How This All Ends.

When You've Had Enough, You Know.

       Enough is enough. When the only person you ever spend time around avoids you like the plague, shifts everything to avoid contact with you, refuses to glance your way save for the few times when they catch you staring and glare with hatred and disgust, it breaks you. It doesn't just chip away, it rots and corrodes, it burns like acid, eating and dissolving quickly at any and all resolve you may have had.
       When your grades are suffering, when your mother wonders if she's failed as a parent because you've grown distant or your sister wonders if she missed something in your few conversations, when you're mother always asks at dinner if something's wrong, and all you can say is 'I'm alright', there's a problem. There's a big fucking problem.

       It wasn't enough anymore, to simply give up on passing and replace studying with harming, and it wasn't going to ever be enough, either. There wasn't enough pain to redeem him, not enough blood to drown his thoughts in. There was too much silence, too much tension.
       Maybe he was too young to feel this way, maybe too young to be so confused. He had so much time to sit and think, to figure everything out. But there wasn't really enough time. There would never be. Even six lifetimes wouldn't grant Morty the answer. 
       Why Rick? Why him? Why not Jessica anymore? Why not that boy in the back of the class, almost as shy as Morty? Why couldn't he decide which gender he preferred more? Why did he want older people? Why somebody like that? Why not something normal, outside of the fucking family, not more than three times his own age?
       No, Morty would never find the answers, even if he dug in ever damned universe, reality, or dimension. Nowhere would he find the answer.

       The night was quiet, save for the tv in front of the teen. He sat in the living room, watching a premiere of Ball Fondlers alone. He'd been planning on watching this with Rick, but the man had openly voiced his leaving to watch it with a friend on another planet. Upon questioning, Beth wondering why he didn't watch his favorite show with Morty like usual, Rick had ground out a simple answer. 
       "Because he's a disgusting teenager."
        Sure, Beth laughed, dismissing it as joking, but Morty was absolutely torn. He had waited a minute, not wanting to draw attention to himself, before he'd taken care of his plate. 
       "Morty, sweetheart, you barely ate anything. You haven't eaten normally all week. Are you feeling alright?"
       "No, mom. I'm sick."
       It had been the truth, though meant in a different context. And it was true on Beth's part. Morty barely ate anymore, finding that he both wasn't hungry anymore and he couldn't sit through family dinners for very long, across from Rick, the man who no longer sat near him, who no longer did anything with the family if Morty was involved.

       Crystal droplets fell slowly down sunken cheeks as the television flicked off, not even halfway through the episode. It wasn't funny anymore, anyway. Nothing was anymore. It was always too literal, too serious. Every joke had a common punchline, every trip and fall was more serious than laughable. Everything was almost painful anymore.

       In his room, instead of holding polite conversation with his best friends, Morty grabbed his school notebook and a pencil.