The Hollow Days

It's as if I were sinking into a black abyss. Or falling, all I knew was that the emptiness, that blackness, was engulfing me. It's like that feeling you have of horror when you break your mother's favorite vase, or you see a dead animal in the middle of the road, except with me it's constant. It's in every waking moment I spend on this earth. It's in me.

"Elliot, get up! You're in so much trouble!" I pull a pillow over my face, trying to ignore my sister's voice, but I can hear her banging on my door as if someone was banging on my eardrum.

"I'm coming." I sit up in bed, and swing my legs over the side. I just put on this stupid Hollister sweatshirt that my mom got me for my birthday and a pair of jeans. I brush my teeth and look into my mirror, looking into my own eyes. They were gray, sort of. But like, a greenish gray. I never really liked the way they shined in the light, I wish they could be brown or something so you couldn't see my real emotions. Emotions, which I wasn't supposed to have. Or so my dad tells me, because guys aren't supposed to feel so intensely, as I do. I brush my brown hair out of my eyes; I was due for a haircut soon. I put on my boots and head downstairs, my hood up and earbuds in. I listened to everything, from rap to death metal, even some country, but it was just to drown out the idiots around me. "Why am I in trouble?"

My dad looks up from his paper, and nods to the trash which was overflowing. "Take out the trash, you forgot yesterday after school, didn't you?" I open my mouth to speak but bite my tongue as he continues, "and did you walk Marcy? I didn't think so."

"She's not my dog." Bitch. She's not my bitch. That's what I wanted to say, but instead I muttered these few words. I grab the trash bag and wiggle it out of the can. Of course. It has a leak. I run for the door and open the lid, gagging at the stench of previous trash. I close the lid quickly and walk around the house, picking my bag up from where I had dropped it yesterday when I came home from school under the carport. I walk down the street of my middle-class neighborhood and stop at my bus stop. School was one of the things I hated the most, other than waking up in the morning. People never stopped talking, and sometimes I honestly just want silence. But I never get it, not even in my own head where it's a constant battle with my conscience. I couldn't fathom the way people smiled and chatted as if nothing ever happened. As if no one died last year. As if Cyrus never existed.

As usual, the first one on my bus, I still sit up front. I'm a junior, and I still ride the bus. I'm one of the few. All the 'popular' people have cars that their parents provided them with. Of course, I sound cliche when I think of them that way, but that's what school all comes down to, right? Popularity. Cyrus was good at popularity, I guess he just wasn't too popular with himself.

I don't look at people's faces anymore when they get on the bus, I can tell just by the air they provide and the stares I feel when they walk by. People stare at me, but it's not because I'm weird looking, or peculiar in any way, it's simply because I 'drown' in myself. That's what I've been told.