‹ Prequel: Stony Park
Sequel: Searcher

Volume One

three of three

The light is shining through the window and that means I’ve made it. Another night without sleep but at least I’m alive. I can play with chance all I want but being alive is always the ultimate game. My mouth tastes like it’s trying to decompose something--I can guess what but I’m too tired. 2 missed calls from Tulip make me smile, I know he’s worried about Milo and that’s another reason why I love him so much. But I know the voicemails are going to say the same bullshit they always have recently.

Milo’s losing his mind, we should go do something, get him out of the house.

Sweet gesture, but we’re all losing our minds. He’s not the first idiot to be going through some crisis. He’s the first person to feel something other than ignorance in a long time and that equates to dropping everything to run by his side. Milo’s a good friend, he is, I’m pretty sure if I expressed anything otherwise there’d be a target on my forehead that Tulip could see a mile away and we wouldn’t last long after that. Co-fucking-independency. I try not to be jealous because it gets you nowhere. Getting stuck within the inevitable is a common occurrence but I’ve always fought it. Fought my parents, fought my sister, fought the hand that feeds me anything other than acid--I’m a fighter. And any day I wake up forgetting that is not a good day. My bed’s suffocating but I can’t turn around again because there’s nothing worth looking at besides the darkness inside my pillow.

I can see Tulip and he’s smiling but it’s at something behind me.

My lips twitch and I feel along the nightstand blindly until I graze the clear plastic bag, small but I know it’s bigger than I am. I hear voices even though Twin Peaks is muted. “Fuck off.” I’m yelling maybe, hard to tell now with the devil sitting on my tongue. I feel ready to call him now or at least listen to the voicemail.

The buttons are small and keep laughing at me I know they are but I can’t get them to stop so I start smiling too and it takes five tries to hear the message and I can hear the snickering because they think I’m weak but I don’t disagree because I can’t find my voice anymore and that’s not a bad thing they tell me and I believe it I do I believe it because it’s dark again and every mirror shows somebody else and then it’s good again.

“Hey Lis. It’s me. Look, I’m at Milo’s but I told him I was taking a piss. I stayed here last night, sorry I had to bail. Really I am. He’s having a tough time, I mean you know how he gets, but this is different. It’s kind of freaking me out, he’s in denial but it’s almost like he’s ready to go full on vigilante here. I don’t know what to do. You know how much Andrew meant to him, kind of messed up just how much but I’m not one to judge. Anyways, I can’t leave him. Got to make sure he eats and doesn’t like shit himself. You wanna do something with us today? He needs to leave his room. Let me know. Call me, I love you.”

I hit delete--can’t listen to another word. Not for the first time, I go back to bed wishing I was Milo.
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