prey

Dissociation was kicking in and I felt my vision getting blurry. The world around me went from sharp angles to soft edges, to which I took off my glasses to amplify the effect further. 

With a blink, I slowly turned to look at the other boy, the flush in my cheeks increasing as I noticed a hand reaching out to presumably hit me or something. Instead it felt like a feather – floating down from the sky above – gently stroking my cheek, rather than the flesh of a living being touching me. It wasn’t anything like I expected it to be. A faded memory, good kid wrong place wrong time. Nobody to remember his name, his laugh, his strange black eyes, his crooked smile. 

every so often my typical dreams start to give way to stranger, more concerning ones, flavoured like lukewarm vodka and flashing neon.

I could feel every dent in the other boy’s hand, every cut on his upper left arm. I ran my fingers down the many scars and all I could think was that this was so right, just us, until the end of the fucking world, and maybe even then we’ll find each other in our next lives. Maybe we already had. I remember the first time I saw him and our eyes met, I felt sick. Like I was going to vomit right there in the classroom. I felt an immediate urge to make sure that he was alright. Like a thread wrapped around my finger and pressed against my heart. The intimacy of finally being understood.

I know I’m young and the world isn’t crashing down around me, but I want to know what’s wrong with me. There are things I can’t change about myself, and on most days I wish God would hear me and please change my face and my hair and my growth pattern and right now I’m ignoring every mirror and pretending that friendly conversations are a kind of validation. I don’t even know if love is real, let alone if it has any substance. I had tried so hard, staring vacant and void and hurting in those court appointed therapy sessions, to wrap myself in a shroud of tepid indifference. 

delirium, unmoored and drifting. grey, wide open reaches. the cracked jam jars of roadside shrines. the breathless adrenaline of always looking over your shoulder. the ever present hunger. the ghosts of kids on bikes haunting the ruined streets.

Time does not exist and neither did rules, there are no boundaries anymore. Eventually this became boring and he got up to have a cigarette and a huff of glue that was left over from lunch and suddenly the sky had grown a kind of flickering neon pink, like from an old VHS. We wandered outside, dazed, sluggish, into the dying spring heat of evening and we stand there in the street, with the rose coloured sun beating down on our backs, magnetised by the black of our shirts. I hoped my racing heartbeat could shake him loose from whatever nightmare he was walking through alone. I watched him, like I always did, in these unguarded moments. The hair at the back of his neck was damp, clinging there with sweat, stuck to his faded old Marilyn Manson t-shirt. I wasn’t as high as I would have liked to be but the buzz was good enough to halo everything in soft light and to give my immediate emotions a distant, unreal feeling. 

I noticed he hadn’t spoken for over five minutes. Which was unusual for him. I crouched carefully over him like he was some frightened animal that might leap up and bite me if I made the wrong move. Somehow, I managed to get both of his wrists in my hands before he closed the tiny gap between us. I could feel his pulse, stuttering and fast, or maybe it was my own. In my mind, we had already begun to blend. He was made of anger, sunlight and someone else’s laughter, distorted frames crossing in front of my eyes.

but then his phone flashed, a panel of white, illuminating the ceiling above, filling the lonely pale midnight blue with sharp strobes of static, and it all comes crashing down, the building crumbles and turns to dust. 

In reality, I’m in the bathroom and Lucas was next door watching something black and white on TV and there are little pills, oxycontin, the strong green shit, scattered around the sink but also on the floor. When I get back to the living room, there are two lines still untouched on the small glass table and Lucas is on the floor, folded in on himself. I could kiss him. But I can’t because his eyelids are swaying and his pupils are tiny and his lips are almost blue and he’s barely breathing and we’re way out in the middle of nowhere so even if I called an ambulance (no reception?) it would take ages and then who’s gonna pay for it? Maybe I still have Narcan? I should know that. But he’s right there on the floor next to me and he’s dying. 

Bare, white walls. Cold moonlight peeking in through the broken window. I look around the room and can see with perfect clarity what the rest of his life is going to look like. Glint of the hypodermic needle, track marks crawling up his arms like ivy overtaking a ruined house. Grime, blood borne infections. Cold in the ground by twenty -five.

a faded memory, good kid wrong place wrong time. nobody to remember his name, his laugh, his strange black eyes, his crooked smile.

I have this dream often. We’re standing across from each other in a dark room, clouds float around us in the void. He’s painted in dark broad strokes, wild and feral. Large eyes glowing black in the dusky light. We say nothing. I don’t know how long I’m stood there before he’s leaping towards me. Feathers flying and sharp teeth. I’m pinned under him. His claws are digging into my wrists and he’s staring at me with his black eyes. I am prey to him, nothing more.

Outside the stars begin falling.