Save Me

Chapter Twenty-Four

♔ Chapter Twenty-Four ♔

It was so easy - falling for him all over again.

When I looked back at the boy I knew years ago, I remembered that he was absolutely fearless. Darby could handle himself even back then. He could throw a hard punch, and I'd been on the end of those throws a couple of times myself.

It was something that drew me into him, at first - he wasn't black and white, he wasn't afraid to do what he wanted. When I would hit him, he'd hit me straight back. We'd stare at each-other, bruised and bloody, and we'd make out.

I remembered the metallic taste of the kiss, our blood mixing with each-others, and I remembered thinking that there was nobody else for me. Pain stinging my body all over from his punches and kicks, the warmth of blood trickling over my skin, I ached to feel it again, to relive those moments with him a thousand times over. Back then there was nobody as fucked, or just as empty inside, as the two of us. We were miserable, and misery loved company. I wanted to go back to those days, maybe just because they seemed a whole lot easier than now.

But they were built on lies, I had to remind myself. All of those memories were fake and tainted, because I'd killed Tom, and lead Darby on the whole time.

At the time, it felt easy to toy with people's emotions. Who were they? I didn't care. They didn't mean anything to me. They weren't me, so I just didn't care. I didn't even consider their feelings, I just did what I wanted. I craved it so much too, that feeling of invincibility that I got whenever I hurt someone else. It was like a drug, an addiction, something that I needed. Over time, the need faded away, or maybe it mirrored back onto me, left me to hurt myself. That always felt good too, another craving - being beaten and battered, left bruised and alone, feeling that exquisite pain and letting it fill you up entirely, until all you feel is nothing at all, nothing in the world.

Maybe that was the ultimate craving, I thought to myself. To feel nothing at all. What a superpower that would be, to be able to glide through life unaffected, to have no conscience in the back of your head screaming at you to do the right thing, to stop you from doing those horrible things that run through your head everyday.

Darby was similar to me that way, but he was nothing like me in reality. Back then, I craved to hurt people the way I'd been hurt, it gave me a thrill, a twisted sense of satisfaction. Even now, I knew it. I could feel how powerful it felt, to treat Tom like shit, to fuck him around and throw him to his death. It felt good, and in a way it still feels good. In my darker, innermost thoughts, I still craved the power trip it gave me.

Darby craved something else entirely - maybe love, or maybe just an escape to his own loneliness. I remembered all the sex we had, wild and filthy, and sometimes freaky. After Tom, I felt a pull to Darby that I couldn't deny to myself. He fought back, and I liked that too. It gave me a thrill, another boy to conquer - a challenge.

I wanted him, and I took him.

But those were just memories now, hot and sweaty memories of a dark time in my life that seemed dreamy now that I was looking back on it. It was only with retrospect that we are able to look back and smile on hard times, and remember them differently than they were. Sure, we were fucking mental back then, but we were different people now. And it's only now that matters.

It was only a few years ago, but it felt like I'd grown up since, like I'd came to the startling realisation that life is hard, and it drags you down time and time again. It makes you feel like you're drowning in loss, in dreams and almosts, cursed to look backwards and hope that it's all just a nightmare, not your real life.