Rise and Fall - One

One

I can’t help but think that I’m wasting my time.

And time is everything.

The ticking of the clock lands in my ears and stays there. It whispers to me. It tells me secrets. My secrets. It exposes me. To myself. To the world around me. Each tick, like a blow dealt straight through my chest. Straight to my heart. My heart itself pounds mercilessly, and only relents when I bring myself to face it. Because it’s weak too. I’m just weaker.

I sit up. Trying to rid myself of the prying hands of the clock as they mock me from behind the glass that encases them and keeps them safe.

Not anymore.

I take the clock in my hand, and heave it at the wall. It smashes, sending fragments spinning through the air like snowflakes. But these pieces do not melt. They burn, and I burn with them. The pieces find the chinks in my armor, and they break me open. And I cry. I break down and sob with my face in my hands. My shoulders shake, and my throat jerks, and the ticking is still there. It’s inside my head. Eating me up, and spitting me back out. Holding me gently, while tearing me apart.

I pull the covers over my head in feeble attempt at protecting myself. But it’s futile, and the ticking scans my thoughts like eyes. Reading them like the open book they’ve become. Throwing some aside, and making me see the others. Relive them. I scream and pull at my hair. Trying to banish it: the phantom ticking. But it’s content with playing my damaged mind like some sort of anguished instrument, where the notes are like knives and the keys like fire.

It feels like years before my pounding heart begins to slow, and soon I lie here shaking. The ticking like the dim light of a memory. A dream. A nightmare. It fades, and so do I. Only when I slowly drift off does the ticking stop completely. And I’m alone. Truly alone. My only company, the scattered remains of the clock on the floor. The moon throws its beams across them, and across me. The guiding light of my broken soul. The soul that -I’m sure- resembles the corpse of the clock on the floor. But I need the pain it brings if I’m ever going to heal it. The pain and the memories that come with it. Even when I’m barely able to hold on, I need it. I need it, and it needs me. It feeds off of me. It weakens me until I’m a ghost. A wisp of smoke. Just a reflection in the mirror. It comes back day after day, and breaks me harder than before.

And I endure.

As I know I’ll have to, from now on.

I just wish I didn’t have to.

It’s a sad sort of existence. Every night, I fall. And every day, I get back up, just to be knocked back down again. I wake in the night and lie frozen in bed as my world crashes down all around me. I try to close my eyes, but I can’t. They’re glued to the destruction. To the life that flashes before my eyes. My life:

The burning past.

The slowly cooling present.

The nothingness that is the future.

Somehow, even after everything, that one scares me the most. I think of what I will become, and I break again into a thousand pieces. The world as my witness.

But by now, I’ve been broken so many times that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be whole.

I guess that’s the price I pay for being the one that escaped. The one that’s alive. It’s sick that I should be the one that’s hopeless. The one that screams in the dead of the night, and keeps on screaming because he’s too weak to endure it all in silence, however hard he tries.

I will always be him.

Always.

When I wake up, I know it’s for good. All the same, it’s still too early. As I sit up, I massage my right shoulder. Rubbing my hand over the hot skin of my neck. I’ve slept badly. No surprise there.

I numbly rub my shoulder, and stare blankly ahead of me. Soft light filters through the curtains. Tousling my hair. Caressing my cheek. Asking if I’m okay.

I pull away. It and I both know the answer and it’s a silent shame I bear each morning as I wake and unconsciously count the days since all that I knew ended. The tally is the days I’ve woken up, but also the days that everyone else hasn’t. The numbers create a lonliness that presses against my chest and constricts my breathing. Twenty eight days. Or has it been twenty nine? I rub my eyes, and try to breathe evenly.

That’s when I hear it. The whistling. It’s cheery. Incredibly out of place in this dreary hell-hole. I crane my sore neck so that I can see out the door. The hallway is oddly bright. Someone’s opened the curtains.

I notice the floor, then. The clock is gone, and as I slowly regain my senses from the realm of my nightmares, I smell something cooking. It nauseates me. I hold my breath as I slowly edge out of bed.

My bare feet touch and flatten against to cool wooden floor, and I stumble as quietly as I can to the door. My pulse pounds in my throat, and adrenaline seeps through my veins as I ready myself for whoever is in my house.

I reach the stairs. Skipping the ones that creak as I descend. The whistling is louder on the floor. It fills the kitchen. My kitchen. As does the sound of bacon frying in the pan. My pan. The smell is stronger too. Overpowering.

I gag, but push open the kitchen door. I have to see.

There’s a man at the stove. His dark blonde hair is a mess, and the deep tan of his skin seems to reach to his bones. I stumble against the door.

No, no, no.

This can’t be happening. Not now. Oh God, no. Not now.

As I turn to run back up the stairs and hide until this living nightmare is over and the memories attached to the man no longer threaten to swallow me, my foot catches on the kitchen chair, and I sprawl onto the floor with a crash.

The man stops mid-whistle, and turns slowly around. His green eyes pass over me as my chest heaves, and I shake on the floor. He grins, but it’s tentative. Fake. The smile you give when you’re the bearer of bad news. I can’t help but wonder if this is more bad news, or if this is just how he’s chosen to deal with me.

“Hey, Alek.”

I swallow hard.

Grant.