Tribulation [h.s]

39

"I'm sick and I'm tired too
I can admit, I am not fireproof
I feel it burning me
I feel it burning you
I hope I don't murder me
I hope I don't burden you."

-

I light a cigarette. I inhale deeply, and I feel the pollution poisoning my body. The toxins filter through my lungs, my blood, and my veins. It burns me, and I know it's slowly killing me. I don't care for the stale taste coating my tongue or the smoke searing the back of my throat.

I just don't care.

It's cold tonight. November rain coats the streets, but I stay hidden from the rainfall under the roof of my porch. I lean precipitously on the metal railing, my cigarette perched between my pointer and middle finger. I stare out at the city.

It's three am, and the streets are dark but illuminated with headlights and billboards. I close my eyes and suck the life out of the cigarette. My hands flick the spent ashes to the road below. Then, I proceed to press the end back to my lips and finish the cigarette with a few more drags.

I hate smoking.

I hate being lonely, too, but I learned to enjoy the loneliness and take it for what it is after a while. But, my thoughts got too loud tonight – dangerously loud. So, I took out my old box of stale cigarettes and started smoking.

The burn those white tobacco sticks cause is enough to numb me for the most part. So, when I finish the first cigarette, I light another one, then another, and another. I end up smoking the whole box, and when I finish, I can't tell if my hands are shaking from the amount of nicotine in my system or the thoughts I've been warding off wanting to come to the surface.

Whatever it is, I don't care.

Sighing, I quietly walk back inside my apartment, closing the porch door behind me. The last thing I want is to wake up Maggie right now.

At first, I thought I imagined it – the soft thud at my front door. But then the sound comes again, a little louder this time. My body tenses when I realize someone is knocking on my door. If it were Julie, she'd just walk in. She has a key, after all.

Who is it?

I tip-toe across my creaky floors and make my way to the door. I don't make a sound as I look through the peephole. I even hold my breath with anticipation. It's hard for me not to be paranoid. After all, my apartment was broken into only a few months ago.

I step back from my door and rub my eyes after looking in the peephole. I'm sleep-deprived, so maybe I'm seeing things, right? But nope, I'm not. When I look back into the peephole for the second time, I see the same mess of tousled brown hair and green eyes I saw the first time I looked.

I unlock my door before opening it. "Harry?" But, all of my millions of questions die on my tongue when I see the condition he's in.

He looks sick.

I haven't seen him since I found him in his bathtub a few nights ago. He certainly didn't look good that night, but now? He looks like a dead man walking. What happened between then and now?

His skin is pale and even a bit yellow. His eyes are drooping, and a thin sheen of sweat covers him. He's even shivering, but he tries to hide that as best as he can when he sees my eyes inspect him. I also notice his knuckles are bruised and bloodied.

When the realization washes over me, my shoulders slump.

Oh.

Questions can wait, I decide. So, I push the door open a step aside without a word. Harry spares me a glance before slowly stepping forward and walking into my apartment.