Fiction Friday!

Hey!  If you're here from Mr. Stonebender's blog, welcome.  If you're not here from Mr. Stonebender's blog, welcome!  Remember this?  It's revised!  It's been all prettied up, and this! Is! It!  Yay!  Other fiction by me is all right here, if you'd like to check that out as well.  Enjoy!

Legs in a Tangle

These words are best read out loud, starting slowly and quietly and gradually getting faster and louder and a little scary. A lot scary. The kind of scary that most of us keep buried, deep down where no one can see us ever and we can all act normal on the outside. Smile for the picture, honey. Smile and look pretty.
We've known each other for a long time, haven't we? Was it you who I met years ago, on that night turned morning, don't you remember that? I think I remember it. I thought it happened, but maybe it was all in my head. A lot of stuff was all in my head, back then. But you said that I could conquer it all.
A lot of stuff is all in my head now.
We are holding hands and then I walk away because it's cold rainy I want to go inside inside inside, but you're here and I want to stay with you. You make it okay, you make me stronger. You should come inside, why not stay a while, but you have to go someplace else, someplace important, someplace without me.
I go inside anyway, go home, open the door and close it, sit with my back against it, legs in a tangle of smooth black on the floor, shoes have disappeared somehow and I can't look anyone in the eye, not that there's anyone to look at but you know what I mean? I stare at me and I worry about what's going to happen and I worry about what's already happened and I worry about the things that are happening right this very instant and bam! There's no getting out now, we're in this for the long run, we're in it together. You are stuck, my friend.
That's a lie. I'm all alone. It's okay. I keep telling myself that - I'm okay with it, I'm alone and I like it that way, I'm alone and I don't have to care what anyone else thinks because I am me, and I am good with that, right? Everything about me says something else, everything about me says no it hurts you, doesn't it? It has to hurt you too!
It doesn't.
(I tell myself that lie too.)
I grab onto my hip bone, I love having bones that stick out like that, protrude, and I tug and tug at it, until I can pull it out. I hear a crack at the back, and it's a little bloody, but I don't mind, I've seen blood before, enough to stop caring.
I can't stand up now, but who has to know, I throw my bones across the room, and look back down, down at me. I can conquer it all, I can conquer the world. I want to go away, I want to melt right now. You see, it's not that I want to die, it's that I just want to stop existing. I want to not be awake. Can we make that happen, you and me, together? Just stop being?
Oh wait. It's just me, now.
I pull my tights down a little bit, then trace the scars, up and down my other hip, graceful, beautiful curves, stretching to touch my ribcage and down to my thigh. I did them one by one, each marks a different occasion of hatred pain regret. Ribcage. I need to tear that apart too. Fingernails to sternum, tear at it until it cracks in half and pull it apart too, now there's lungs squishy and exposed and still, somehow, doing their thing.
I stopped doing my thing a long time ago. It must've been something, right? Right? I did something, I was someone. I must've been.
I remember numbers though, before, numbers that I took to heart, numbers that I used build a body for me to live in. Who wants to be a person when you can be data? When we went off into your world, my binary body felt just like home. I want to be row after row of zeros and ones, take the feelings right out of it.
I hate feelings. They're messy and bloody and I wanted to be bone rather than flesh. I don't need to be that human.
Palm to forehead, I claw an eye or two out, and now I can't see, but what was there to see, what was there in the first place? Nothing worth the effort, I think. Nothing worth getting out of bed in the morning. I'm going to sleep now, there's no more reason to be awake. I'm going to dead now, there's no more reason to be alive.
I stand up. We can't be so pathetic now, can we? We keep on going, because we are strong, just as strong as we can pretend to be. It's harder to pretend on your own. I picked up my pieces and put them back where they belong, stretching the skin to fit over them and sewing it back into place.

 Conquering it all, just like you said.

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