Static

A girl finds herself dissociated with herself and the people around her, severing her from reality.

So, why don’t you like your birthday?” he asked while placing the forks and plates in the stainless sink.
Myra didn’t answer as she wiped the granite counter with a paper towel. She felt him watching her, leaning onto the island counter. A quick whiff of his sweat wafted to her nose and she moved to dump the paper in the metal can without meeting his eyes.
“Come on, Myra,” the man sighed, fixing his glasses like an annoyed child. “There’s nothing wrong with talking once in a blue moon.”
“I thought you were much better with a body’s clues, Salvador,” she smirked, turning back. Her hands reached up to clasp his head and bring it down to hers, him being a foot taller than her. “You are a detective after all. How else would you help the police nab the perps? With your Mediterranean good looks?”
Unimpressed, he frowned and furrowed his brow, an awkward bent in his neck as he stared down at her. His defined arms crossed over his large chest, even as she started to a sensitive spot underneath his jaw, though he did twitch and visibly soften.
“Stop that,” she said to interrupt whatever his mouth opened to say, surely something persuasive to bring out her insecurities. “I just wanted to congratulate you on your big case.”
“And I can’t wish you a happy birthday? That doesn’t sound fair.”
Myra shrugged, letting go. “Sure it is. What’s the point of celebrating a birthdate anyway? It’s just another opportunity to make people feel uncomfortable. Who really wants to have several people to sing to you of a day that doesn’t really matter, to them or the unlucky person?”
“Sounds like something that needs therapy,” Sal replied caustically, rolling his eyes. She ignored him and continued into her rant.
“Why the hell would I need to be reminded that I’m approaching an age that would render me worthless and ugly. Right now, I’m considered beautiful for being young, having clear skin and naturally dark hair. Even with the ridiculous saying ‘Black don’t crack’, I’d still get comments like ‘But you look so good for 45!’ As if Beauty can be limited. I don’t know how the hell the world got into a state where people made out of silicone and an undeserved sense of entitlement could ever be considered even attractive over a Persian Gulf veteran, I mean really!”
“Are you done?” he asked, rolling his eyes. She flicked his eyebrow ridge in mock outrage, looking at a colossal black widow tattoo over his right pectoral. When the dark skin started to become darker and flushed, she peered up, regretting it immediately.
His voice went from his usual baritone to slightly gravelly and his round eyes blinked, exceedingly uncomfortable but firm. “Does it have to do with your dad moving out?”
Her back abruptly straightened like a pike drove itself through her body, her eyes narrowing. Still, the question sent her mind into a small private place that was preserved in fear and doubt. In this place, she couldn’t discern any words to create an answer that would satisfy him; she didn’t like how well he was getting closer to this part of her mind. Her body recoiled from attempts of any invasions, but it wasn’t as quick to fall back like her mind, somewhat resembling how a snake’s belly curved outward after its head. It didn’t help that she couldn’t remember ever telling him about her father�"maybe she had been drunk? The thought only exacerbated her resentment.
He pretended not to notice, studying her. She began to feel that he was hiding a bitter smirk behind his motionlessness and bristled more into herself.
“You think feelings just go away when the people you don’t like are gone?” he said, not really looking for a reply, bulldozing through his words. His arms and hands propped themselves by her sides on the counter behind her. As she tried to move away, his body beat closer to her and touched his nose to her left collarbone. Biding her time for him to give up, she shivered, disdainful but becoming still.
“They don’t come up at all,” she quietly responded. At least, not that he should see for himself. All she needed was for herself to acknowledge her frustration for them to be real. What did she really need him for, other than good distraction? Nonetheless, her arms wrapped around him and pulled him closer so she could eel his naked legs against her own. She could admire their different tones and coloring this way without a full length mirror this way�"she hated seeing herself�"his swarthy kaleidoscope of a body next to her dark, beautiful one.
“Now that’s a lie,” he gritted through his teeth. She felt a change in his face and his breathing change underneath her chin, startling her.
Hoping to steer away from whatever he was about to say she unnecessarily answered him. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sal.”
“Can you at least tell me how your mom and brother are doing?”
Her throat clogged with a large mass a she tried to swallow. Scorning it, she raised her eyebrow and stiffened more. His eyes widened, and he also stood up, keeping his hands beside her, probably preventing her escape. After the day she decided to follow him to his apartment downtown for the first night, they had decided together that neither of them would mention nor speak about their families or personal lives. Sal was lately repeatedly ignoring or forgetting, she didn’t know which, and brought up things she didn’t want to talk about while she was euphemistically spending time with him. He was engaged to a person for three years, and she wasn’t eager to move in in the nearby future or any time? He told Myra the last time they spoke was just before she had went to the Bahamas with a man he suspected she was sleeping with for a few months. . What could she really say to someone who already had a someone to share themselves with, even if that someone didn’t seem to want him? Still, I wanted to feel like I fell for his smoldering pretty gaze and quick movements.
“Yeah, yeah I know,” he quickly said. “Never mind, my bad. Did you at least tell Jeremy and Stacia about…you know?”
She shook her head, and he was already rolling his eyes expectantly. Again, she flicked him, a little more aggravated.
He tried to defend himself, smiling. “You know I’m only trying to save you a huge nervous breakdown�"”
“Okay first of all,” she started, trying not to laugh and pushing against his chest. “Stop saying that! Jeez, I came here for some action, not a small intervention. Second, you and I both know it’s practically impossible for me to crack. I will not shave my head! After all the work I’ve done for my hair, which I still do by the way! No thanks!”
His eyebrows lowered and she knew she had lost him through the Britney reference. “Weaving willow branches and symbolic flowers together and singing about how my father does me wrong by whoring me out?”
His eyes glowered, not at all taking away her relief of speaking literary with someone other than her AP Literature instructor. “What’s the big deal?”
He didn’t answer, biting the inside of his cheek. (Geez, his jawline and chin went on for days.) She already could see the thing he wanted to say, things he wanted me to say to him, but she didn’t want to moor herself. She knew he wanted her to just the words that would snip his rotted ties with his fiancée, but she knew she wouldn’t find a soulmate in this man. Sure they met accidentally, like two cars that crashed into each other at a crossroads, like Stacia said, she gave up earlier in her short life. It hadn’t seems much to ask the world for forever love, it was all she wanted�"any other dream she could’ve made up for herself would have been a lie and she tried not to lie to the only ally she had in herself. Soulmates, she realized some time ago before high school began, were a misplaced abstract that would make her into a sentimentalist, a way to cope with the emptiness of her childhood. Of course she knew that she probably adopted this thinking from big white male thinkers and ignored the lessons of her ancestors, but she never saw or heard from said ancestors, so why should she bother with them? No, both she and Sal were two solitary, selfish beings incapable of truly loving, since they couldn’t even find ways to love themselves. She already knew better, but didn’t think it’d be prudent to inform her lover of the nonsense she thought daily and stayed quiet to his dismay and consternation.
“And what is with you and my friends?!” she demanded with her lower lip out. “Why do you all think I’m going to crash or burn out? I don’t need the lack of faith you know.” Myra drifted to the episode a few months ago where Stacia had yelled at her about her crushing her own dreams when she mistakenly wondered aloud how she got to meet Christian Bale when she was just an actress in a small high school play. It had taken her almost all of her patience not to get up and leave.
“You’re just angry and jealous because you don’t want to dream anymore, so you’re bitter and you take it out on everyone around you, like that would make anything better. You don’t like it when people point it out to you, because you think you can ignore it, but really you’re dying inside! You set yourself up for loneliness, no one else did it for you, no matter how many times you say your parents made you this way, which I know is going through your head. Why do you think I’m friends with you, because of your brilliant conversation? I see something in you, yet you don’t want me to! So what is the point, then?!”
Myra shook the words out like a dog getting water out of its ears. Her head felt suddenly too heavy for her and exhaustion like a plague moved down to her toes, but it was familiar and she didn’t’ fight it. It gave her the excuse to ignore the changes she felt he was attempting to make real, and she rebelled. They wouldn’t be enough, and she couldn’t fathom why he didn’t know this at least. “I’ve got to go.”
“Oh, come on, I didn’t�"”
“No,” she sharply said, already moving away from him towards her clothes and ignoring her own nakedness. “I really do have to go, I don’t know if my mom picked up Nate. Let’s call it a day, yeah?” All she wanted was the thick mattress in her room, to take the afterschool nap she always looked forward to and give into lucid night visions.
She didn’t see, but he grimaced behind her back, more confused and frustrated than ever. He didn’t know what else he should be doing without her here in his place besides going over a nasty new case of a beheaded and dismembered body of an older African woman with Myra’s eyes. He still had no intention of telling her until he was absolutely certain that it was her aunt in the lab, thinking past her assurances against of a psychotic meltdown. The accusation he had come from the same space as his dissatisfaction, but still let her go.
“Yeah.”
She nodded languidly with one foot pointed toward the door, already away from him. How was it that she managed to bring him to hedonistic heights in one way and leave him with her complexities? Aside from her juvenile efforts to be nonchalant and blithe about things like the dissolution of her family, he was constantly astounded at old she was. Then again, there was a blank space where he thought her sensibilities were supposed to be. She was beautiful, but somehow kept reminded him of a raven with ruffled feathers, though her features weren’t far from resembling one: a sharp nose uncharacteristic of her West African heritage and large otherworldly black eyes, like a changeling.
He watched her quickly drag the clothes over her brown skin, past berating himself for getting involved with a minor. If he was going down anytime soon, it’ll be with a well-deserved memory.
Over five minutes later, Myra was walking the few streets up to her family’s new condo. Dodging the walking salt pillars, she found that she was torn between wanting her mother home and having her working overtime at the local hospital. Deciding that it didn’t matter she resolved herself to whatever. “Whatever” turned out to be the amorphous shape of her mother snoozing on top of the small kitchen table with her fingers on a tall glass filled with jewel-red liquid from where she could stood by the front door. She watched from the steady heave of the mass and relaxed to its shallow rise and falls, glad to postpone dealing with her questions for a while. She threw her satchel next to the wingback sofa and plopped down, shoulders giving and seizing her chest. Her mind went to Stacia and Sal like it couldn’t help to, and she hadn’t put enough defenses to block them out, their words bouncing in her mind.
She believed that she didn’t do things halfway and it was either all or nothing. She fatally applied this attitude to love early on in her life and isolating herself with her family she never learned to let go of her childhood naïve conception of love as boundless and limitless and perpetual. Whenever she saw two lovers display their affection on the streets or hear the occasional story of a couple dying on the news together, she shook her head at how similar the idea of love was so collectively popular and so sentimental. It was just an idea forced into life though, as much of one as discrimination, and it couldn’t be real. There was no way one person could die with another person, no matter how much romance was thrown into the situation�"there was too much space and time thrown between people, as there should be. Humans were made to be alone, because so much comes out of solitude, and when there was an accident of meeting someone that complemented your loneliness, than that made life more bearable. It created meaning, but it doesn’t last forever. Nothing did. Not even peace. The only assurance was one’s own death.
She thought of the young girl she met and kissed in the park, her name something like Star or something meaning “bright”. She had been curious enough then for a child, and had already mocked on Freddy Rosse in her third grade class. A small chuckle passed through the lips as she recalled the anxiety over her mother’s pregnancy with Nate.
“My name is Estrella,” the young girl about her own age told her. She considered telling her name was Akua, since she liked it better, but decided that Myra would be easier for her to pronounce.
“Mine is Myra,” she replied, grinning over a new friend. She liked the Spanish girl‘s voice because it sounded like she sang for a living, like the opera singers her daddy watched and made her watch, but with realness. She pointed at Estrella’s small bag. “Can we play with your marbles?”
Nodding, they walked to a small plot of cement near behind the jungle gym, folding their legs into pretzels. Suddenly, it was Estrella that had broken through the quiet, and for a minute Akua was irritated with her. Wasn’t this enough, just to sit quietly and play? It was for her.
“Do you know what pregnant means?” the girl asked her, all of a sudden serious. Akua nearly jumped to answer, to show off her new knowledge. After all, her own mother was pregnant with what seemed to be a boy. She still sighed over the miss opportunity of having a sister.
“It means that she is going to have a baby�"” Estrella was shaking her head, though and Akua’s annoyance came back. “Then what do you want me to say? That’s what it is!”





If a soul departed from the earth, why would it go to be judged like it had in its lifetime for al of its sins, whether it did some of them or only felt them in their hearts. It certainly wouldn’t stay behind to witness its loved ones mourn, or whose to see no one at all. Both would keep the soul latched to the earth�"who could pass up the ultimate chance of freedom through death? Only in death can there be a true life better than love, fathomless and open for everyone. Everyone dies alone, and there isn’t any possible way to spiritually tie someone to another person while still alive. People deaths belong to themselves, no matter how they came about, rather it is their births that belong to the ones that chose to push them back into the world.
Her eyes unbiddenly swept to her large mass of a mother, who was still breathing properly. She decided to get up and check on Nate, who didn’t notice her staring at him color in a few sketchbooks in his room. Shade-like she walked back to the living room when her phone trilled loudly, and he mother jolted without waking up. Quickly, she answered it without looking to see who it was.
“Akua.”
Her heart felt like it dropped. Perhaps it was the several cigars, the botched throat surgery from last week or the constant yellowing through the years, but the demonic rasp of her father’s voice nauseated her.
“Hi, Dad. How are you?” She could already hear herself talk smaller, and her legs walked jerkily to the sofa.
He snorted loudly and dramatically. “Now you asks after I tell you to, as if having good manners is difficult for American girls.”
Oh, lord not this again�"she closed her eyes and tried to get that private place, keeping in mind that she needed to leave something to carry his words.
“Crop shirts, eh, eh, Nicki Minaj…lesbians! As if there is such thing, maybe men. But two women?! At least if a homosexual puts himself into another homosexual there is an active one! What do lesbians, sing together, plant flowers eh, eh, ehhh….bump like those…eh…carts!? There was no such thing as gay before I began my residency here in America! There are rules that must be followed, or there will be no sense in this world. There would be no point to anything without the force of reason.”
There was a scorch in her throat, pins traveling down her sternum. It flew past the point where she could’ve pretended that the line wasn’t any good, as she spied the gray sky blanket from the large windows, but she knew he would’ve called back eventually with soaked ire. The image a small swarthy girl stalked her, blocking out the day, and she sharply sawed it I half. Finally, he got to the reason he was calling. “When you come this Saturday to visit, tell me about your mother.”
“What do I have to say?”
“Ah, this girl. What do you mean Akua?!” he cried. She recoiled. “With this attitude, I can’t see how you can get friends.”
How he did any better was beyond her, she thought. He had enough people curse him out or serve his lawsuits, which he somehow evaded. Gotta love the American justice system.
“I need to know what your mother is doing with herself. If she is still drinking! Honestly, Akua, I don’t know. I don’t know how you can stay there with her. Isn’t it embarrassing to have a woman like this as a mother?”

Better a drunk than hypocrite; the words almost roared out. At least her mother knew what she was. Instead her legs crossed, her free hand cupping her heels while eyes fixed onto a People magazine. So many tables, wood, plastic, metal, became collateral damage in the parental fights over the years. It was still difficult to not flinch whenever putting something on the wooden one in front of her�"it had only been thrown twice and one leg still wobbled, but she liked to thing it had once been part of a strong oak tree, or something.
“�"brother is the same, I can’t understand. How can I ever win custody over you two, with both of you against me?”
The feeling Myra had towards her brother teetered close to both envy and awe, close to how someone would look sea�"small, yet magnificent. Their parents were what they were because of him, it seemed to her, and her own memories became sharper and less dreamlike after he had been born. He separated their parents from each other, and her form their parents, while preserving himself. And his precociousness. How he could make her feel so lost and yet become a post through his childish pearl words! He was the only dynamic between all of them, the one that kept them going, and the reason to why their mother tossed their father out after hearing that he had taken another mistress �" this one named Daniel. At the same time, she learned to see some things closer than she would’ve wanted. How could his mere existence push boundaries she didn’t know, but she felt free and didn’t intend to have him under their father. Her hand gripped the phone.
Yet, she also wanted him to disappear, deeply. Disappear into himself, like she did. Didn’t make sense, but she thought she’d finally find a commonplace then. But nothing was common with her.
Her father finally cooled down long enough for her shake off her thoughts like fruit flies. Her eyes moving across the room, she noticed a strong shimmer forming, making the large orbs feel like they were car parts being moved around after being oiled. Down, next to the wobbly leg was small rectangular piece with metal. Without realizing, she bent down to pinch it up, nearly letting the sharp edge slide underneath her index nail. Twirling it between her fingers, she watched it glint like a black-and-white villain’s eye.
“Yeah, Dad,” she mumbled, scarcely scraping the blade against the meaty part of her middle finger. “I’ll let you know.”
His nod was just as palpable as if he was with her. “Good. I expect to hear what you have to say, Akua Even if there is one droplet of wine and she only stares at it, tell me. Is your brother there?”
She stiffened. “No.”
He huffed. “Of coursed your mother will forget to pick him up. Well…go get him from school!”
“Already on my way,” she said. Her teeth mashed and grinded in mortar-and-pestle fashion. Her eyes became blinded.
She disconnected the call as she could, standing up and seeing that she had also been sweating, moisture building on her brow and between her eyebrows. Her body was being pulled apart, running into exhaustion and falling into anxious thinking, and she wanted it to stop! A gasp from wherever was the last straw�"she didn’t want to look at her mother, much less talk her into thinking that she hadn’t just come into the condo. Her legs were elongating and thumping onto the floor, taking her away, away, out of the unit to the building stairs and up, up, away until her legs started to burn an not even then did she stop until she had got up onto the rooftop.
Absently wondering over how long she had been standing in the apartment, she wiped at her face with her sleeve and gazed at the new moon in the dusky sky. Beside the myriad of open windows of other apartments, it was the only source of illumination. A thick metal rimmed the space, keeping in God knows what and providing for extra walls against neighbors. Usually, the roof sang with potential energy, and with the moon’s light and the isolation she felt like she tapped into a bridge between herself and Her Self. She could see herself touch it and usher it towards her.
Sometimes she wished that she’d choke on her tongue, get hit by a stray bullet in the throat�"why specifically in the throat she’ll never know�"to pass into different depths. Waking up became very difficult for her nowadays, being stuck on one side when she’d rather be on the other. Her hands pushed onto her eyes as she shook her head.
“Gah!” She came up here to…what?
Ungracefully she folded her legs into the lotus, feeling a sting in one of her slick palms. She glanced at the box cutter she still held, and the shimmering phone in the other. She thought about Stacia and her current trip to New Orleans and Mardi Gras beads, for some reason. She wished for an active imagination, so she see her next to her as they watched drunken partiers and flashers. Then she froze, incredulous. How could she have forgotten? She dialed the number with numb fingers.
After three rings, his thin voice answered. “Hey, Myra.”
All of a sudden, her breathing slowed and hitched. “Who else?”
He paused, dropping a small jar filled with viscous green liquid and a gray mass floating inside onto the concrete floor. The shards flew and spread over his socked feet in all directions in the dark basement, but he ignored the tiny slices. “Myra, are you…crying?” Immediately he wished he hadn’t said. She would close herself off from him.
“No, w-w-why w-would you th-think that? I j-just…”
Even though she couldn’t see him his head shook, almost stepping on the mass. Keeping the disgust from his voice, he trained himself back to her. “Okay, just tell me where I can get you. I’ll be there.” She told him, and as he snapped the phone off, he held a certain intuition of a slow beating in his ears, throat and more strangely his eyes. Nonetheless, he was familiar with the deep sensation and the iron taste in his mouth that went with it for months now. Sporadic paroxysms reverberated through his chest and solar plexus at several inopportune moments. Suddenly, as he took a step�"away from the greyish mass�"he became aware of a slight hum.
It was expressed by a sharp high voice of a child and washed over playfully but insistently, cajoling him. Besides the throbbing in his skull behind his eyes it moved melodiously, alluding to a slow dance, as if with it the throbbing came. One couldn’t live without the other. It frequently passed suggestions, all with the small and airy tone that carried a challenge in sin; he mostly ignored it, familiar with this presence, too. Most of these suggestions involved either showing himself like an inferior or him swinging himself or anything around him at anyone in front of him�"except Myra. When people talked to him, even his absent parents and Stacia, it growled. The noise responded to noise.
It seemed to like Myra though, and that alone was the only reason why he didn’t tell anyone about this presence. He knew how to control it, even when sometimes his hands twitched in a quick effort to choke the presence’s words, but somehow when he hung out with Myra, the voice, the presence inclined to crate unobtrusive purrs, like it was content. And how could it not? Unlike the others, Myra was almost nothing to look at, but he knew as he looked at her while she looked away that beneath the prickly casing there was simmering molten rock jest begging to immerse. He feel that no one really understood her like he did and he thought he knew she knew this, too. There were no words needed to make a closeness between them, because as both weren’t good with words�"
He nearly fell to the ground onto its wetness�"his eyes burned in a searing flash and she almost brought his hands to the before the infantile voice hissed.
Of course! He needed to see her! He forced himself up, bringing his foot up and lunging forward toward the stairs ignoring the moist squelch underneath his feet and remembered the lock the door.
Myra almost tossed the phone before she remembered that she would have to pay for repairs, as she had to do recently. She wanted to keep him on the line so she didn’t feel the ground move underneath her legs. She already felt so disconcerted, though, calling him; she was coming off of the sudden pressure in her throat and eyes. While looking up at the moon’s shape, she had the inexplicable sensation that she felt a kinship with the moon�"so sequestered and yet the only light in the darkness. The only reference point in this dreary world that she trusted was herself, even after she had called another person to her. There was nothing more real than herself, but sometimes, like now, she needed a little assurance that she didn’t need to be. He became the heartbeat she listened to at times like these.
She didn’t know how long she had sat in the darkness alone until she heard the tell-tale sound of feet against the heavily painted stairs behind her and a ding. She got her first sight of him by his triangular face, then his shoulders, elbows and knees before he plopped down silently beside her. A rueful smile greeted him, which he ignored, suddenly eyeing the box cutter with attention close to reproach and getting contorted with a pale horror. Fascinated, she watched the blood leave his face, turning the metal over and between her fingers�"he gulped, hard. “What happened?” he choked, trying to hide his walking fingers towards m hand. It wrapped around my wrist in a quick movement, clammy, and I immediately released the metal, suddenly not keen on holding it. Hi arm curled itself around my shoulders and pulled my body to his. I squirmed, looking up.
“My dad called,” was the whisper.
His body clenched and his arm tightened, and I shook my head at his open mouth.
“I was the one who named him you know, my brother,” she murmured. “It’s why my dad only ever calls him ‘boy’ in front of him, never ‘Nate’ nor ‘Nathaniel’. I think he’s always hated me that much.
“No really. Bothe of my parents don’t seem to like me as they do Nate or themselves. My mother had dreamt of being a famous writer and acclaimed author, selling children’s books, not actually have children of her own. When I was born, the creative part of her died and she cried in mourning. That’s what she told me sometime when I was in third grade and she had in the place of drunkenness where a feeling of power and boldness masks the feeble mind. There’s the maternal resentment and regret, which I can ignore, because I still think that she had the free will to choose to marry my father. But my dad actually hates me�"senselessly! It doesn’t seem to come from anywhere�"he doesn’t tell me anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly got the idea to beat me to death�"he looks at me with such intent and scorn. If it wasn’t for the actual passion, as if he felt he was justified in hating me so much, I think I would have turned out to be a much nicer person, but I sound like I’m complaining and making excuses, and I wish I had some other way to explain this to you.
“The doctor is both more complicated and simpler to deal with. I could hate him back, give an eye-for-an-eye, for taking away my expression�"at least for a while. Nowadays I could give a damn. I’m tired of feeling like a cave about to collapse in from dynamite. When I’m around them both I feel trapped. I poured my mother’s wine and read over my father’s shoulders. Then Nate was born, and they didn’t know what to do with them at all. I was angry with my mother for some time�"why bring another child into this world if she was going to make him nameless? I gave him ‘Nathaniel’, for the first boy I kissed in the school parking lot�"if he had been a girl I would’ve named him ‘Estelle’, for being novel.
“Even though my mother took care of him better than she did me, I learned to love him because he was a blinking new thin, a new friend. I may not be very nice, but at least I’m not insane. That’s what Nate did for me, even though he’ll never know that.”
She watched for the judgement in his eyes, and hoped for hope. What she saw was unreadable, but it wasn’t what she was looking for and she was glad, liking the attention. More than liking it.
Breathing deep, she continued. His long brown hair brushed her face with an abrupt icy wind and she shuddered. “I don’t know where Nate is going now, to either my dad or staying with me. It’s funny�"I don’t care that my dad is gone, he is practically nothing to me. But now he wants to take away Nate, because he thinks it would hurt my mother most. It’s all so selfish of me. I don’t see a future alone away from my parents, and I know that he needs to go somewhere and grow into something someday. I don’t really understand but I know that I need him! As long as he is with me I can live in hell forever!
“God!” she cried, vaulting up and away. “I sound insane. Don’t!”
Jeremy avoided her hand in front of his chest and circumvented to her, ferociously pulling her to him again with shiny eyes. She fought him just as fiercely hitting square places of his chest with the heel of her hands, which didn’t deter him. The soft chuckle so unlike the disgust she thought, she stopped turned up her face. His eyes were stelliferous and crystalline, like a million facets had appeared�"why hadn’t she ever noticed how beautiful they could be until this moment? And yet, there was another force from around them, another consciousness stabbing into their space. She couldn’t shake something malevolent…
“It’s not you they hate,” he insisted, grabbing her wrists beside her body and anticipating her starting to get away again. “Listen, start listening for once in your life! Them?! How could anyone hate you? It would be like killing magic�"they hate themselves. They want the life they can’t see in themselves anymore, and they look at you, the strongest and boldest of them, and try to own you. It’s like some twisted possessiveness�"they hate themselves and hate that they need you! Nate is still young, and you’re his big sister, so he needs you. But you? You don’t need anyone, or any of us�"it’s like you already left us all behind…”
Her brow furrowed. “I’m invisible to them--”
Shaking his head and grinding his teeth together, so close to her she could actually hear the metal brackets click. His glittering eyes became rabid and tinged with red. “Cowards! They’re afraid! Afraid to see you and sacrifice themselves to let you go.”
Confusedly Myra’s eyes blinked and her head cocked, trying to hide the alarm of his manacling grip. Despite herself, she needed to know something.
“Why?”
He knew exactly what she was really asking, his voice trembling. “You’re almost too much to love.”
She stiffened. The light in his eyes were too full of…something alive that was dying. The force from before pervaded through her now, like it was searching and she realized that somehow, it had coming from him, a lightning rod curving through her. He himself seemed a bit shaky yet decisive, like he was at the edge of the ship and making a list in his head of all the things he had taken care of.
“And you don’t have to be trapped.”






The next day at school was awkward for the first few hours: Stacia was out sick, and Myra used every opportunity she could not to run into Jeremy again after last night. She thought she’d become something like a Hogwarts ghost if she stayed long in the several hallways she never noticed, solitary and almost all knowing. It wasn’t until right after fourth period lunch did she begin to wonder why his calls and texts had stopped altogether and realize he was absent, too. She almost got the unwanted attention of her AP Chemistry instructor wither constant phone checking. The reason behind her anxiety instead of relief from seeing Jeremy was elusive, as she never spoke to him all that often. They had never needed to, as if they were always on the same wavelength. It didn’t make the facts of life of the previous night any less cringe worthy, before or afterwards. Her mother never woke up, and Nate had already gone to bed when she looked into his room again.
Already she had felt like she was racing and there was nothing…
The police officers and Principal Stewart had come for her at her AP Literature class, the latter nodding to Salvador, whom she noticed took a lot of care not to look directly at anyone. She was the only person not seeing the nerves gesture of fingers-sweeping through hair. The rest of the class were whispering under a great hush, a muffle under a pane. If she could Myra would’ve told him that they weren’t here for him, with their penetrative, cop eyes staring straight at her grimly. She never looked back at Sal as she left the room at the principal’s announcement, wondering if her father had finally taken upon himself to steal Nate away, or if her mother had broken her neck, tanked while climbing down stairs.
The no-nonsense words of the bigger officer began abruptly after the closed door stamped out the noise. “There’s really no easy way to say this…”
Calmly, Myra listened to the messenger. In no lofty words she listened to the vague account of the discovery of her parents, both of them found in the apartment�"she wondered what her father had been doing before more words told her brother had been the one to find them. She demanded more, and the taller cop insisted that they couldn’t reveal anymore, and would she please follow them down to the station? Where he was waiting? It was all that was needed for her to start moving, and the blur of the world around her helped to pass the time before she finally reached the precinct.
Nothing could be forced out of Nate and she didn’t want to push him further into the unresponsive mania he was stuck in. Later as she walked by a random neighbor’s house a little away from their aunt Akua’s house, she found out more about her parents’ deaths from a couple of passing rookies than she should have.
The doctor had his throat ripped open, like someone had torn it with their bare hands so the arteries and veins and trachea were all exposed. His nose had been stuffed with some slimy, pink matter, which had been his actual brains scooped out with a nearby brass hanger. Two thin scalpels had perforated his eardrums and had been left there, so they were crusty with blood and mucus. Our mother’s eyes had been punctured by two unsharpened pencils and stripped completely of her skin from head to groin. Her hands had started to rot in a huge black plastic bag, where long streaks of vermilion painted the floor.
Hearing all this didn’t make the fact that my life with these people, had been cut short, my brother’s cut shorter and bloodier. There were mixed feelings about Nate, happiness for their freedom and sadness for the shock and the nightmares he will have for most of his life. At the same time for me it wasn’t so cutting like the loss of a loved one or even the dull pain of losing someone a part of your past�"the wall between her and life had finally come down and she didn’t know what to do with the extra space. Her brother was too fragile, and Salvador was supposed to be her kept secret, someone that she’d turn to be a link to the outside world. He needed her like a human needs shelter, compulsively and impetuously, always on the lookout for a better one nearby.
She was starting to appreciate the phrase “shock value” all over again. This was losing her virginity a second time.
Even with these horribly painful deaths, I couldn’t get past the dismemberment shoved into the kitchen being something beyond the horror attached to it, as if there was more to the act then clear hatred or insanity, or both. Consequently, I saw that had Jeremy to thank for this black hole�"he was lying on the roof in the cross and slit his wrists open. Pieces of either my father or my mother’s skin caked the underneath of his nails. Apparently, he had offered himself like a lamb to me�"or what the letter for me he left behind.
Something like this stays and sprouts its own spores into the body. The space left behind by Myra’s parents was large as the world, as they became the darkness succumbed into a large composition. Fortitude crumbled into the ruins, becoming her.