Nocturnal Fears

London,

Chapter One

The mirror depicts a different you, a one of compassion and soul. And all pain aside, you were a part of my life, but if being here makes you bitter, I won't obstruct you, my guesswork. Step forward for the final fight. Step forward, I wouldn't want to be accused of stealing your limelight.
Purging her thoughts, a smudge of mascara at the corner of her bottle green eyes, she sat on the breakfast counter, her knees brought up to her chest and head resting off the cupboard door trying to straighten out her mind again , the beautiful black nocturnal sky seemed distorted and broken now. She looked over at him at the kitchen table, singing the same old heart-rending song, only it now sounded tuneless and like a broken tape, replayed the same old lyric. "I hate everything about you, and yet every time I try cut the chord between us, I feel it's my fault that you ended up the way you did." there was no solace from him, the taste of sycophancy was so sweet that she didn't realise it was slowly poisoning her. His friendship would either make her or destroy her. He smiled faintly and looked back at her "Look, you think I did this to get back at you..."
"NO!” she jumped down from the counter to the floor and ran her hands through her hair before looking right back at him "you don't get to tell me what I'm thinking, because i don't even know what I'm thinking! My head was messed up when you ran, now it's even worse that you've came back!"
He turned the chair around to face her "I'm your best friend"
"No, you're the prodigal looking for a sofa to sleep on and a shoulder to cry on and I am so sick of taking care of you because you can hardly take care of yourself. there is some bedding in the airing cupboard, I want you to be gone when I get up tomorrow morning"
he stood up just as she grabbed the door handle "Planning on avoiding me forever?"
"Holden, don't start. Be grateful I didn't slam the door on you" they both knew she wouldn't do that, leave him to rot, because it wasn't in her nature. She always told herself that her humanity was killing him. He looked at her, her skin pale and face, cold to the touch, her black hair hanging by her shoulders "I thought you of all people would understand"
And it ached. it ached because he thought he had to use something like his own misery to get her to stop hating him. No. Not this time. Often the love evened out the hate, but there would never be enough to dilute the hate she felt then. He was her friend, but no matter how loudly she screamed, he wouldn't hear. He wouldn't change. Don't look at me that way, because it's not me who is destroying you. "Sorry but i don't. you were always so difficult to know, you're reckless and the reason you ran was just because the limelight wasn't on you. I mean, you've done some things but this is too far. You’re fifteen-running away for two months is too far, oh and before you go off some place else, when you're sleeping rough, try not to think back to us-it keeps the screams from your door."
She opened the door and he hurtled it back to its hinges, then moved her head so she was looking at him "What do you mean by that?"
"It eases the guilt if you block out the idea that people may actually care. I'm guessing you did. that's how you came to my house in the middle of the night because you didn't feel like coming home right away. I mean, i thought you'd go to Bruno's to save face-but I’d been wrong about you before."
"Surprised?" he smirked
"Nothing you do surprises me anymore"
"I remember when I didn't need to justify myself to you."
"That was before I knew you, and I mean really knew you Holden"
"Goodnight," he tried to force some sincerity but it came off bitter and resentful.
"I'm washing my hands of you" there was a tremor in her voice, she didn't fear him only his deceptive nature. Only feared the idea she would forgive him before she went to bed that night. Then he'd weave his way back into her life, and get into her head and under her skin. Back into a part of her life where he could manipulate and destroy her. And that put the fear of God into her. But they both knew that she would pity him and she'd have to go back to the puppet friendship, setting herself up for a bigger fall. How loudly would she have to scream before he so much as glanced her way? She pulled up a chair and sat back down as he began to tell her where he'd been and of the cold of London. he mentioned the glamour and the adventure-his spirit rekindled after a night in it, but then of the hunger and the cold, damp ground, rats in the gutter, the exposure and the way those who passed in yellow taxis mocked him by a spray of a puddle drenching him. And the cruelty he saw on the streets and how that gave him the realisation that this was where he belonged. She felt awful for thinking it, but maybe it was just a story to try and bargain her forgiveness. it wasn't beneath him. And as he told her of his misery over the passed two months, she felt exactly nothing. Because she remembered her own misery that he had caused when he left. her being dragged from her bedroom by her parents and step-sibling as the police sirens sounded outside. Entertaining the idea he may be alive but they all prepared her for the worse, and the regular hospital visits as her state of mind declined. So how could he talk about his own bland sorrows when he didn't even know her own? She knew him better, he wasn't scared, he didn't get scared and he wouldn't have minded the loneliness, it was where he was most at home. He's lying. she stood up and backed towards the door, how could she have trusted his word? The sirens never stopped, nor did the nightmares. Her friend gone, her mind following, her other friends abandoning her as she edged more into emotionally distressed. "Angie? Are you okay?"
"I don't think so, you don't know what it was like. Not just the worry, they thought i was going mad, they told me so often that even I began to think it and it scared the hell out of me. Four weeks under observation. Bridgette and Bruno watched from a far as their friend 'fell to pieces'-"
"don't you think you're over dramatising it?"
"Everyone thought i was crazy and I was driving myself insane on the idea that you may not be alive and well. I lost everything when i lost you! So you cannot come in and just lie about your hardships because you have no idea unless you've been where I've been. I cannot believe you left me to rot after all we've been through"
         By the deception and falsehood he condemned her to, all she ever knew, everything about him lay behind his eyes. the eyes of a victim. A victim of lost innocence whose only flaw was his self-indulgent, overconfident nature. That particular nature that was slowly drawing Angie away, a dark side that only she could see. There was of course the other side to him, but that was the part of him that made her stay. every single time. and when that thin pencilled in line between love and hate begins to break, then only could she clearly see the boy she'd came to know. He who had allowed it all to happen, for her mind to break out of itself. He was the great pretender, his heart worn like a crown.
"We know you're not going to leave it like this"
"How come?" she seemed uninterested by this point.
"because, you've went to leave this room several times over the past 2 hours and yet you stayed to listen and fight it out. because you don't like leaving tension up in the air"
"Don't do that. Psychoanalyse me, like you know me better than I know myself. But the reason I can't leave it like this is for my benefit, I don't quit on people."
He stood up to stand next to her and touched her arm "So we're okay?"
She shook her head, "Not really. I lost my friends, family, my mind, my independence and all I ever thought about was the idea I may have lost you. You make it so hard for me to be a friend of yours." she looked at him again "I think I'm going to bed now, you should get some sleep, you need to build some bridges tomorrow with your mum and Bridgette and Bruno.
I haven't seen them in a while. The next time you take me for a fool, I won't think twice about casting you out" Angie looked back as she was about to shut the door "Don't let me down this time"
         She said that with a hint of faith in her voice, but faith in him was unfamiliar and that made her uneasy. She knew it wouldn't last, this down-trodden shell of an adolescent. It was a build up, to make the ending so much more cruel, gradually everything would begin to feel a little normal before he stepped up for his final act, the grand finale, the crushing blow that would tip all three of them over the edge and into an epitome of self-loathing and doubt. Her lack of confidence in her friend was almost appalling but she had to expect the worse. This wasn't some stranger to whom she was giving the benefit of the doubt. this was her best friend.
         The more she thought about it-the harder it was, the idea of letting go. The first night he ran, she didn't sleep at all. And how long it took for her mind to find a place where it was at ease, for him to come back and stir up her already confusing world.
         Angie curled up on her bed and dragged a small blanket over herself, the smell of embers filled her room due to bonfires in the neighbourhood and the ambulance sirens sounded all night long, but that wasn't the reason she couldn't sleep. Nothing was in her mind other than the despair she could feel he was going to slowly inflict on her. All people were just bystanders in a world that there is no control over, in a spiralling abyss of agony. Victims of circumstance. Soon enough, he would reunite all four so he could make the pain so much more bitter-sweet. And he would watch from afar as their worlds all became nothing more than collateral damage to the naked eye, he would just watch, bemused, contemplating his own vanity, deceitfulness and sin. There would be no winners, never any winners in this game. In his game, everybody lost. But she had to allow him back into her life, fully aware of the misery he caused in it last time simply because she knew if she wasn't there to steady him, nobody would be. And she knew of how much he tried to not let lachrymose weep its way into her life, he couldn't help it. It was in his nature.