Crossed

Chapter 2, Part 5

It was her first week moved in. She had switched apartments due to loud noises in the last one. This one was less of a college-town apartment and more of a homely one. She had her small decorations and such to make it her own, but not enough to really reveal an intended long-term stay. All she really cared about was that it was a safespace for work and that it smelled good. Both of these were solved with this new apartment and a couple of candles. Lighters strewn around the various cylinders of wax, ready for the most raw invention to welcome: fire.

He looked at her with a distraught but internally tired craze. Her first impression was a kind of lustful disgust. He was wearing black baggy sweatpants with a gray t-shirt and was holding his arm like it needed a cast. His mouth was open and he was breathing through it, loudly. Loud enough for her to hear him even if she hadn't heard his footsteps.

A light lit up in her mind. Another student-looking person her age right next door? There was only potential.

She assumed he would greet her, but all he did was shuffle awkwardly and rush to open up his door. Something was wrong. She left the key in her door and edged toward the door which was now closing behind him.

This is when the potential really took off and spun up her imagination. Situation after situation flashed through her mind of the possible events that could take place as she opened the door to the young man's apartment, which he left unlocked. The crack widened and she instantly smelt the hideous odour that was his rotting walls. The weed. It was more potent than her candles. She should really give him some. That's what she'll say. That'll be her reason for entering. And that he looked like he was in some kind of danger, existential or physical; she had to help.

She stopped at the entryway, uncapped her medicine bottle and took her preparatory adderall pill, the second and last one for the day. She wanted to be sharp for this encounter. Immediately the placebo began to wash over her neural senses, cleaning up the leftover withdrawals and sweeping them under the rug for the time being. He was seething oos and ahs of pain when she walked in. He was behind a small wall guarding the kitchen from the front door and she could hear the sink on. He was running water over some kind of wound. She approached.

Something was special about him. Something about the look in his eyes when they met earlier. She was just now understanding the kind of mind he had. A kind of desperate ache for something. She couldn't put her finger on it. But there was a darkness in those sunken and probably enlarged pupils that was emanating like the floating and ripped black gown of death, scythe sharpened and a hole for a nose.

Like a magnet she was pulled to stand behind him.

Uh oh, I don't think he hears me, she thought.

She laid a hand on his shoulder. He spazzed back, flinging water everywhere, including my face and the floor. A not-so-manly but partly endearing squeak left his throat. He was frightened, the same look as outside, mouth upturned in an open frown. She could reach in and grab his tongue if she wanted, it was almost sticking out like a silly looking scarecrow. She just laughed.

Pupils on pupils stared. Wondering what to do. The full potential of the situation not crossing his mind yet. The full potential already seen by her. This contrast left them in a state of erratic solidity. Pressure contorting tighter and tighter, the breaking open of a motivation to communicate, to react, to solve the problems they were facing. A frenzy of thought igniting and sparking in all directions, opportunities for action sprouting like wildfire, burning all their nerves at once, sizzling, integrating some kind of intuitive extraction from the absurdity of the meeting and having that fuel what to do next.

Her laugh faded to a smile as they held their looking. He spoke first.