DISTORTED FACES

10. Collected.

My heart sinks for this has been a daunting presumption of mine and now I cannot even trust myself. Charlie is afraid of me and I remain adequate. If anything, I feel reassured because I have been scaring even myself. Admiring Charlie with an empathetic gaze, there is a part of me that longs to hold her. Her petite nose and round cheeks stay flushed and white while she cries. There is no heat nor defense generating her cries, everything about her is soft and somber. As if there is no true pain emitting from her heart. I feel it in mine looking at her and wanting to kiss her, love her: It will be the death of me. A thin icy hand caresses the back of my head. "What is going on in there, Jay?" Charlie nestles her fingertips in my greasy hair. "I cannot trust anyone." The hypocrite says to the liar. I do not know what has come over me, but it is something like surrendering. Without either of us saying another word I: stand up, take off my shoes, change my clothes, and lay down in bed. She watches me before doing the same thing. I doze off in her arms.

She starts strangling me. With fingers like rope she wraps them around my neck and restricts me from breathing. I can feel my windpipe crippling in her violent grip. Every gasp for air becoming more desperate as the ball of pressure builds. Pulsing veins trail up my face and my eyes bulge from their sockets. It is hard to see past the red film fogging my eyes, but through it, I see her smiling down at me. Like an angels face melting, those once beautiful eyes droop down her cheeks and thick layers of flapping wrinkles form underneath her lids, touching the edges of her wide manic smile. I have never seen her face so contorted, the sight invades my brain and drains my consciousness.

The rest of my body is paralyzed. Again I am trapped: stuck in a state of agony no person would ever deem bearable. I should have never trusted her. Those cries were fake and there was truly no pain behind them. She drops the weight of her body on my stomach and strengthens her grip. Coughing and hacking: I close my eyes and try to see through the panic. I have reached the point where I can no longer distinguish reality: it has become my nightmare. As desperate as a dying fish my lids push open and my eyeballs pop. This woman is the starring role in the story of my demise.

Unless, I can stop her.

Move...Move...MOVE-MOVE-MOVE- No matter how hard I try, I am a deadlock. Internal screams wire my teeth shut. Because of the colossal compulsions in my temple, it feels like my head is going to explode. Out of tune with the screams, she starts laughing at me. With her teeth still grinding together I hear her giggling, she cackles louder and louder. She takes a deep breath in, opens her narrow jaw with skin slipping off the edge, and pops it out of place.

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"Jay! Jay! Wake up! Please!"

Just before the stage lights above me turn on, I stand alone, dead center. Everything around me is dark, faded into a black line, but there is energy radiating from it. My blood pressure expedites knowing in just a moment I will see the source. This used to be one of my favorite feelings, standing in this place, absorbing the energy here. But now, all of my bodyweight falls behind me as I lay on top of a narrow bed, the sheets wrapped around me. My eyes slowly reopen, they skim my bedroom. No lights turned on, but there is a faint blue tint making areas visible. Darren's bed is empty. All of his possessions seem in place. My eyes continue seeking the unordinary. I see his pillows and sheets without any wrinkles, tucked in and laying out perfectly. Clothes scatter randomly along the floor, it trails over to a stack of papers also covering the desk. As if my eyes were playing tricks on me, the color is sucked out of everything.

Across my bed, the closet door hung open. My eyes squint as I stare inside. Nothing sways back and forth. All of my shoes are stacked evenly along the floor. Deep cracks of black separate each article of clothing hanging along the rack. My gaze sunk into each one of them. There is nothing. So I continue to scan the rest of my room.