2024 Story Collection

All I Wanted In That Moment Was To Exist Beside You

"What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it." She says speed walking past him, back in the direction of her dorm with her suitcase in tow.

"Oh, so you just hop on a plane to Japan and you comeback like this and don't want to talk about it?" He asks while following after her.

She turns on her heels to face him, causing him to almost run into her. "Why the fuck do you care anyway, Rodger?"

"I-" but he stops himself.

"Exactly." she turns. "Leave me the hell alone."

She storms off walking so fast it takes her half the usual time to get back to her dorm.

The rich private college was an old repurposed castle in the mountains of Europe, her dream school. Well, it would be if Rodger didn't exist. He was her wannabe bully. Wannabe, because she didn't put up with his shit.

She swings the old door open, kicking off her ballet flats she despised. The door creaks as she closes it behind her. She knows she won't be able to sleep, so she ends up unpacking her suitcase. Might as well do something productive, she reasons.

She takes out her clothes and puts them away, each another reminder of how much she had changed for him.

As she pulls out a long baby blue dress, a photo comes out with it. She watches it fall to the ground. She hangs up the dress, taking a second before turning, picking up the photo and looking at it. She looks at the photo of her and her boyfriend of four years, that she had changed her whole life for.

Ex now.

She sits on the edge of her bed and stares at the woman in the photo. She doesn't recognize her.

She stands, moving over to her mirror and taking in her appearance. The woman in the mirror was wearing a light pink shirt with a long white skirt with ballet flats. The coverup makeup all over her body she used to hide the tattoos was cakey and made her look dead. Her piercing holes she filled with wax to hide were beginning to pull away from her skin. Her long hair tucked into a bob wig was beginning to escape around her face. The disguise she'd built for her ex was falling apart, and so was she.

"Fuck this," she says, pulling off the wig. She pulls off the pink shirt. "I fucking hate pink." She throws it to the ground and soon the skirt follows. "It's so hard to keep white clean, never again."

She stands there for a moment just letting her emotions flow over her, looking at the clothes laying on the floor.

She walks over to her closet and pulls out a storage bin in the back corner. No matter how much she changed for him, there were a few things she refused to part with.

She opens the bin.

Her old leather jacket lay neatly folded inside. It had been her mother's before she died. In the pocket was the jewelry she kept, including that for her piercings. Her black platform boots with 10" heels lay underneath the jacket. She smiles, as next to the boots lays her father's lighter that had been passed down from his father. He'd given it to her the day he died. She flips back the cover and lights it. It gives her an idea.

She closes the lighter and goes into her closet, grabbing the only black clothes she owns: a pair of shorts and a lingerie top.

"That'll do just fine," she says.

Rodgers words come to mind in that moment, "Why do you wear that shit? It doesn't suit you." he was right, but this does.

She jumps in the shower, doing her usual routine, scrubbing off all the makeup that covers her body and removing the wax she used to fill the holes from her piercings.

She gets out a few minutes later and grabs the concealer, about to put it on by habit, but stops herself. She tosses it in the trash instead before walking out of the bathroom and putting on the clothes she picked out. She slips on her mother's leather jacket and her old boots.

She walks over to her mirror and takes in her appearance. A smile creeps onto her face.

She pulls out the bag of jewelry and puts back in all her old piercings, mostly in her ears but her lip has one, her nose and her eyebrow, bellybutton and a few more in fun places. She was beginning to feel a bit more like herself again.

She slips on her grandmother's rings, her grandfather's chain and her other grandmother's watch as well as a few bracelets.

She looks up and bursts out into tears. She looks like herself again. It's been so long.

After a few minutes, she looks around her room for a bag and her wallet. She stuffs her wallet in her pocket and throws all her clothes, the wig and evidence of that man she had in her life inside the bag.

She takes one more look at herself in the mirror before leaving her dorm.

She stops by the convenience store to get a pack of smokes and fill up a small gas can. She lights up a smoke and takes a large puff once outside. It was a nasty habit, but she missed it.

She walks out to the old dusty field nearby and dumps out the bag's contents before covering it in gas and throwing her cigarette on the pile, lighting it ablaze. She steps back, a bittersweet smile on her lips as she watches it all burn.

She stays there till sunrise, watching as the last of the ashes go out.

She takes a piece of scrap metal she finds lying around and uses it as a makeshift shovel to smother the ashes with dirt.

She dusts herself off and heads back to school, lighting up another smoke as she goes, ready for a fresh start.

To be continued...

February 7, 2024