The Last Lie

Be true to yourself. Faking it will only end up hurting you and everyone you're faking it for

The Last Lie

 

 

 

What have I done?

 

I’m sitting in this empty room - white walls, stucco ceiling, wood floors - full of boxes still needing unpacked. The only furniture, besides the stool I am sitting on, is the massive, drawer-less dresser sitting in the middle of the floor, her dresser. It looks skeletal sitting there stripped to its bare frame, like a shell of what it should be; perhaps that emptiness is what drew me to it. Perhaps, that’s why I’d been sitting here, staring into the mirror mounted on its back all morning.  Empty, but still able to project the image it was given, as it was expected to; still able to keep appearances. I’ve always hated this dresser.

 

What have I done?

 

I sit on the stool, looking at him. Where did he come from? I mean... I understand where he is coming from now, but where did he come from in the first place? And how had he known to come?

 

I just stare at him.

It was just us, now.

 

He is supposed to be me. He is supposed to be nothing more than my own light, fed to the glass and silver and shown back to me.  But how can that be? Look at him. He’s young, he’s handsome; sure he looks tired, but he does not look weary, does not look fatigued, does not look as though life itself is becoming a burden too heavy for him to bear. Look at him; nice teeth, glowing skin, cute hair. He looks like he’s ready to take on the world - perhaps first he’d take on a toothbrush and a cup of coffee, but then the world.

He is supposed to be me? This man, in his universe of silver and glass, was born of my light? How is that even possible when I have no more light to give? My light is dying, has been  for years, it could not satiate the hunger of the mirror to produce such a pristine image. Yet, he is supposed to be me, or better yet, I am supposed to be him.

I’d like to blame him; his smiles, his joy, his energy. I’d like to say that those things are what had gotten me here, but he had only done what I’d asked him to do, what I’d done so long and couldn’t do anymore. I invited him in, instructed him, and watched idly as he fooled the people in my life as I once had.

All I wanted was to hide my pain from them. I wanted to spare them from having to know what I was going through, what I was feeling. I wanted to spare her especially. I still do. I’d dug myself into this happy hole. I could’ve avoided it early on with honesty, but instead started living this charade. So now what could I do? Tell them the truth after years of lies?

 

I’m sorry, but I don’t love you, I don’t know if I ever really did. I didn’t want to hurt you, I still don’t want to hurt you, but living this lie is eating me away inside. It’s killing me. I can’t do it anymore.

 

I couldn’t do that. Not now. It wouldn’t just hurt her, it would hurt them all. No, I put myself into this and now I just have to deal. But dealing was becoming all the more painful - the fake smiles, the fake cheer - it was all becoming too heavy, and I was cracking under the load.

Now, I had to let him do it.

He came in and began to give everyone the feigned smile I could no longer deliver. The lies, the look, the life; they all killed me inside, slowly sucked from my light, but everyone else was happy. I was sparing them all the pain of knowing the truth, or perhaps I was sparing myself from having to watch their pain. Either way, he played his role well.

 

“How excited are you, Hon? Our own place!” I remember hearing her say to him one day while sitting on his lap.

 

“It’s wonderful, Babe,” he lied. “I can’t wait to finally start our lives together.”

 

While I wept, he looked her in the eyes and smiled.

It was the most perfect smile I’d ever seen.

 

“OK, Hon! You love me?”

 

I was going to tell her the truth Right then, I was going to do it. I was going to apologize for all the years of lying and just come clean. I just hadn’t wanted to hurt you, but I can’t go through with this. I can’t give my whole life to you on this pretense of love that doesn’t exist and maybe never did!

That’s what I was going to say, but his resolve was stronger than mine. He did not stray from his assignment.

 

“Of course I do, Babe.”

 

He was good.  That’s why I had needed him, that’s why he’d come. The happy face, and the lies that were becoming like load of lead to me, he could easily handle. He knew the cost of the truth; he knew that it would ease no pain, only transfer it, and if either she or I had to bear it, then it was I that deserved it. That it was why I now sat in this empty room, gazing at him through this barrier of glass, asking myself one question.

 

What have I done?

 

“You OK, Hon?”

 

I turned to the doorway where she stood, a concerned look on her face. I turned back to him for help, but I had temporarily trapped him in his prison of silver and glass. He could not help me now.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I muttered to the floor.

 

“Why are you just sitting there in your underwear, staring at the mirror like a weirdo?”

 

“Uh, I don’t know, just tired I guess,” I said through a forced half-grin. “Just zoning out, or something.”

 

“Um, OK,” she said through a small giggle. “Well I’ll be downstairs unpacking, come down when you get a little more awake. Love you.”

 

I simply nodded and grinned. I didn’t have it in me to tell another lie; I had told my last.

 

I looked back toward him with envy. It was so easy for him to wear this guise of happiness, he didn’t have to feel the pain that came with it.

Why can’t I be stronger? I say I lie to spare them, to spare her, but have I spared anyone? Or have I just trapped us all in this downward  spiral of an empty loveless life, full of resentment and self-loathing. Have I really spared anyone?

 

It doesn’t matter, I though as I used the razor to trace the big blue vein in my arm from wrist to shoulder.

 

Now we are all freed.

 

And as my head lie down on the dresser, watching the beautiful, crimson falls, flow away from my body, he reached down and began to softly stroking my face. Lovingly.

 

I smiled.

And for the first time that I can remember…

 

It was weightless

Author's Note

Sorry this got a little longer than expected. If you notice any out of place quotation marks from the stupid glitch, let me know :)

This was partially inspired by a message I sent to London and JoshuaDeathdealer encouraging them to work together on a poem. I said to them "It'd be so dark and sad I'd probably slit my wrists right at the desk, but it'd be so good I'd die smiling" which put an image in my head I had to explore.

PS
if anyone can find a better picture LET ME KNOW haha

Enjoy! ^_^

Reviews

[lostboy]

we all live in a much greater light than our own ..a light that makes ours a shadow when we look in a mirror we see a reflection when we look in our heart what do we see ? i say the truth from the start is still the best ..if for no other reason than it causes less pain.

[Rachael]

Grammar: "And as my head LAY down on the dresser..."

The way it begins....I almost thought it was a girl speaking and when she said "her dresser" she was talking about the person in the mirror as well.

And then I almost still thought it was a girl....but like a girl in a boy's body? (Which I think works pretty well with the story actually) I'm not really sure if this is because I am a girl and maybe I have a tendency to think of first-person characters as girls automatically?

Anyways it's really interesting. But it also makes me really dislike the guy. Like when his alter-self is trapped in the mirror I was expecting him to take the opportunity to free himself. Tell her the truth. But then he doesn't and it makes me angry at him because I feel like he's taking the easy way out.

Anyways...keep up the good work!

[Kathryn Elizabeth]

Love it. Its quite an interesting story. I noticed a few little errors but overall it was well written. It also holds some truth to it because most people these days fake who they are to be accepted by others. So overall, well done :)

[kasanova]

diggin it.

[London]

this is sad but awesome Tj. excellent work...when we lie we lose ourselves in the end.

Great short. Well written and paced. Good setup and just enough information throughout to paint a picture that most can fit into.

[.shalynn.009.]

"still needing unpacked" should be "unpacking"

"had gotten me here" to make this less wordy, you could cut "had gotten" to just "got"

“OK, Hon!" coming after what he said, this sounds awkward. Seems more like she would say something along the lines of "Me too, Hon!" Saying OK makes her sound a bit sarcastic and insincere

"I turned to the doorway" To keep consistent with the tense of the beginning, this needs to be in present tense.

“Why are you just sitting there in your underwear" I love this detail. Like the dresser, he is stripped to his bare essentials, with nothing superfluous to hide who he really is.

"full of resentment and self-loathing" thsi should end in a question mark.

"And as my head lie" shold be "lies"

I really liked the ambiguity of the beginning of the story, how the reader is left guessing what is going on, and how everything is slowly revealed through the story. And I really liked that you made a kind of split personality for the main character, so that he spoke of himself in third person, completely separating himself from his public persona. It was very effective in helping the reader to understand his isolation and disconnect with both the rest of the world and himself. It allowed him to both take responsability for the situation and to give responsability to someone else, someone he had no power over.

I also like that the entire scene took place in front of a mirror. Mirrors are great symbols of perception vs. reality, which is what this entire piece is about. And hte tone is set from the very beginning, with the bare skeleton of the dreser representing how he is stripping his soul to its barest state and deciding whether he can live with it or not.

It was interesting that you refrained from giving the two characters names. This made them much more universal and relateable, as it is left to the reader to create their identities beyond what we are given by you, the author. And the female's personality contrasted the male's well, her overly sweet and sugary enthusiasm giving the reader a better idea of his pain and dead love.

I don't know if the lack of punctuation on the ending line was intentional or not, but I thought it an interesting technique, with the context of the ending sentence. It left the look of it a little weightless as well, as though it was floating. However, since this is technically incorrect grammar, you could remedy this by ending with an ellipses, which would keep that kind of floating feel, rather than an abrupt end.

For picture ideas, these were the two I came up with that fit the perception vs. reality thing:
http://vinceparker.com/tag/perception-vs-reality/
http://www.anjuthomas.com/?attachment_id=37

[Audrey Howitt]

The release of pain is such an enticing thought. So well done! I can relate to all three---

[Judas Hammer]

next level as usually with a professional polish. you have the confidence in you writing and a power and control on your words. I really liked this. I felt liken a fly on the wall as though I was watching the whole even come alive. Very good piece, this is the stuff I like to read.

[Krystal Nicole]

Wow. Great write!! I loved the feeling in the poem. Nice. .

[compositionc]

That was incredibly well written. The punctuation usage was fantastic. The ending was surprising! Like, LOLWUT?
Nicely done, good man.