Spaces Between Us

Six.

M A N I K

"I can't... I just can't..." I lifted my eyes from the canvas to the tall slim frame laughing her heart out by the window of my dirty apartment. I wondered what made Noelle laugh so hard knowing that Doctor wasn't just a Doctor. She was a mentally unstable woman. Otherwise, who pushes a man into a lake? I wanted to know who.

"She literally...d-did, right?" She spoke puffing in heavy breaths in between her laughter. I said no more. What was so funny!

"Anyway, does this...." She poked my nose which was covered with a bandaid and I winced in slight pain. "..hurt?"

"Oww. Yes, you fool." I rubbed it lightly moving my face aside where she no longer could poke me and she bursted into a fit of laughter. Again.

It was all because of that Doctor. All because of her. Had it been any other person, I surely would've planned to get back but that certainly couldn't be what I was hoping to do. Jeez, she already was mental and Jesus knew what next she'd do if I myself walk into her den. For me, for her and for everyone else it was much better that I stayed away from her. Usually, it wasn't this difficult with my previous Doctors because all I had to do was plainly intimidate them but this time, this particular Doctor was a different story. As if, she liked to be challenged. She desired to be intimidated.

My fingers coated with colours started working back on the canvas. Something about painting calmed me always. Maybe, it was the touch of those colours or their fragrance that lingered long day in my nostrils. Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat...I want to paint the air. The air she would breathe in, the air that would cause her hair to fly, the air that would cause her long eyelashes to tremble and the air that would touch her skin beneath her clothes. I wanted her to promise me that she'll find her way back to me one day and that she'll see how madly in love with her I have always been.. and maybe that will be the day she'll let herself stay.

Gentle warmth of breath landed on my neck and I looked from the corner of my eyes Noelle bending over placing hands on her knees to study the painting. The cigarette in my other hand was nearly over and I dropped it on the floor squashing it with my sleeper. Finding the ashtray was a tiring job and my apartment already wasn't in a quite decent shape so who cares!

"She broke your heart. She broke you yet hers is the only face that you paint day and night." She sighed staying in the intact posture while i picked up another brush dipping it in the palette.

"Every night I bang my head against the wall, I think I'm one step closer to getting her out of my mind. But as the Sun shines the next day, she crawls back into my mind like she was never gone." My voice quivered.

I knew tears were pooling at the bridge of my eyes and thus inhaling hard, I pulled my pack of cigarette to lit another one.

"That's enough." She whisper-yelled pulling it out of my grip making me groan.

Flipping the cap of the box, I dashed another one in my lips hearing her groan in defeat. I couldn't string words together and didn't know what I was feeling as my mind circled in haze.

She coughed waving hand before her mouth. "Take it from me. One day you're going to either set this entire apartment on fire or choke yourself to death in this murderous smoke coming out of this filthy thing."

Nudging my shoulder, she gave me a hopeless nod before walking out of the door and leaving a bag full of food on the table. All I heard next was the shutting of my door.

I heard this voice inside my head telling me to hate myself.. that I will never be enough and when I cried at nights, I wished to feel dead inside for all the hurt that's left in me; I wanted it to vanish completely. My thoughts have been circling as I feel like screaming but no sound came out; all the air left my lungs except a silent cry in my soul.