Beautiful/Terrible

I woke up in an empty bed, the familiar feeling of Allen gone.
In apology, he had signed the scene with one pristine cigarette left on my bedside table, his goodbye note. I smiled and gathered my lighter from the draw within the table. I flicked it to life and lit the cigarette, holding it up to my lips and breathing in.
The smoke felt like Allen, and Allen felt like home. That was pretty funny considering I didn’t feel like I was home until now, even while I was sitting in my own house. I smiled and closed my eyes, pressed the cigarette up to my mouth again, sucking in the lethal smoke that I craved.
I didn’t crave the cigarette, I craved the feeling that it gave me, like Allen was still here.
He must have left while I was sleeping, before my parents could wake up.
I had school today so I began to do my makeup while I smoked the rest of my cigarette. My family could surely smell the smoke, but they didn’t bother telling me to put it out, they knew when to fight and when to let things go.
I finished my makeup- a cat eye and black lipstick- and began to dress. After a moment of contemplation I decided on leather pants and a blue XXL flannel shirt. I slipped on Dr. Martins and clambered downstairs.
Breakfast was cooking and I sat down to eat. Moments later a plate of toast was set in front of me and I scarfed it down. I went upstairs, brushed my teeth, and redid my lipstick.
I rushed out the door, this time determined not to be late so I could catch my bus.
I waited in the cold for a few minutes before I saw the yellow monstrosity hurtling towards me. I shifted my weight from foot to foot in preparation for its arrival. As soon as it pulled up in front of me I stepped up and begin walking to my regular seat in the back of the bus.
There, Lexi and Drew sat in apprehension of my arrival. They already had a vape pen out, which they could play off as the mist that comes from your mouth when it’s cold. This was part of the reason why I like the cold- you could smoke on the bus.
I pulled the pen from them and breathed in. I breathed out the smoke into Lexi’s mouth and laughed at the cheesiness of the moment. Drew joined in and the rest of the bus ride was spent in fits of laughter.
When we arrived at school Drew and I went one way to go to Pre-Calculus while Lexi went the other to go to Civics.
Drew and I walked together and I only half listened to him as he told me of the new guitar he had just snagged for cheap. As we neared the classroom door we passed Allen and James and I caught his eye. We looked at each other for a while before Drew bumped my arm and snickered.
Usually I wouldn’t stare at Allen- he was amazing to look at but what had caught my eye this time was the memory of last night plastered on his face. To kill ourselves. It was a topic I had contemplated often, but had never imagine actually doing. Fantasized, yes, but thought would actually happen? No. This, though… this felt natural. It felt like melody and harmony falling into place side by side, just like Allen and I would fall on the floor and eventually into graves- side by side.
To die together
Nothing seemed more perfect to me.
Realizing my train of thought was clashing with my current objective, to get to class, I had to stop thinking about it for a while. Instead, I focused on math equations that added up to nowhere. I they went somewhere I didn’t want to follow them at least. Like I said, this class was boring.
Next I had Health with Lexi, and that class was fine. We sat with each other again, as usual, and talked about anything and everything. She was great.
After that I had Physics. I hated that, too, just like math it had many equations that I didn’t feel like doing. I was taking it my senior year because I hadn’t taken it last year due to a schedule mix up that nobody bothered fixing.
Finally lunch came around and I sat at the usual table. Drew and Lexi were making out, she had his lap straddled and was grinding into him while they desperately sucked each other’s faces off. It was like a car crash.
James and Grace came over and saved me, distracting me from the horrible scene.
“What’s up?” I asked them.
“Chicken butt,” James said, chuckling to himself. I rolled my eyes.
“Nothing much,” Grace answered me, “We just got out of Gym with Allen.”
I nodded, “Then where is he?”
“I think he said he was gonna do some… stuff… in the parking lot. If you know what I mean,” Grace told me.
“Oh,” I said, “I guess I’ll give him some company.”
I walked out of the lunch room with an apple in hand and set out for the parking lot. It didn’t take long for me to spot Allen’s minivan and head over to it.
“Yo!” I called out to him when I was within shouting distance.
“Oh, hey!” he called back to me. I continued closer.
“Wacha got there?” I said, referring to the brown paper bag in his hand.
“Take a look,” he said, gesturing for me to come see. Inside the bag were round, light brown poppy pods, each smaller than a tennis ball. I stared back up at him.
“Are those…?”
He grinned at me. “Yup.”
“Sick! I’ve been wanting to drink that shit for a year and a half!”
“I know, babe, that’s why I got it.”
I had been wanting to drink opium tea for the longest time and now it was finally happening. I jumped into his car without asking if he even wanted to leave school- if you had opium why wouldn’t you want to leave?
I stared up at those cracked and crumbling eyes, painted on the ceiling so long ago. I remembered when I had painted them two summers ago. Everyone was at Courtney’s lake house and we were stoned and listening to metal music, an interesting combination that made for an interesting result in the painting.
I wondered what it would turn out like if I repainted it while high on opium while listening to some chilled out jams. That would be an interesting product.
I proposed the idea to Allen and he loved it, so he drove us to his house.
We pulled up into his empty driveway- his parents were at their practice as sex therapists, or as the esteemed would like to call them, “sexologists”.
We walked hand in hand up to his house before I slid my hand into the back pocket of his skinny jeans, while he grabbed my pocket-less ass.
When we stepped onto his front door, he turned and pecked me on the lips before taking out his keys and turning the lock, letting us in.
I watched his figure, clad in black, walk towards his kitchen and I followed. He plopped the paper bag on the kitchen table and instructed me to crush enough of the pods to make 25 milligrams of powder. I began to follow his instructions as he turned the stove on to heat up a pot of water he had filled. Once the water was boiled and the pods were crushed he turned off the flame and I poured in the powder.
While we let that steep we went into his room and turned on some music. Immediately Objects in Space by La Dispute began to play and I swayed to the music. Allen stood up from his sitting position on his bed and put his hands on my hips, running them up and down soothingly. He reached for the hem of my shirt and pulled upwards, relieving me of the cloth. We continued to sway like that until we heard a timer go off in the kitchen- 30 minutes was up.
We crept back into the kitchen and Allen took out two shot glasses, a coffee filter, and a large cup. He then poured the tea into the cup through the strainer, and once the liquid ran out, he lifted up the strainer and squeezed out the excess tea.
Finally, he poured some of the liquid from the cup into two shot glasses all the way to the top and turned back to me.
“Ready?” he asked me, holding one of the glasses towards me.
“Bottoms up,” I answered him, taking the glass and clinking it against his before knocking it back into my mouth.
And now to wait five minutes. This time we stayed in the kitchen. We sat across from each other and played with each other’s fingers while we waited to feel something. My small delicate fingers with perfectly almond shaped fingernails painted black intertwined with his thick and large hands with short bitten at fingernails. I pinched his cuticles. He stroked the length of my hand. I twirled around his fingers. He suddenly clasped my hand in his with intensity.
“It’s been five minutes,” he said with a smile plastered on his face. I giggled.
“Let’s take another hit, then, I don’t feel high enough,” I suggested.
“Fair enough,” he said, before pouring us another serving.
We knocked them back and I closed my eyes in bliss. The drugs were settling into my system and it felt pleasant and right.
As if I was run by my feelings, not thoughts I stood up and removed my pants. I gracefully walked over to Allen and ran my hands across his shoulders and neck. I removed his shirt. I felt free. Free. I brushed his nipples with my fingers and trailed my hands cross my chest.
And then I left.
I went outside into the cold and I felt my nipples harden against the bitter feeling.
I opened the trunk of the Allen’s car to be met with a beautiful sight- art materials. I kept them in here because I didn’t have enough room in my house and they “weren’t aesthetically pleasing” to my mother.
I took them out and hauled them into the main cell of the vehicle, prepared to begin to repaint the crusty surface of the peeling interior of the roof. First, to scrape off the old paint.
I used my fingernails to animalistically scratch off all of the old paint. I then began to lay flat on my back and paint.
As I painted with swirling color, the paint dripped from the brush onto my bare torso, and I relished in the cool wet feeling it left on my skin. I felt like I was floating and I could see myself in the backseat of that fucking car and it was amazing. It was euphoric and yet the eyes were possessing of every emotion, they saw everything, no escape. I stared up at the silky wet paint that met with other silky wet paint to make a picture, a picture that looked back. I smiled and closed my eyes; I felt pleasant.
I heard a rumble and then I felt a pair of hands grab my feet and pull me towards the culprit. I felt my feet pulled over his shoulder and I was lifted up so that my butt was resting on Allen’s shoulder and I was sitting up straight. What an amazing view I thought as I stared down at Allen. I could feel his hard clavicle and deltoid dig into the soft fat of my butt. It felt nice in the way that it felt nice when you got spanked- not because the feeling was pleasant but because the action was exciting.
“I fucking love you, dammit,” I heard from under me.
“I fucking love you, dammit,” I said back.
I slowly slid like a snake down his back and walked in front of him. I grabbed his hands and placed them on my small breasts. It wasn’t sexual, it was animal. I dropped my hands and he kept his there.
I waited in silence for him to do something.
After a few minutes of just pleasantly staring at each other he put his thumb to my lip and dragged down. The flesh pulled down with his finger and then snapped back up when his hand left. I licked the spot in his absence.
I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids. I let out a small laugh out of contentedness.
I fell a little bit into a world between dream and reality, half asleep half awake.
Before I drifted off to sleep I think I heard Allen say something, but I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. All I heard were the words
“I fucking” and
“You”.