrong. Nobody could whack through his facade like that with just a look, except her, and Alex liked it. He wanted her to know that he wasn't such a bad guy after all.
*Are you okay? Are you safe? What's wrong, Alex? What's going on? Please tell me.*
Alex shouldn't have smiled at her worrying but he did. He liked that he felt like someone cared about him. It didn't happen often.
*Come.*
Before Alex could even press send there was a loud banging on the tourbus door. It was continuous, and Alex sensed that it wouldn't stop until the door was opened. He used strides to walk over and swung it open, only for a huge grin to effortlessly sweep across his lips. Tay stormed onto the bus and grabbed onto his face with her hand, turning it and inspecting each side. She frowned and looked into his eyes.
"You've been... crying?" she said. Alex couldn't help but beam inside at the fact that she was practically panting from running over here so fast. He didn't even hear what she said. "Alex?"
"Huh? What?"
Tay's brows furrowed and her eyes flickered around, looking for any more evidence. She stormed around the bus, looking for clues as to who had made Alex upset. Alex tried so hard to supress his overwhelmed smile. This girl was actually caring for him. He noticed the worry in her expression as her eyes danced around the room. She spotted the pills on his bed.
"What are these?" She said, picking them up and examining them. Alex felt his heart reflect his panic.
"Sleeping pills."
"You have trouble sleeping?" she interrogated. Alex shook his head slowly.
"Sometimes."
Tay saw through his act, again.
"They're almost empty," Tay said, looking up and expecting answers. "Looks like you take these every night."
Alex shrugged and Tay dropped the pills back on the table sympathetically. She sprinted over to him, looking up at him with curious eyes.
"Why were you crying?" She said, gently. Alex suddenly felt pathetic and weak, he looked down, breaking their locked gaze. He shrugged and Tay repeated the question, more forcefully.
"I was sad." Alex said, bluntly. His eyes showed he would offer no more explination. Tay frowned at the puzzle stood in front of her. She felt like he were a jigsaw with missing pieces. She sighed and reached up, pulling him into a hug. He obliged, comforted by her immediately, and quickly began focussing on things other than himself. He liked that. Her hair smelt of shampoo, she had just washed this morning. She was wearing perfume, something sweet and musky. Her breathing was still quick, indicating she was both worried and had ran from her bus to see him. He squeezed her.
"Thank you for coming." He whispered into her ear. Tay felt his hot, shaky breath tickling her neck. She tried not to notice it. "I needed to talk to you. You distract me from the bad things that I sometimes force myself to think about."
Tay held onto him tighter, panicked by his words. She didn't want to let him go, not while he was so afraid. She was so confused by the act he put on sometimes, it was like he was two different people. She didn't like any of them separately. The vain, dickhead flirt with a bad attitude and the insecure, quivering mess who's so terrified of something even she can't work out. They were so contrasting and so unappealing apart, but together they created Alex, and for some reason she found him irresistable. She couldn't stay away from him. She'd assured herself that it was because she was curious as to know what happened to him, but part of her brain was shouting at her telling her that she knew that wasn't true. She wanted him. No! She wasn't like that. She was just curious, that's all. End of story, close the book. Curiosity.
"Alex?" She whispered, aware that she was breaking Alex's silent and relaxed serenity. She winced with guilt. "Will you tell me more about yourself?"
Alex sighed next to her, still locked in the hug.
"Maybe," he replied, his voice gentle and a lot more calm. "One day."