Coma ➷ Izzal

Chpt.4

Growing up, Axl quickly learned to differentiate blatant happiness from facades. As a child, the estranged glint in his mother's eyes told more than the bedtime stories she whispered as though they were being scrutinized from afar. He discovered more within her veneers than what was taught to him by his father's abuse, and he learned brutality in the sounds of his sister's shrill screams rather than historical teachings of war in school. Age was defined by the late discovery of his biological father's death, just the way it was defined by the lacerations painted across his skin by his artiste of a stepdad.

Axl realized how deprived he was of what happiness could truly be and what it could truly mean early on in life. He wanted to prod into the fake grins his mother showed, break apart that porcelain mask and find her true emotions sheathed to him in flesh and blood. He wanted the truth— the unadulterated declaration that things were not okay.

But still she smiled, and still she whispered those sweet nothings; sweet nothings that truly were nothings. They meant nothing, and they did nothing.

And Axl despised feeling so lost as a child, feeling as though he was restrained by that cruel man's wicked abuse, feeling his heart shattering each time his mother gave that painful, pitiful smile.

When Axl looks up, there's blue before his eyes. A cerulean abyss displays itself before him in it's true form, like a maiden unlacing her corset. And he only watches as if he's being sucked in, enthralled by it all with such excitation and bewilderment pivoting inside his frail body. He doesn't snap into focus until someone steps into the view, the garish sun angled behind their face and making it near difficult to recognize them.

That is, until they speak.

"Fuck, Bill. Did that asshole whip you again?"

Axl sits up, glaring at Izzy with a dazed extent of concentration. The brunet is wearing an armless shirt, his chest barely covered beneath the skimpy fabric, and his jeans are faded and torn around his thin legs. One of his feet is propped up on a scratched up skateboard, while the other maintains his balance right beside Axl.

"What..?" Axl feels as lame as he sounds only when Izzy gestures towards his arms, which are embedded with scarlet welts. Dried blood travels down his elbow, staining his pale skin, and clouding his head with horrid memories— though none of them are recent. "What the hell happened?"

Izzy sighs. "Bill, did he knock your head too? C'mon, get up." Izzy extends his hand, and Axl takes it, grunting as he's hoisted up from the hard ground. The name alone leaves an all-too familiar spark of annoyance in his head, and when he scans the vicinity, he's stifling down his urge to vomit.

Axl hasn't always hated Lafayette. In a distant period of life, he admired the quiescence of the town, along with the sultry air that burnished his skin when riding his bike along the sketchy outskirts. He loved proximity when it mattered; how Izzy was always only a block away.

But now, it felt nothing more than an imprisonment, perhaps just as vivid as the one his head was encased within.

He turns back to Izzy, examining the concern prominent within those prismatic eyes. He doesn't pull back when his friend leans in, gently touching his head before revealing his finger coated with Axl's blood. Axl just stares.

"He can't keep hurting you like this," Izzy growls, and Axl nods, because he too is sick of the pain that has embedded itself within his darkest memories. "We've gotta find a way out of here.. A way to leave this shit hole."

Axl smiles. Axl smiles, and the cowardly Bill Bailey probably wouldn't. But he foresees what that same coward never could, and a part of him is hopeful; hopeful that he did make it out, but not to die. Not to exist in this endless dream, but to live.