Black Waters (Frank Ocean Love Story)

Chapter 六

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Christopher’s View.

When I left that hospital, I was utterly confused. It was like…I didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what to feel. The doctor’s voice when she told me that Ajahni was a fugitive kept replaying in my head like a broken record. In fact, I felt like everything that had been happening was a broken record. This had happened before, hadn’t it?

Of course not. Ajahni never broke out of a hospital before this. She hadn’t gotten raped before this.

But I knew deep down inside that something similar to this had happened in my life, or in her life.

So I left the hospital, tripping over myself every few steps and trying to ignore the black spots clouding my vision. I tried to look like a normal young man making his way to his car, with nothing to worry about. But I had always been bad at trying to be someone I’m not.

Yeah, I got a few stares in the parking lot. It didn’t matter, because the faces of all the people staring at me were blurry and alien-looking. This was worse than being high, and I didn’t even know what it was.

After a few tries, I finally unlocked my car and got in, closing the door as quickly as possible and resting my forehead on the steering wheel. What was happening to me?

 I started the car and began to pull out of the handicap-parking spot that I was in. Fortunately, I didn’t get towed.

As soon as I was back on the road, my phone rang in my pocket. I took it out and looked at the caller ID; I couldn’t read it. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. I could see Tyler’s name a little clearer now.

“Hello?” I said groggily, trying to give him the idea that I had just woken up.

“Man, where are you?” Tyler asked in his usual energetic voice. I sighed.

“In my car. So talking to you right now is kind of illegal.” I said, disappointed that my sleepy voice hadn’t worked.

“Illegal my ass. You needed to be at the studio an hour ago. What happened?”

“Something came up. I’ll be there soon though.”

“Alright.”

Then we both hung up the phone. Talking to someone had actually made me feel a little better. I wasn’t dizzy, and I could see much clearer now.

After waiting a few seconds for a red light to turn green, I swung a corner and pulled into a dead end. I could see better, but not well enough for me to have seen the DEAD END sign at the corner where I turned. I sighed and prepared myself to reverse, but then a strange thing happened.

The air was just suddenly extremely foggy. All I could see was fog, and the inside of my car became humid, so I stepped out of the car. I coughed a bit; it was surprising to breathe in fresh air after being locked in a humid car for just a few seconds.

After my fit of coughing had passed, so had the fog. But things weren’t the same. Sure, the houses and the brick wall that indicated that this was a dead end were still there. But some things had just appeared…

Like a ghost.

I’m not crazy—at least, I hope I’m not crazy. But seeing that ghost was like…it was crazy.

The ghost is still there after I close my eyes and open them again. She, or it, walks toward me until her one-dimensional face is only a few mere inches away from mine.

“Why?” She said breathlessly. I cannot respond. My mouth is slightly open; I cannot close it. I can’t move.

“Why do you feel the need to lie?” The ghost whispers again.

“I didn’t lie. I…” I trailed off. The ghost’s eyes are wide and remain locked with mine.

“WHY DID YOU LIE TO HER?” She screamed. Startled, and stumbled backward onto my car. The ghost walked toward me and grabbed me by the neck.

“I don’t know why you lied, and why you don’t know what I’m talking about. But I need you to find her. I need you to save her, to heal the wounds that you made in her heart. You’re the one that left, and now you need to go back. Do you understand?” She asked forcefully. I motioned to her that I couldn’t speak with her hand gripping my neck, so she let me go.

“Yeah,” I said between coughs of relief. When I picked my head back up, she was gone. I wasn’t even in a dead end, I was parked in front of an apartment building with a beat-up revolving door and things crawling through the grass behind the gates on either side of the building.

No. Not here. I couldn’t be here. How did I get here?

I no longer had control of my actions. I got out of the car, locked the doors, put the keys in my pockets, and walked toward the building—all without intention. When I was in front of the building, staring at the graffiti-covered revolving doors, I tried to walk back toward the car.

But I failed.

I pushed through the doors and ended up in a building with a tiny, mere lobby that smelled like fish and piss. I strolled inside, trying not to drag my feet in the anonymous substance on the floor. I walked up one flight of the steep, creaky stairs and ended up on the second floor.

The first door to my right was unlocked. It had to have been unlocked. It was always unlocked.

I pushed it, and was satisfied when I saw that I was right about the lock issue. The apartment was stuffy and hot. I closed the door behind me and walked past the kitchen, which was really just a home for rats, and entered the living room.

There were wooden tables lined up in the living room, filled with bags. I stared at them with hunger, but managed to snap myself out of it and walked down the hallway and into the one and only bedroom. This is where Griff’s junky-friends came to have sex. No one slept here. Griff definitely didn’t sleep here.

How could he sleep when he had to work?

There was no bathroom. Some guys shot up the toilet, but that’s an entirely different story.

I couldn’t resist the urge anymore. I marched back into the living room, fighting myself while doing it, and picked up one of the thousands of zip-loc bags in that room.

I opened it and sniffed it, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head. I had broken this addiction. I didn’t need to bring back old memories.

Griff had me hooked. Like he said when I told him that I wouldn’t get addicted to this stuff, “You never sell cocaine to a fourteen year old who won’t grow up to be terribly addicted.”

I was about to do cocaine. Illegal cocaine. In a vacant apartment. The apartment of a drug dealer. A drug dealer that I murdered when I was fourteen.