Treasure [h.s]

| 26 - Dance With Me |

***
'Cause the hardest part of this
Is leaving you

Cancer - MCR
***

Lying in the cool dirt, I look up into the late afternoon sky. I'm hidden away by the growth all around me and if my car on the side of the road wasn't a blatant sign of human life, I would be completely shut out from the rest of the world.

I twirl around a flower that I found next to me, peeling away the green outer layer of the stem like some fucked up she-loves-me-not game. The back of my clothing is filthy from laying here for so long, but I need this right now. I have no one else to turn to for advice and this is kind of my last resort before doing something stupid.

I've been coming here more often recently. I never expected this to be one of the spots I frequent. After all, I've kind of given up on the place, but I need it now more than ever. I've got a lot of burning questions regarding the love of my life and what the fuck I'm supposed to do to keep her.

"I know, I know. That's what I said. I told her she wouldn't have to worry," I say to the empty sky above me. The stem in my hands is becoming less and less recognizable, and perhaps my picking is from the nerves making my hands sweat as I tear the poor thing to a pulp.

A sigh leaves my lips as the wind courses through my hideout, rustling the greenery above my head. "Well, I never said she wasn't allowed to be an independent woman. I just think that maybe she should take a step back and let someone else care for her. She's never gotten that."

The small flower in my hand becomes just a wilted bud and dirty leaves. "I don't mean like that. I'm smart enough to know I can't just kill everything in my path to her. Have you no faith in me?" I pluck a few scraggly petals off the bulb.

The clouds move above me as the wind picks up. "I won't lie and say I didn't think about grabbing Jill the second I left her apartment. Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. Even though I've planned out her death in my head, I'm not going to leave a trail."

"Sometimes I wish we could have traded childhoods, Brinna and me. She deserved parents like you and Dad..." I sit up in the dirt, a small cloud of dust poofing around my sudden movement. "You guys deserved a better kid. She would have been the perfect fit for you. I deserved her childhood. You guys were too good to me for how horrible I was."

A flock of birds flies overhead, my eyes squinting as I'm more exposed to the bright beams bouncing through swaying plants from my seated position. "I deserved everything you guys did to try and change me, though." A hard thunk lands on my shoulder, startling me slightly. I toss the dead flower from my fingers as my eyes wander to my left.

A bird shit on my shoulder.

"Fucking really?!" I whisper-yell. My mouth drops open as my arms come out to my sides in frustration. "I know that was you, Dad!" I shout into the sky, the volume making crows scatter out of the field. "Nice one, listening in on my private conversation. I thought we talked about boundaries!" I gripe, wiping off the white fecal matter with a nearby leaf.