Slowtown

25

Blood leaks down from open wounds to a pair of violently shaking hands in front of me. They move toward me, and I realize they're mine. I stroke my neck, finding it raw and bruised. I feel like I'm breathing out of a straw. A ragged noise escapes me. My heartbeat is deafening, I want it to stop and never start again.

Feelings. Emotions littering my mind, making a mess of it. Everything is too much.... too fast, and I'll never catch up.

Escape...

...I tried...

...I failed.

The world around me morphs, my senses momentarily impaired. I can't get a grasp on what's happening until I hit the ground. Back to Earth, I understand that I fell. I'll be fine, I know, so I lay there on the grass, fading in and out of consciousness, having no idea what I experienced. But when I finally fully come to, it's all plainly clear.

I remembered.

Yes, duh, of course I did. It was me in that situation. I was... oh no. Oh no.... Was that really me? Would I have done that?

The sun shines on my face, a spotlight indicating, you did.

It makes sense. Hate to say it, it's fitting, and if I thought hard enough, I could've guessed that's what I did to get myself in here. Not the first time I chucked my will to live out the window.

I lay there all afternoon, patiently watching the sky turn from blue to bright orange to furious magenta to deep denim. Before I get stuck under the stars, I wobble up, noticing how nothing hurts, and stumble over to Lisa's, if I recall correctly where she lives.

Yes; her door is unlocked, and I stumble in to find her hunched over a book.

I timidly ask "Sorry to bother you, but... can we talk?"

She looks up immediately, nodding for me to come next to her.

I find it surprisingly easy to talk to her, except for one thing. Admitting it is the hardest part, because more than anything, I'm admitting it to myself. Out loud. This is for real.

Once I get past the lump in my throat and spit it out, she thanks me for telling her, and says that the easiest thing I can do for the rest of today is go home and sleep. "We'll figure out the rest tomorrow. Don't worry."

Lumbering back to my house, I feel like I'm not even in my own body, but at the same time, I can't feel more like me. As much as I dislike who I turned out to be, I know who I am.

I almost pass my house, I'm so spacey. I throw open the door and walk in a ways, then stop. I inhale so very deeply, and when I exhale, I feel everything inside me collapse. I fall to my knees, crushing and crumbling the debris, feeling a prickling sting in my eyes. I don't know exactly why I start crying hysterically, it's a giant mushed up blob of reasons, all melted together so I can't tell what I'm even feeling. Whatever combination of emotions it is, it's been building up for far too long, and it's hard to keep it in.

I lift my head, seeing the phone on the wall and a post-it note next to it. I crawl nearer to see what's scrawled on it. Josh must've taken the liberty of sneaking into my house again to leave his phone number for me. I contemplate. I decide that there's no one I'd rather spill my guts to than him, I feel like he'd really care.

So I reach up, and slumped against the wall, I call, and he picks up soon.

"Hello?"

"Hey. It's Tyler. Could you, uh, could you come over?"

"Yeah, yeah. Is something wrong?" his voice crackles a little through the receiver.

"No... I just need some company I guess."

"Do you want me to bring Jenna, too?"

"Sure."

"Okay, I'll be right over."

Click.

I breath tiredly. That's right, I'm tired, and that's quite a blessing for me. I wanna go lay in bed. So I do. And a few minutes later, when I hear the door open and he calls out my name, I, tucked under my fluffy covers, yell, "Upstairs!" I hear two pairs of feet thud up the stairs, and then Josh and Jenna are sitting on the end of my bed, gentle smiles and soft "hey"s.

"How you doing?" Josh is the first to ask.

"Something happened today," I tell, sure that they already know.

They look at each other for a moment, then back at me. I nod.

Jenna sighs, "I'm sorry."

"Yup. It sucked."

"So what happened?" Josh asks curiously, and Jenna socks him on the arm for it. "Sorry, you don't have to tell us if you don't want to," he corrects himself.

"I do. ...I do, but I don't want to go into the details."

"That's fine," Jenna reassures me.

This time, I don't prepare myself for what I'm about to say. I blurt it out, crass, harsh, and unexpected. They inhale sharply.

We talk the night away, but about other things.

And when I wake up around noon, I leave them sprawled on the floor to go meet Lisa.

—

The days pass, the weeks pass, until I have completely lost track of time.

I am so carefree.

But often I feel like I'm doing nothing productive or purposeful my life, and this makes me feel worse and worse every day. I ignore these feelings because it makes me think I'm being selfish, knowing that there is no reason to feel horrible anymore. I am safe. But something chatters in the back of my mind, something is slipping out of my reach and itching my subconscious trying to find a place to grasp.

I open up to Lisa about these things. She's a great listener. While she's telling me about how mental stability is a very gradual process, the light over our heads flickers out. But it's the middle of the day, so we don't pay attention to it, for now.

Later, I try to call Josh, but it seems the line is dead. Not a big deal, his house is just across the way.

I head over there but find the place empty. He must be at Jenna's, then. And as I'm passing the graveyard, there's that old man, still sitting on the bench. I try to walk quickly but he looks right at me and says coarsely, "You're new."

Not really, but I nod, pace slowing.

"Let me tell you some things, some things you should know," he says while motioning for me to sit with him.

I am not excited for this.

He rambles about a million topics that all seem irrelevant to each other, but I listen intently. I wring my hands all throughout his lecture on trauma. I notice how skittish he becomes while preaching about sanity. I wonder how it is that one person can learn so much.

He concludes with: "If there is only one piece of advice I want you to always have in your mind, it's to never get used to this place."

I have no idea what time it is when he lets me go, but I've lost interest in seeing my friends today.

On the walk back home, I make a conclusion: this John is a very fearful man. And that thought raises questions, such as, what reasons are there to not be rightfully afraid? I'm stuck in some limbo because something awful happened and I can't do anything about it. That's terrible. When did I begin to accept this?