Drukkna `a hvita hr`osa

I gulped in the Aquatics Department; that coolness that wafted through the door carrying the spice of chlorine.

That grin spread across my face before I could think about it, all I needed were those chocolate cookies to be complete…

Then the smile faded like it always did..

Forget those damn cookies. Forget this damn smile.

Everyday this was my regimen. Remembering and then willing myself to forget. When I leave this Hell, they won’t matter. Her love wouldn’t matter.

Knuckles against metal jolted me awake from these dreams and memories.

My head tilted on the door to stop the world from its absorbing spin.

Did she stare at me? Was she at witness? At fault?

Perched on her almighty high as her baby boy forced thorns in my skin.

I shook away the tears, not wanting to be suspended in those moments folded away in time.

I had already taken off my shoes so the grout could scratch the pads of my feet and the tile could freeze my toes.

In the small window, liquid shadows of light flickered over every surface.

I stared at the locker room, straining to hear any footstep, any metal slamming shut or screeching open. The water lapped behind the door and my heart pounding filled the silence.

I slipped through the smallest crack, as far as the thick wooden slab of a door would go without its shriek of protest.

Rows of shabby metal compartments with busted locks and rickety wooden benches was the revered Boy’s Locker Room.

The half cracked mirrors were the only thing truthful. Its surface nagged me about the antiseptic cloth crossed taped to my cheek. The beat up glasses the have felt the floor too much in their year long ownership.

The cuts always burned in the water. My feet always ached from the cold.

But, it was pain I could control.

Pain that didn't linger to make me feel weak.

The effect was my effect. It was created by my hands.

For those minutes of gliding through parts I cut into the water, feeling the sting of my flesh and buzz in my heels; I was the master of my own moment.

I couldn't have been more eager to take off my shirt.

Only that my whole body pulsated from the celebratory beating from last weekend’s game. Still, it wasn’t as bad as Phys Ed last year.

All the bruised skin quivered against the cold but forgot themselves in the water.

I just wanted the water. But, I needed something to change.

“Sup, nerd.” My heart sank to the bottom of my stomach.

I followed his smirk from the corner of my eyes. Staring at the cruelty in his face.

He reached out and had the crown of my skull in his grip within seconds.

“Ready for another lesson?” He laughed, forehead to forehead.

I focused on his eyes, not the emotion but the memory of the color.

He had her eyes, her hair.

I braced for the impact, remembering her to curve the pain.

“...What the-”

“...Huh?” I gaped at the orb of light in his chest. Almost warming the bitterness of terror inside of me.

“Y-your chest, it-”

“Wait...No-Shit-” I quickly looked to where he was looking, realizing I was shirtless and that the warmth was my own light. Burning out from my bare chest just as bright as Ric’s.

“That means we’re-”

“AW, HELL NO!!” We cried out simultaneously, leaping from each other’s touch, our faces mirroring disgusted bewilderment.

I wanted change but not this!!!

Not us.

Nope.

We are not Fated.

~~~~~~~~~~

'Fateship' was a new phenomena that alluded all the PHDs. They couldn’t determine where it came from or how it happened.

They just knew that when it happened, it couldn’t un-happen.

Ric hadn’t been to school in two weeks. Immediately after we were...together.

Fated….

I never thought the person who terrorized my life would be the one for me.

The only one for me. Until the day I died.

I suspected he would be there when I bit it, just more as the person who killed me than mourned me.

Fucking Fated…

Why couldn’t I just die?

The person I wish would stop that pain was the one throwing the punches.

“-Nice of you to join us Mr. Caldher.” Mrs. Hampton pointed to an empty seat without even looking up.

Speak of the devil, Ric sat in his usual seat. Encircled by the sharks he chose over me.

On a normal day, he would smugly grin at me through his ring of sniggering goons.

Promising me of the hurt he would put on me later.

Wow, I have read way too many organized crime novels.

Yeah, goons? Really?

My body briskly surged forward, forgetting the very stationary desk over my knees. It lurched forward, dragging against the floor.

“Mr. Bastien!” “-I’m FINE!!!” I screamed.

The class tried to hold in their giggles in their hands. Mrs. Hampton gave a lasting glare before continuing on a subject I couldn’t explain if it saved my life.

Are...you...okay, I guess?

I searched around, getting even more freaked as I saw everyone’s normal faces watching Mrs. Hampton. I reclined back self consciously peeking everywhere, starting to breath as deeply as I could without divulging how scared I was. Who the hell was talking to me? The last thing I need to do is lose my mind right now.

If you keep breathing like that you are going to give yourself an asthma attack.

There are only a handful of people who know about my asthma, and only one of them is in this room right now.

My eyes instantaneously connected with Ric’s.

Are you talking to me?

If I was?

Taking that as a yes then!

Sorry. I just keep falling into your head.

Hearing your thoughts like you

are whispering in my ear...Can we talk?

No.

Why not?

Because I would rather be dead than

give myself to you and I will never

trust you enough to be alone with you.

So, then what are we going to do?

Just pretend it never happened?

Where the Hell is this coming from?!

If that never happened you would still be the

same old bastard who almost killed me

everyday.

What if I didn’t want to be that same

old bastard? What if I wanted to be

someone else?

Then go redesign yourself with that

minx clutched to you every day.

I already broke it off with Miranda.

Guess your bed is going to go

empty tonight. Goodbye.

Come visit her grave with me... Please?..

My eyes launched the incredulousness of his request straight for his face.

I vaulted to my feet, riled to the point my face felt like it was smoldering.

“GO FUCK YOURSELF YOU VILE PIECE OF SHIT. ” And it was over.

My hope for a better life. My perfect record. And my fear of this boy.

“FITZGERALD BASTIEN!!! I will call your parents!”

“Well, you know who they are. Make sure you do say missus, my “Mother” gets so upset when you get her title of power wrong.”

The class quieted to the edge of everyone’s sudden demise.

I got my things and headed to principal’s office on my own.

“Don’t worry Hampton dear, I will see myself out.”

Ric surged to his feet to stop me, “Itzy..” he cooed, that name, burning me with white iron.

His hand reached out and I sprang from his touch like he was the Rider of Pestilence himself.

“If you ever try to touch me again, I will kill you.” My voice came as a growling hiss I didn’t recognize.

I couldn’t stop anything from happening, I wasn’t in control of myself but I never was to begin with.

Life branded me and Fate owns me, all of me.

When I reached the Principal’s office, my feet had ready made up their mind to keep going.

It was too early for the buses of course so my only choice was to walk home. Without anything reason to hold back, the tears sprang from my eyes in a pitiful river.

And there I was, with my rich kid olefin book bag and my bedford cord pants, sobbing and then realizing I was lost.

But I wasn’t, just at a place I hadn’t been in a thousand years, and yet my legs knew exactly where to go when going home.

I could smell those cookies from down the driveway, the bumper of her 90s BMW that was her pride and joy, the Norse lullabies that drifted on the steam of her pies sitting in the window. Annetheah Jenrose Tomislava Caldher.

Anneth….

Anneth….

Anneth…….

Our Woodstock Wonder Woman as we called her. A professor of Norse Mythology and History, she could speak it fluently. Sing in it for hours. Her voice was rough but ours. She was ours. Until Fate and Life reminded us that we as puppets with invisible thread own nothing.

I thought walking away from that house again was going to tear apart everything inside me. And I was right.

The mirage of my laughter, of my screams of delight, of my silly toddler jokes that always seemed to crack her up, they died in the distance behind me.

Where they will always be until I died with them.

I couldn’t remember before her, and I don’t want to remember after.

Just her. Only her. For a million white roses….

~~~~~~~~~~

It was impossible to sneak into a house with cameras, because we were that rich and that uppity. We had one of those huge houses that wasn’t called a mansion but a ‘Manor’, like it sounded either more humble or more fancy. The sound of Jimmy Choo's and hurried footsteps filled with ire announced mother’s presence and that she knew about my act of ‘defiance’.

“Fitzgerald! Fitzgerald Arliss!!!” She always tacked on her and Cristobal’s last name to make pretending I was their blood child more easier.

“Dorinne…” I responded as she reached the foot of the stairs, staring at me like she was going to hire a hitman, because she wouldn’t do it herself.

“You are in monumental trouble when your father gets home. I am so disappointed in you, talking to a teacher and speaking ill of me. You had nothing when we took you in. All tore up inside after that woman died because she was a dumb little slutty druggie-”

For the second time today, all I did was see red. For soul sickness and blood rage. My hand hooked across her face and collided to the wall with such force that I ripped through the plaster like paper.

I didn’t hit her, but skimmed her nose and send a wind to slap her cakey face in warning.

“You were saying Dorinne..” I whispered colder than ice cubes down the back of your neck, colder than losing the one person you loved, colder than the pain of having the one person who hates you be the one who is going to stand with you. Colder than living a life worse than death and still have hope that tomorrow could be better.

She stumbled back up the stairs and barricaded herself in the master bedroom.

When I heard the lock, I detached from the wall and walked right out the door again.

This time I walked in the direction of the church and the county cemetery.

Anneth wasn’t a fucking whore, she was a heroin addict, when needles were all the rage and AIDS were in same league as the common cold .

And she paid for it with her life at thirty two, with her dream job and two kids.

I wasn’t even hers! But she wanted me. The only one who ever did.

She was the only grave with a rose carved into the marble. Budding from the stone and the ground on the one side.

I sat down in front of the headstone, drawing some sort of residual strength.

She always made it better.

I closed my eyes and sat, the day growing cold with age, just as though the warm blood of sunlight drained out of its veins.

“I felt that you were here.” That unceremonious voice, absent of the usual sneer, called behind me, without any type of indication of his presence; he always did walk light.

“Was it the spidey senses?” I shot back not bothering to open my eyes; muddy black disdain covered them and the calmness.

He huffed, agitated by the unimpressed poise and monotone flavor.

I didn’t move to get up or even look at him. He wasn’t worth it.

Ric went silent over my silence.

And there we were, for once not wanting each other to die.

Despite the light of feet, leaves and twigs snapped underfoot and I learnedly braced for the impact of a strike...

Up until now would he still hit me regardless of everything? Would he show who he really is?

What any amount love would never change…

A hand rested on the crown of my head, lighter than what was left of the sunlight.

“She told me to take care of you...

And I failed…I was angry....that you left me with that man. But, then I saw you. For the first time since they put her in here, I saw how much you hated Life and Yourself and Me.

So, here I am….touching you again...asking you to kill me..”

He was talking about the rumors. That when the other half dies, there are cases where they are replaced.