I had one flowery cross, given by that wannabe aunt of mine. I fiddled with the chain as I was given, wondering what should I do with it. It was pretty, but it didn’t catch my eye as a wearable thing. But then my closets were stuffed with things I would buy from while to while, something like a corpse would build. Marcie seemed to ask me if she could wear them.
I couldn’t say no, but in the end I said it.
She shrugged and stopped.
It was like the nail varnish.
I had a drawer where all my nail varnish was stuffed in, the drawer heavier than an airplane with rows and rows of colourful chemicals. I had a thing, I loved the colours, but not even once in my life I dyed my nails. I didn’t even know how to, I liked to take them out and stare at their intense unreal colour as I’d shake the bottle, as a smile crept up into my face. But as soon as I’d hear the door’s lock fiddle I’d throw the bottle into the drawer, panic and push the drawer back with a thud. I wasn’t just closing the drawer, I was closing people out of myself, out of the drawer of my imagination.
Out of my life.
Earning the teacher’s thought on that I might be suicidal. Just because I wasn’t as girly and closed-up, like a raincoat on a winter’s storm. Life was such a horrible storm. Maybe I should dye my nails, let them choke under the bright colours and up to my shoulders. But then the colours would drain as life would stare at them, eating them, scrapping them off in mean way. Just like she does it to us, leading us up to death.
But then what is it? What’s death? Is it the end of the slow motion walk of life? Poetic. What was there behind the eternal closed eyes, no matter if we closed them on our own or not? I’d flinch in scenes where the eyes gets closed as much as they are left open. It feels unreal, like when you kill an annoying fly and then it’s lying there as if was supposed to be. Then a plunge of guilt takes over you, did it really deserve to be swapped until whatever happened the shock, broken bones, overflow of blood that lead it to death.
Was I afraid of death?
How can I be afraid of something I don’t know?
But then maybe it’s the unknown fabric slowly falling over the eyes that drives people insane? It’s like a taboo, like drawing the devil until you get so attracted, too accustomed to the thought that you go insane, insane for the rest. Twitching? Screaming? Life-threatening? What did the person do? Mumble prayers, shake, clutching the hands to the chest, count its pulse, eat pill after pill, drag cig after cig, bite nail after nail, cut after each cut?
What was held in that he turned insane?
Maybe he tried to avoid death that way or lure it closer, feeling the cold weapon against the neck feeling it trace a cut, go deeper, cutting the life wires like paper with scissors with bonus effects as the life would crawl out of the cut, exposing the flesh, the eyes hinting the wound, maybe a groan fading out into nothing until the sensation would flow all over the body devouring it, leaving it in there as a sign of glory.
What was it like to die?
Pain?
Fear?
Relief?
What would happen later on?
I believed that it was eternal dreaming, never believing in heaven despite the kids' whispers behind my back, as they would know my reaction to that. Children with wings. White. Fluffy. Clouds. Kingdom. Eternal.
Then I found out that there was no eternal dreaming.
I don’t remember how I was explained about that, but the fact that there was no dream, it shocked me. There was no place to dream even death. Death would just tear it out, like the person essence, pulling the scalp in a painful way but giving a good, expensive painkiller at the beginning and maybe some anaesthesia to draw the person in a lull, to drive the life’s scars away and you’d just float without and with nothing.
What was death like?
A girl?
A boy?
No one at all?
The chill hiding behind cemetery graves, greeting the newly dead to sink in the ground? What is it? Did I want to meet it?
I covered my ears when I was told about clinical death, afraid to find out what was it like to see nothing, to think nothing and to be nothing. I waited, I waited for my uncle to go insane but he never did, he kept going as if nothing happened. And then he died and there was no connection and I’d never find out, if I could, I would, he’d be dead anyway. Maybe he never dreamed? The numbers going in his head, as he’d count the tables, chairs, walls, everything, words, pauses, breaths, pulses, heartbeats until he died in the end. It shocked me that he still got dragged into that nothingness, no way to be pulled out, only sucked it.
Was I afraid?
I was.
I deadly was.
Up to the point that I never reminded myself and once I would I would clasp my ears, my eyes like the no evil seeing monkey, begging for the thought to go away.
I was afraid of even clasping death’s hand let alone someone who lost the battle or survived once. I locked myself in a room, hoping that I could avoid my uncle, somebody who had seen death, seen it under its mask, hood and endless conclusions of the alive.
I was deathly afraid of seeing my parents as I could see them pulling the drawers open, nail varnish bottles scattering, clothes ruffling in search of something that could tell them about me, but they never bothered asking me straight, knowing that I’d be silent. I’d just stare at one spot, feeling Jonny rub my shoulder, saying that his parents were the same.
But they weren’t. His dad died, he had a brother while I had two. One, I had said, thought enough about them, despite the occasional flood of thoughts I noticed the year books piled on Marcie’s desk, maybe she ruffled them through.
Chapter 16
I couldn’t say no, but in the end I said it.
She shrugged and stopped.
It was like the nail varnish.
I had a drawer where all my nail varnish was stuffed in, the drawer heavier than an airplane with rows and rows of colourful chemicals. I had a thing, I loved the colours, but not even once in my life I dyed my nails. I didn’t even know how to, I liked to take them out and stare at their intense unreal colour as I’d shake the bottle, as a smile crept up into my face. But as soon as I’d hear the door’s lock fiddle I’d throw the bottle into the drawer, panic and push the drawer back with a thud. I wasn’t just closing the drawer, I was closing people out of myself, out of the drawer of my imagination.
Out of my life.
Earning the teacher’s thought on that I might be suicidal. Just because I wasn’t as girly and closed-up, like a raincoat on a winter’s storm. Life was such a horrible storm. Maybe I should dye my nails, let them choke under the bright colours and up to my shoulders. But then the colours would drain as life would stare at them, eating them, scrapping them off in mean way. Just like she does it to us, leading us up to death.
But then what is it? What’s death? Is it the end of the slow motion walk of life? Poetic. What was there behind the eternal closed eyes, no matter if we closed them on our own or not? I’d flinch in scenes where the eyes gets closed as much as they are left open. It feels unreal, like when you kill an annoying fly and then it’s lying there as if was supposed to be. Then a plunge of guilt takes over you, did it really deserve to be swapped until whatever happened the shock, broken bones, overflow of blood that lead it to death.
Was I afraid of death?
How can I be afraid of something I don’t know?
But then maybe it’s the unknown fabric slowly falling over the eyes that drives people insane? It’s like a taboo, like drawing the devil until you get so attracted, too accustomed to the thought that you go insane, insane for the rest. Twitching? Screaming? Life-threatening? What did the person do? Mumble prayers, shake, clutching the hands to the chest, count its pulse, eat pill after pill, drag cig after cig, bite nail after nail, cut after each cut?
What was held in that he turned insane?
Maybe he tried to avoid death that way or lure it closer, feeling the cold weapon against the neck feeling it trace a cut, go deeper, cutting the life wires like paper with scissors with bonus effects as the life would crawl out of the cut, exposing the flesh, the eyes hinting the wound, maybe a groan fading out into nothing until the sensation would flow all over the body devouring it, leaving it in there as a sign of glory.
What was it like to die?
Pain?
Fear?
Relief?
What would happen later on?
I believed that it was eternal dreaming, never believing in heaven despite the kids' whispers behind my back, as they would know my reaction to that. Children with wings. White. Fluffy. Clouds. Kingdom. Eternal.
Then I found out that there was no eternal dreaming.
I don’t remember how I was explained about that, but the fact that there was no dream, it shocked me. There was no place to dream even death. Death would just tear it out, like the person essence, pulling the scalp in a painful way but giving a good, expensive painkiller at the beginning and maybe some anaesthesia to draw the person in a lull, to drive the life’s scars away and you’d just float without and with nothing.
What was death like?
A girl?
A boy?
No one at all?
The chill hiding behind cemetery graves, greeting the newly dead to sink in the ground? What is it? Did I want to meet it?
I covered my ears when I was told about clinical death, afraid to find out what was it like to see nothing, to think nothing and to be nothing. I waited, I waited for my uncle to go insane but he never did, he kept going as if nothing happened. And then he died and there was no connection and I’d never find out, if I could, I would, he’d be dead anyway. Maybe he never dreamed? The numbers going in his head, as he’d count the tables, chairs, walls, everything, words, pauses, breaths, pulses, heartbeats until he died in the end. It shocked me that he still got dragged into that nothingness, no way to be pulled out, only sucked it.
Was I afraid?
I was.
I deadly was.
Up to the point that I never reminded myself and once I would I would clasp my ears, my eyes like the no evil seeing monkey, begging for the thought to go away.
I was afraid of even clasping death’s hand let alone someone who lost the battle or survived once. I locked myself in a room, hoping that I could avoid my uncle, somebody who had seen death, seen it under its mask, hood and endless conclusions of the alive.
I was deathly afraid of seeing my parents as I could see them pulling the drawers open, nail varnish bottles scattering, clothes ruffling in search of something that could tell them about me, but they never bothered asking me straight, knowing that I’d be silent. I’d just stare at one spot, feeling Jonny rub my shoulder, saying that his parents were the same.
But they weren’t. His dad died, he had a brother while I had two. One, I had said, thought enough about them, despite the occasional flood of thoughts I noticed the year books piled on Marcie’s desk, maybe she ruffled them through.
Chapter 16
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