Sorrow Swallows My Screams

Chapter Three

Sorry if it's boring, it'll get more interesting soon...

Chapter Three:

Zacky’s POV:

A week later they finally let me out of there. I think I liked it better when I was unconscious. At least then I didn’t have to deal with the seemingly endless boredom. The only time I got a break from the boredom was when I was sleeping, which hadn’t seemed to be working to well for me lately. Whenever I moved it hurt in some place in my body - it seemed like a new and exciting place each time - so I was woken up by the pain every few minutes. And I had painkillers in me, too. Imagine life without them. That would be so painful. Guess that’s why they call them painkillers. Kills the pain.

I was bored out of my brains an hour before they let me out, and I began thinking about the word ‘painkillers.’ It kills the pain. So why call it suicide? Why call it therapy? Both kill pain, on some level. Some very different level. I guess if everything that killed pain was called painkillers it would get too confusing, all the different forms of painkillers.

But when my doctor, Dr. Fran, walked in with my mother and told me I could leave, I felt myself smile slightly. I was free.

Okay, so I wasn’t that free, really, I had to go home, back to the life I did, and still do, want to leave behind. I got up from the bed and rubbed at my eyes, vigorously. They hurt, too. Not from the… incident, they hurt from crying so hard. Late at night, when I was alone, there was nothing else to think of but my dear Mikey.

I miss him so fucking much, no amount of words will ever be able to explain it.

I wouldn’t let myself think about it now, I couldn’t. That’s unless I wanted to tell my parents that I had a boyfriend who killed himself, which I didn’t really want to do. Telling them I had a boyfriend full stop was too much. There’s probably something you should know about my dad: he’s the biggest homophobe in the world. He hates gay people with a passion. He often reminds me of the dickheads at school that beat me up whenever they saw me, with or without Mikey. I’m 99.9% sure that he would act the same way as them, too, if he found out. Not something I wanted.

I hadn’t seen Brian all week, not since I’d first woken up, and the second I got home I ran up to the stairs towards my room at full speed.

“Don’t run so fast, honey, you don’t want to hurt yourself,” Mum said, sounding like she cared. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw her sifting intently through a pile of mail that had been left unattended on the kitchen counter.

I ignored her and kept the same speed until I was in my bedroom. I shut the door, locking it behind me, for no real reason, except for that I didn’t want her… or dad… to come up. I opened my ratty old black backpack that I’d had at the hospital and began to empty it’s contents onto my bed. Clothes and books formed a growing pile on the centre of my messy bed covers, continuing to be carelessly emptied until I saw what I wanted.

A serviette.

Not just any serviette, though. The serviette with Brian’s phone number on it. I wanted to talk to him. I don’t know why. I just felt this attraction to him, kind of like a wolf to its prey, though I wasn’t going to eat him. I needed to talk to him. Maybe it was his kindness. Maybe it was his hair. Maybe it was the fact that he seemed to care about me. Probably more than my own parents did.

My mum is kind of very tuned out. What I mean by that is that she doesn’t know me from Adam. Seriously. And she’s my own mother. She pretends to care at certain times, like if she gets a call from a teacher at school saying I skipped again, or like the hospital, but given the circumstances, she would have made it obvious - like a slap on the cheek, the stinging lingering a long time afterwards - that she didn’t care at all if the doctor’s hadn’t seen anyone there to take the roll of parent or guardian or whatever.

She was hardly what I’d call a mother figure though, as much as she likes to pretend she is when the occasion calls for it. She goes out drinking and smoking and clubbing all night a lot. It’s not even that, though. She lies to me. She tells me she’s going to a golf club meet or a community service… thing, but she just goes out getting wasted.

Dad’s not any better in the wasted department though. I’m actually glad he’s gone every night though. I hate him with every fibre of my being. He beats me raw, mum too. I hate him. I hate him! I HATE HIM!

God, I hate my life. I was snapped back to reality, however, when I realised I’d dialled Brian’s number already. He picked up, and I told him who it was. He asked me if I needed anything. I said it would be great if we could meet somewhere, and we agreed we’d meet at a nearby park in twenty minutes.

Strangely, I couldn’t wait.