Whispers In The Dark

Robin

Robin

I finished off my third cigarette of the hour, rubbing the lit cigarette head into the side of the school and flicking the dying cigarette into the grass. As the smoke cleared from my eyes, I looked up to the looming building that I had been leaning against. It made me sick to think that this was where I would be spending seven hours a day, five days a week, at for the next ten months.

Sighing, I rolled my shoulders and adjusted my brown messenger bag. Wheezing yellow school buses had begun to spew kids of all shapes and sizes onto the gum-ridden asphalt. I pulled my hood over my head and trudged toward the clusters of high school students, wild with happiness from seeing their friends again, mouths moving a mile a minute as they tried to catch up on what had happened over the summer.

I stared in distaste at the giggling groups of girls, and the howling, perverted teenage boys trying their hardest to sneak glances down girls' cleavage-baring shirts.

I jumped as a hand clapped down onto my shoulder, my hand flinging out to catch whoever had touched me.

"Whoa, Rob!" was said, as I slapped the hand away.

I arched an eyebrow in confusion. "David?"

"Yeah, man! How's it going?" David asked, a slight Australian accent tinting his words. He ran a hand through his cropped blonde hair; a relaxed, subconscious action. His eyes were blue and twinkling in the late August sun. His skin had tanned over the summer, becoming darker and smoother, despite having already been flawless the year before. He was an inch or two shorter than me, but was broad and built, whereas I was lean, all skin and bones. Compared to him, I felt like an awkward skeleton, with nothing but flimsy skin pulled over rattling white bones.

"I thought you moved back to Melbourne in May?" I remembered the giant moving trucks and tearful goodbyes.

"I did," he said, and with that, he disappeared into the air.

My breath caught in my throat, and my eyes became damp with what I told myself were not tears. Exhaling, I turned my eyes up to the groups of high school students that I had nearly forgotten about.

A myriad of eyes were focused on me. I growled lowly at the sudden attention, causing a few of the eyes to turn away and pretend that they weren't even looking in the first place. Hiking the strap of my bag higher up onto my shoulder, I ducked my head and pushed through the once again chattering students.

The voices were there. They always were. They were always at the back of my head, laughing, teasing, calling me names, but this time, I really couldn't tell if they were real or not. Worthless, they hissed. Nobody loves you. You're ugly.

 I shoved open a door to the school, stumbling inside and immediately becoming aware of the lack of air conditioners in West Haven public schools as I had been only three months prior to that moment. The sticky heat surrounded me, making the smell of hormones and dry-erase markers even thicker than before.

Worthless.

 I could hear the groups that I had left behind laughing and talking animatedly. I was sure that they were laughing at me. Look, the freak talks to air. He's so ugly that he had to create imaginary friends because his real friends left him to die.

 I groaned as the beginnings of a migraine prodded at my brain. My eyes watered as the voices snarled vicious words into my ears. I ran my hand along a row of lockers, grateful for the lack of people in the hallway.

Hideous. Worthless. You will never amount to anything, you whore.

The words slurred together and became an endless string of fire and hate. I stopped walking and leaned my forehead against a locker, trying to catch my breath. The green metal was cool against the perspiration on my skin, and I sighed deeply as the voices closed in on me. I pressed my hands against the metal as well, the sleeves of my shirt slipping to reveal a bit of scarred white flesh. Not here, not here...

I screamed, my mind coming apart like the layers of an onion to reveal the sound of destroyed and troubled mental wiring. I slammed my fist into a locker, cringing at the harsh contact.

Disgusting.

 "Shut up," I hissed quietly.

Several hands pulled me away from the dented locker. People were talking frantically. Faces were becoming a blur. I spotted one girl standing beside a row of lockers, staring at me with pity and sadness in her eyes, her mouth a tight line.

"Piss off," I mouthed, glaring.

And all I could think, as I was pulled into a nearby classroom, was, I should have taken my medication.