Status: Active.
Colours of Insanity
Thing I
We spend our nights in hotel rooms drinking and laughing, kissing and touching. We spend every minute enthralled in each other; I sit under the stream of the shower and smoke a cigarette that has lost its flame.
I didn’t smoke before I met him, I had never touched a cigarette in my life but he changed that, like so much else. We met when I was fifteen nearly a full year ago, I was coming out of school and he was watching me. He was an out of towner and the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.
Five years my senior he had swept me off my feet with late night drives and endless bouquets of flowers. I came to associate him with the changing seasons because for every second he was nice to me he spent a minute being mean.
Not that I minded much because that second was more than enough to help me get through those minutes. My mother hated him, she hated all men and tried to break us up. He wouldn’t stand for it, one night after too many cigarettes and little white pills he showed me his gun. He promised he would love and protect me forever, under the influence of his kisses and those pills I shot my mother in the head.
The news is playing on the small TV in the other room, I am trying to listen but the pounding of the water on the shower floor is too loud. The bathroom door comes flying open and he stands there watching me for a minute before he drags me out of the bath falling over my own legs to the TV.
He is pissed. He holds me on my bruised arm and I stare at the images on the screen, they have found my mother. There is a nation-wide search for us; I’ve never been on TV before so the sight of my name makes me giddy. I am famous, we are famous.
He is not happy about this; he is pacing and muttering under his breath, the cold air is making my naked body break out in goose bumps, I want to run to get a towel and put my clothes back on but I don’t want to make him any angrier.
We are no longer on the TV, the news has been replaced with an ad for carpet cleaner, I don’t think this motel cleans its carpet there are stains everywhere. I stare at him and wait for him to speak, he doesn’t. He simply motions for me to go the shower and continue smoking my cigarette. He joins me minutes later and we make love under the water as images of my mother’s violent death flash on the TV screen.
*
We stop at a gas station to get petrol and some more food, we had swiped a hundred dollars from the motel when we left, and I had kept the manager distracted so he could take enough to get us by. He told me that the motel manager was a good man trying to keep his business afloat so we should only take what we need, I asked him what the difference between the man he shot and manager is but he didn’t answer.
I think I messed up.
He walks slowly inside the store to pay for the petrol, as I wait in the car I pull down the visor and stare at my swollen lip. A dark purple bruise lines my lip and a nasty split separates it. I gingerly poke at it ignoring the sting, he hasn’t mentioned it and neither have I. We are both content to pretend it is not there.
The news story last night really freaked him out and he keeps telling me how we need to get as far away as possible. I am still staring at my lip when he comes back, a bouquet of flowers land in my lap as he jumps in the car starting the engine.
I smile ignoring the pain, he doesn’t have to tell me what the occasion is for, I know he feels bad for my lip. I don’t blame him though, it really wasn’t his fault. He leans over and kisses me seven times. It hurts every time but this doesn’t stop him, I think he likes it.
I think he likes hurting me.
I didn’t smoke before I met him, I had never touched a cigarette in my life but he changed that, like so much else. We met when I was fifteen nearly a full year ago, I was coming out of school and he was watching me. He was an out of towner and the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.
Five years my senior he had swept me off my feet with late night drives and endless bouquets of flowers. I came to associate him with the changing seasons because for every second he was nice to me he spent a minute being mean.
Not that I minded much because that second was more than enough to help me get through those minutes. My mother hated him, she hated all men and tried to break us up. He wouldn’t stand for it, one night after too many cigarettes and little white pills he showed me his gun. He promised he would love and protect me forever, under the influence of his kisses and those pills I shot my mother in the head.
The news is playing on the small TV in the other room, I am trying to listen but the pounding of the water on the shower floor is too loud. The bathroom door comes flying open and he stands there watching me for a minute before he drags me out of the bath falling over my own legs to the TV.
He is pissed. He holds me on my bruised arm and I stare at the images on the screen, they have found my mother. There is a nation-wide search for us; I’ve never been on TV before so the sight of my name makes me giddy. I am famous, we are famous.
He is not happy about this; he is pacing and muttering under his breath, the cold air is making my naked body break out in goose bumps, I want to run to get a towel and put my clothes back on but I don’t want to make him any angrier.
We are no longer on the TV, the news has been replaced with an ad for carpet cleaner, I don’t think this motel cleans its carpet there are stains everywhere. I stare at him and wait for him to speak, he doesn’t. He simply motions for me to go the shower and continue smoking my cigarette. He joins me minutes later and we make love under the water as images of my mother’s violent death flash on the TV screen.
*
We stop at a gas station to get petrol and some more food, we had swiped a hundred dollars from the motel when we left, and I had kept the manager distracted so he could take enough to get us by. He told me that the motel manager was a good man trying to keep his business afloat so we should only take what we need, I asked him what the difference between the man he shot and manager is but he didn’t answer.
I think I messed up.
He walks slowly inside the store to pay for the petrol, as I wait in the car I pull down the visor and stare at my swollen lip. A dark purple bruise lines my lip and a nasty split separates it. I gingerly poke at it ignoring the sting, he hasn’t mentioned it and neither have I. We are both content to pretend it is not there.
The news story last night really freaked him out and he keeps telling me how we need to get as far away as possible. I am still staring at my lip when he comes back, a bouquet of flowers land in my lap as he jumps in the car starting the engine.
I smile ignoring the pain, he doesn’t have to tell me what the occasion is for, I know he feels bad for my lip. I don’t blame him though, it really wasn’t his fault. He leans over and kisses me seven times. It hurts every time but this doesn’t stop him, I think he likes it.
I think he likes hurting me.