Angel On A Whim

                      Fallen Angel : Angel On A Whim
                                       
                                     

Chapter 1 - An Introduction To Morning

I remember watching you through my half cracked eyes as you started to move around. It was barely 6 am but you were already getting ready for another one of your days. The pre-dawn light that filtered in through the partially closed blinds seemed to give your face a slightly angelic look, though the bags under your eyes gave way to the damaged inside of you.

these are the memories of you i don't want to forget, but yet wished they had never happened.

as you pulled on your knee high boots and zipped them up i could see the look on your face... the one that showed you were looking for a reason to hold you back. pull you back into the bed and curl up, just fall back into sleep. but you couldn't. i knew that already without trying to stop you and even say good morning. You needed to score. it was written in the way just five minutes ago you had been tossing around in bed next to me.

On your arms, which the rips in your sleeve showed, were the track marks from just a few days ago. and i knew that by the time you got home there would be new ones. I can remember wishing in my heart that you would just come back to bed and let me hold on to you until the shivers stopped and u could get up without the pain of with drawl. but no amount of crossing my fingers could make that wish come true.

i knew deep within my heart that one day you would break the cycle, and make the right choice in staying under the down feather covers with me, but today wasn't that day. And tomorrow pro-belly didn't have much better odds.

the alarm clock went off and you jumped. fully aware that i would be waking up in the next couple seconds. you grabbed your bag and made your way out the door. You knew how i felt about your addiction, and i knew you wished you could beat it, but that day just hadn't come yet where both of us could wake up smiling at the dawn of a new day. The front door opened with its normal cry of protest, from the rusty hinges i had yet to fix, and then the hard slam as the wood hit against the frame it sat in.

I rolled over and got started getting ready for work. i had to be at the store in just over an hour to start opening up.

as my eyes opened i noticed laying on the floor, the picture of you and i just after we had met. the rays from the starting of the sun rise illuminated it as if it sat in a puddle of golden water, in the middle of our bedroom floor.

You lay on a tree branch with your legs hap hazardly thrown on either side of the great oak that you so calmly seemed to ride as if it was no more then a bicycle. i sat below you not more the a hands breath away from your face smiling up. in those days you didn't need the morning sun to give you the faint angel like grace. you already glowed with the grace and humility of one and even seemed to have your own pair of feathered wings.

Those were the great days, before you had fallen into the rut of drugs and decay. we were only 16 at the time.
it seemed more like 50 years since that picture was taken though it was only eight. i can't even remember who took the photo, that i held closer to my heart then any other of my possessions, but that didn't matter i still loved you as much as on that sunny august day.

Reminiscing it what i do best, it helps me get through my days knowing that you miss those tears of joy as much as i did. I had finished dressing and shaving the light stubble that had grown on my chin since yesterdays attacks i had made with my cheap disposable razor, and walked into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. The Kitchen was nothing special nor was the apartment we called home. but it was simple and it was just the two of us, both to absorbed by work or other activities that even a simple tv held little use for us. I looked around the spartan kitchen finding the instant coffee and the favorite mug of mine sitting on the counter next to the well used coffee maker, where i had laid them out last night before crashing after an 14 hours day at the store. you were already passed out on the couch, that looked as if we had just picked it off the street, a copy of "The Stand" by stephan King dropped from your hand as i picked you up and placed you in bed.

Life was hard, but we were trying to make something work. as hard as it had been we we both knew that we were worth the fight, worth all the tear stained pillow sheets and back luck with the rehab. 

as i left the house,with the same creak from the protesting hinges, though i caught the door and silently pushed it closed. my long felt exhaustion feel over me. this feeling i fear never leaves me. not now, but it will later. i whispered under my breath "see you when you get home"

The Leafs were just beginning to change, as september was coming to an end. i walked down the driveway where my barely running rust bucket of a 5.0 waited for me. The engine took a bit of coaxing and a few choice words on my part to sputter to life, but in the end this car had always been faithful. I was just going through the motions..

Chapter 2 - 8 Month Ego

I never knew what to expect when i came home each night. Sometimes she would be dancing in the kitchen to "Iris" by the goo goo dolls, which had seemed to become her theme song.  Or she would be passed out somewhere too high to know that she was even home. I always wondered what i would see when i entered the front door every night. "please let this be on of the good days. just please let me hear those words on the cd player." that became my most over used phrase that year. mostly it was just empty wishing and false dreams but every so often i would enter and be blown away by the sound of her voice rising up, over the bubbling of whatever concoction she had dreamed up that night for dinner, "And i don't want the world to see me, cause i don't think that they'd understand..." she had one of the most beautiful voices. like a choir of perfectly pitched violins, playing for the world to hear them. i could dream on that sound for ever. Though i rarely got to enjoy it, i could always hear her voice, even in the deepest of sleeps.

This day in perticualr wouldn't be one of those days. As i opened the door, the familar words never played and all i heard in the house was silence. I knew where i would find her, half hidden behind the door to the small bathroom between the door jam and the bath tub. i could see her sock covered toes, as they peeked out when i glanced in as i walked to the bedroom to change into my pajamas. It was 9 pm, not that it mattered to her, she was to far into her mind trip that time lost its meaning and as far as she was concercened it was the perfect time to hide.

i remember kicking off my shoes, removing my shirt and falling to the ground, barely a heap on the rug that covered a small part of the hardwood floor in the bedroom. i spent a lot of time here, just feeling overwhelmed and crushed by the sight of her high on the one thing that was slowly tearing us apart. "hopeless" i had started muttering that and other negitive remarks to myself whenever i lay in the dark wondering what to do. Life had been closing in for awhile and i didn't know where i would be able to turn to make this emptiness go away. thats the hardest feeling to overcome when u know the only thing that will make u smile, is hiding in the bathroom and at the time is the thing that is making you feel like your life has lost the little meaning it once had.

The picture sat in its spot on my bed side table staring out at me as if it was laughing at the silence that creeped into even the smallest piece of my soul. At the site of my smiling face i lost it and the dam that usualy helpd my tears back burst and i just lay there crying myself into a pool of my own self loathing.

I have never been able to tell how long i lay there. some nights it would be only a momentary loss of concentration before i moved on. i do remember that that night was not like that. i had to mend myself more so after that battle with what was left of my inner emotion.

At some point i pulled myself up, using the  side of the foot board as a support. i had to get up and get her into bed. That was never an easy task, not so much the moving her, since when she got this way she just lay in a bundle that i only had to pick up and place in the center of the bed. it was the feeling of her body in my arms, feeling the wieght of her, noticing every little thing about her features and how she had deterated from just a hand full of months ago. to feel every one of her ribs through her skin, clothes and blankets she was wrapped up in. the stone that sank in my stomach and the choke in my throat. the hate and the love i had for her.

this time wasn't the first time i had to pick her off the floor and place her in our double bed we had shared for the past 3 years. nor was it going to be the last. But this time has always stuck in my mind cause this was the first time i didn't just lift her still frame off the floor. i actually looked in her half open eyes that just stared into space, i touched her sunken face and ran my fingers through her shoulder length dirty blond hair. also this time we never made it to the bed. i just crawled into the small space that was still availble between her body and the middle of the bath tub. i slid my left arm around her still frame and pulled her close to me. so close i could smell her unwashed hair, and could feel the cheap materail of her chirt on my bare chest.  we spent the night that way. i could almost hear her heart willing its self to keep beating in her chest and every breath she took pushed my back painfully against the lip of the tub. but i wouldnt move, this was my place for atleast this night.

that had been the first time i had touched her outside of our bed in almost 3 weeks. i wasn't going to let myself forget the way her touch still warmed my skin, i wasn't going to let my hate for her addiction push away my love for the crippled soul that hid behind it.

I missed the girl i knew still survived deep within the husk that lay next to me. I wouldn't give up. I wouldn't.....


Chapter 3 - The Only Morning After...

i remember watching the sun rise through the slits in the blinds beside the bathroom mirror, as i rubbed my puffy eyes sockets into life. I had stayed up all night holding her with my back pushed uncomfortably up against the rim of the tub. my legs felt numb from lack of motion since i had spent the entire night not moving a muscle in fear of waking her. I didn't know what time it was or maybe it was more of a lack of caring. It was saturday and i didn't have to get ready to leave. Usually saturdays were a day of forgetting the work week and just sleeping in or curled up on the couch reading a book. She rarely joined me such activities cause she was always to strung out to enjoy it. she would just lay in bed all day watching the wallpaper, with the curtains closed tightly, trying to ignore the world. I know i just stared blankly into space through the window watching the first rays hit the floor by our feet and slowly climb as if alive to warm us into wakefulness.

She stirred and slowly started to move, obviously aware of her uncomfortable sleeping position. I remember watching those emerald eyes open to see my shoulder which until a moment ago she had been resting her head upon, and seeing the surprise written on her features of seeing this. She always looked perfect after waking up. no matter how many drugs she had put into her system, she always looked perfect to me.

I had always hated myself in the mornings. nothing good had ever come from the nights before, so the hopelessness and anxiety of passed days always buried me in the heat of my hatred and cold of my mind slowly closing. I had almost forgotten what it was like to start a morning with her in my arms and i think she felt the same way.
The little warmth that radiated from her body kept me content to continue to lay there with her folded like a blanket over my arms, but she was startled by the way she had spent her night. She slowly lifted her small frame off the floor, untangling herself from my arms before getting a confused look on her face. She had that look about her that she was thinking of saying something but the words must have failed her, because nothing came out. It had been a couple weeks since we last said little more then hi to each other. "what happened?" her voice broke the silence of the morning with a similar sound to glass tinkling to the floor. Her face betrayed the fact that she was confused even as she used her left hand to push a few stray strands of blonde hair behind her ear. "the usual" i replied frankly hoping she wouldn't notice i was as nervous as i used to get when i wanted to kiss her. "why?" she barely stammered before her voice cracked and fell silent. "i missed you" is all i could reply before my voice did a similar surrender to me. We had broken a record, most words said in this house in almost a year. She only looked at me, like i was some person who she had never met yet woken up next to in some cheesy motel room. "what is wrong?" i managed to get out before my voice failed me again. My throat hurt from breathing in the dry air of the bathroom all night. "sorry, this just um surprised me is all." "sorry" came out as i lifted my own body off the floor and rested my self on the upper side of the tub.

I rubbed my legs trying to get circulation restored. The pins and needles feeling sprang up my extremities like fire does a tree till all i could think about is getting it to stop. Slamming my foot over and over again against the floor to wake it up didn't work so i tried to stand, but ended up back on the floor in worse shape then when i had started. A laugh is what i heard over my own curse words.. A laugh. Her almost angelic voice rose to my ears bringing a burning hot sensation to my cheeks. Blushing i managed to right myself up onto the lip again before allowing myself to laugh at my failure to operate my own legs.
"Breakfast?" she had stopped laughing. "yeah" i said still trying to stop laughing. maybe for once we could have a normal day, a break in the storm or just a little breathing room until it went back to the hate.

Chapter 4 - Just Another No Iris Day - 11/11/2006

I knocked the ash from my almost forgotten cigarette into the pewter look a like ash tray that stood next to the front door of the apartment. I didn't smoke, never really had the taste for it. but at certain times in my life it eased the stress. The day before had been almost to good, which always meant things were going to fall down before i could even finish memorizing every happy detail. That was he last day i was ever happy.

Holding her all day barely moving, hearing the rain, that had started a few hours after the hard to bare moments in the bathroom, against the living room's large windows.

One day i guess is more then i could have ever asked for. Only one day of no drugs, even the rare smiles that the past ages had all but covered over. I had almost forgotten that her smile brightened a room before she even entered it. and through the entirety of the 24 hours she looked more like the girl in the photo with every twitch the second hand made on the clock's face that sat on the kitchen wall in an almost perfect line from where had sat huddled up on the sofa.

one day of nothing but smiles and twirls of her hair between my fingers, and the even rarer kisses on the cheek that had made me fall so in love with her years earlier. but that was the day before and not now.

even as i had thought of all those memory making moments, inside the old apartment things were falling back to the endless grasp of hell. She was hiding in the bathroom again, but this time i couldn't lie next to her or even carry her into bed. It was late almost mid night and i had seen her and gone out to the store round the corner to buy a pack or smokes even though i knew i wouldn't finish them. She would i knew that much.

The nicotine cursing through my blood stream made me feel almost energetic. but with the energy and slight euphoric sensation just made me madder. I remember hitting my fist as hard as i could against the hard siding of the building. and the blood, from where my skin had cracked, running down my fingers and slowly dripping into the small rock garden she had made in our first year in this hiding place.

The stale air that dragged itself in with the pungent smoke almost made me choke, or maybe it was me trying to choke myself with my mind being the only thing holding me in place. I hated where i was and everything i had let myself and her become. i knew all i wanted to do was scream... just scream... it sounded good...

Chatper 5 - No Thought Of Exsistence - 12/3/2006

I couldn't sleep it's like i knew something was going to go wrong that day before anything could happen. i only really knew that time was passing by the way the shadows of the tree tops outside the window swept across the floor as the hours progressed.

Every time i shut my eyes all i could see was bright images lashing through my mind faster then any bullet could travel. blurred faces and distorted voices rang inside of my skull till i popped my eyes open to make it stop. and even though i knew these figments were nothing more then that, just figments. it scared me. they were almost to real.. like a broken memory trying to piece itself back together in a nightmarish way.

Slowly i watched each of the four tree chapped shadows as they swayed across the wooden floor and rug like a hand full of ballerina dancers coming to ruin my day. It was 4 a.m. and i had to be up at 6. i had the feeling that this day was going to be hell.

I heard thunder just after a flash of lightning blinded through the room. another storm was coming.. and it was close.

maybe i should have taken that as a sign. one pointing me towards knowing that today more so then other days was going to be worse then even i had learned to handle. maybe if i had been smarter i would have never let you leave.

The empty side of the bed, next to me. felt almost like a world away. You had run out a couple hours ago saying u needed to pick up a couple things at the store and would be back. maybe that why i couldn't sleep.

The storm had a way of creeping up on you even when you could seen it through the barely open curtains that held the outside "happier" world at bay. A clap of thunder startled me and almost had me falling from my perched throne of pillows and a moth eaten comforter that was now strewn around my legs much as a piece of rope that binds you.

"Where had you run off to?"

i never expected an answer to my questions that posed to the badly wallpapered walls but for once it would have been nice to hear her coming in and slamming that damn front door.  maybe even think i was crazy for talking to myself between the room being lit up by the storm that was now raging outside and being held captive by my bindings of fabric and down.

through the next batch of lightning strikes, the picture frame was lit up and for awhile i could seem the smiles that both of us used to know so well. Laughing memories came flooding back and i started to feel more alone then i have ever had the fun of feeling.

It was hell this life that i was jokingly trying to make myself believe was what i wanted and how i wanted to end up becoming. I hated the constant worry and depression that came with being with her though at the same time i knew that if i left all i would know is regret of not trying harder to make things work out. there was no doubt in my mind she was that girl that every one talks about.. at least she used to be. but now she seemed to find more solace in a needle then with me anymore. It broke my heart. I had spent the last few years of my life watching the true definition of the perfect person into a mind altered screwed up individual. It broke my heart...

and the worst part is i knew that when she did eventually come in that door and i heard it i would be making myself look fast asleep so she wouldn't know i had been worrying. i was sick with myself. i never thought that i could ever become that. the person who has basically given up.

i didn't want to give up...

chapter 6 - The Wake Up Dance

The storm still raged almost as if hell itself had let loose its power. The window above the kitchen sink shook with the ferocity of the pounding winds, as i stood in front of it staring out into the nothingness void that the grey sky was creating. my home brewed coffee sat in the palm of my hand and though my eyes were locked on the swaying trees and raindrop patterns spattering along the glass my mind was else where. she hadn't come home, and i was worried.

The seedy underworld that she seemed to find her place in was dangerous enough with her just walking in to find her fix let alone disappear into for more then a day. my mind flickered for a moment and my eyes went to the phone. But the the thought of having to explain the drug situation to a cop would only make me feel like a small person and the only response i would get was there was nothing they could do because she was more then likely just coming down in some crummy alley.

The lyrics to Vitamin R by Chevelle pulsed in my mind. She always said it described the drug so well. sad that i needed a song about suffering from drug addiction to understand where her head was. I had been with her for almost 9 years now and yet i wasn't really with her anymore. i had never fully been on the same page even in our teenage years and now life seemed so much more screwed up.

I sipped from my cracked blue mug that had a picture of a smiley face on the side of it. seemed appropriate that the dishes seemed in a better place then my mind and body made me laugh a little in my mind, though a smile never even cracked my lips. the hot liquid burned my tongue but i took little notice. I always made the best coffee when my life was most bothered. call it my solace and place to hide such as she had the bathroom behind the chipped white painted door.

I knew i should be feeling more then just worry at this point, specially since the last time she failed to come home i had been called at work by a soft spoken nurse telling me she had been found sprawled on a park bench o.ding. I couldn't help feeling that if she was at least this might be the catalyst that could get her to stop using but at the same time i felt horrible that i could wish something like that on the girl that even though she tempted me to hate her i couldn't do anything less then love her with all of my being. She was my life and i didn't want to spend my life without her, even if all i saw of her was the demon that the drugs brought out from under her skin.

i glanced at the digital clock on our pathetic excuse for a microwave, since it only seemed to do one thing and that was tell the time anymore. 8:00 am, i should be leaving for work but i just didn't have it in me to go and face my employee's and the customers even if it was a business i enjoyed.

I walked to the phone and dialed the only seven numbers i had ever bothered to memorize since i had moved to this place, and told the person who picked up that i wouldn't be coming in today cause i hadn't been feeling well.

I had made up my mind that i would sit on the couch drinking coffee after coffe till she came home. it was the only thing i could think of doing...


Chapter 7 - An Ending For A Much Needed Closer

Some how i had fallen asleep on the couch even after downing 6 cups of coffee in about 2 and half hours. i sharply glanced at the wall clock and realized i had been asleep for about 4 hours. it's funny what a couple hours of boring vacuity will do within shutting your brain down and letting you pass into a slumber-less sleep. I had woken up with a headache and a couple sore legs from the way they had been buried beneath each other.

i rubbed the feeling back into my left calf seeing as it was the worst off, before standing to go pour myself a cup of coffee from a pot the was already turned to room temperature.

i checked the clock on the microwave again to see if my estimate on my nap had been right and it sat there in its glowing green numbers at 2:23 p.m.

i really had slept a chunk of the day away. i went to check the bedroom with my basically sludge in a cup to see if she had returned. The bed lay exactly the same way i had left it. Unmade and bare of blankets on her side of the bed. with the pillows laying on the floor as if they themselves had decided on a nap until someone would come and lift them from their resting place on the wood.

no sign of her and that scared me more so then it did this morning.

maybe the police would do something about it now. she had been missing just over a day now and that defiantly went past the usual coming down in an alleyway.

i rushed to the phone book for the local police station to wanting to bother 911 with something that very well could be not an emergency. and dialed the digits into the touchtone phone, and waited as the buzzing ring tone rang 3 times before a voice answered on the other end.

I explained what it was i was calling for and he said he would patch me through to missing persons. a few more rings and another husky voice answered with his rank and name. again i had to repeat my story though this time the man on the other end seemed to pay more attention to what i had to say.

I remember describing her to him and then a pause. Then the worst thing i could have ever expected to hear made its entrance on in the disguise of only 8 words. "You might want to come to the station..." the rest of the next 10 second speech he continued to say fell on deaf ears. and the receiver dropped from my hands and hit the floor....

Post Script

its been only two week since that day. And i have visited your grave everyday since. the rough rounded edges of the tomb stone have already begun to wear away under the weight of my body as i lay on it hoping it would bring me that much closer to you.

As i was told at the station when i arrived after having to call a cab to take me cause my faithful car failed me for the first time since i had bought it and causing me to be soaked through my skin trying to get the damn thing started with the dark hood just barely holding the rain at bay from my head as i lay buried in its insides.

She had been found lying half broken under the Parkway bridge with a note clutched in her fist. i have only opened it once and even then the officer had to read it to me. the first words will always be burned in my my skull. "I'm Sorry..."

I lost it after he had only finished half the letter and threw the metal chair i had been sitting on against the wall and started to pound my hands against the rough edges of the desk. He did nothing to stop me just placed his hand on my shoulder to offer his condolences before he continued to read.

She had sat up the night before watching me sleep, and realized she would never be able to stop. she was to far in and was already drowning under the flow of the substances that were always pulling at her body. She couldn't keep watching me wasting away with her hand in hand and step by leap. She had seen that the drugs had brought my life just as far down as they had hers and she couldn't stand holding me back anymore.

The last words were "I love you, please always remember the picture.."

So she had jumped to save me from continuing down the road i was creating for myself to keep fighting the demons that were her problem and i didn't deserve to have to go through it.

I would never hold her again or carry her from the bathroom to our bed and i would never get to hear her sing "iris" as i walked through the door.

I like to drag my fingers down the flat granite surface of the written side of your stone. tracing the lines of each word mouthing each syllable as i went. "Hannah, Fought for so long, Rest in peace, 1982-2006