Fiction Friday

Yeah, it's the second part of the story from last week. Are you excited yet? Mmhmm.


I don't know why I want you to care about me any more. I don't know why thoughts of you can't leave me alone.
I end up somewhere without remembering how I got there.
“Do you need help with something?” They ask me because I look distant and disconnected. I try to respond and say that I'm fine, but my mouth isn't working, isn't forming words that I learned to make long ago and all that comes out is a vague sound. I still feel as though I'm not in my body, but that I am without a body at all. I'm floating around in the air, peering into everyone's brains and understanding exactly how they see the world, but I haven't the slightest idea how I see it.
You're here. You don't even see me, but you still invade my thoughts. I'm not okay with that. I want you to go home and leave me alone, just for once.
“Hey.”
I ignore you , hoping that you'll think I'm someone else and stop talking to me.
You don't. “I haven't seen you in weeks! How are you?”
I look under your eyes, unable to make eye contact. “I'm okay. How are you?” My voice is shaking uncontrollably.
“Oh, same as ever.” You touch my shoulder, and I can't breathe. “Listen, have you seen anybody else recently? It's almost like they're hiding from me or something, you know?”
“I, uhh, haven't seen them. Haven't seen anybody, really.” You think I'm lying, but I'm telling you the truth.
“Oh. I wish that we were still spending time with them.”
“You should, you should call them or something.” I'm panicing, I need to get out of this situation.
And of course, you see this. “Are you still all distraught about what happened? It wasn't your fault, you know. It wasn't any of our faults. It just happened.”
I shake your hand off of me. I can't handle having you touch me like that any more. “It was our fault. It was all our faults. We all hat the chance to stop it, and none of us did.”
“What's done is done. We can't change it by regretting everything that happened.”
“But you're trying to deny it.”
You should say something, anything. You have to make a case for yourself, but you don't.
“He died, and we could all have saved him.”
You turn around and leave. You've left me alone, just like I wanted.
Thinking back to the beginning, it feels like I was a different person, or, at the very least, I thought differently than I do now. I didn't think then, I really didn't. I did what people told me to do, I let them influence me more than I should have. I needed to please them, I needed that external validation. And now, in a sharp break with tradition, I've built walls. I've gotten good at it, and that's why I'm messed up now. Because I ignore things far too much, and that means I have a problem. I'm not supposed to be so cold. I'm supposed to feel things more, but I don't want to. It's difficult and it's annoying and it's a huge waste of time.
I need to get rid of this, I need to cut out the part of my brain that holds memories, memories of everything that we did, and get it out of my head so that I can just be free for once.
I remember the screams, and I hear them, sometimes. That, I think, is why I can't handle this. I can't handle any of this, and I just want out. I wanted it then, and I still want it now.
Gosh, it sounds like I want to kill myself. I don't, I swear. I just want to take a short break, a nap, if you will. Just a month or so, and then I'll be ready to jump back into all of this again. I feel as though I'm bargaining with the universe, and the universe always seems to win. The thirteen year old inside me is outraged at this injustice, and I think the current me is a little outraged too.