Silent Pantomime

Chapter 38 | Skin and bones

Chapter 38🌌: trigger warning; Ed and suicide, please don't read if uncomfortable🤍

(also I posted this chapter last night but glitchpad deleted it, so a huge thank you to my literal favourite human being imperio_xv for helping me rewrite most of this for me. Thank god we send each other voice messages of each other's stories or I wouldn't of had the chapter up again as soon as I did.)

Ever since my mum died, my life had basically became a ticking bomb that was yet to go off - just me sat on my self-obsessed throne, drowning in compliments and glory, just waiting to explode.

People would just look at me walking on the street and think "It's easy for you. You're pretty."
Then the letters started coming like clockwork, making me realise that at least one person thought, "Oh you're so pretty. But your personality kills it."

But on the path I was heading: too distracted to realise what I was eating; too worried to worry about my body; I realised that day by day I wasn't as pretty anymore. My eyes were looking less magic, their glint of glee from causing mischief in the universe was mixed with something else that I couldn't get rid off. The empty space between my legs was becoming much smaller, my stomach was looking slightly larger, and my entire mind felt like it had been smashed by a boulder. What was the point of rules I lived by if I wasn't beautiful?

In a way I was happy that the letters were making me go through ghost week, because I might have lost the gaining size thats only outcome was to make me more invisible. I wanted people to say "I want to be like Hazel." Not because they want to deal with being blackmailed, pretending to be happy, missing the only people they loved; but because at least they would be pretty.

Nobody really knew the real Hazel Fitzgerald, but if I wasn't remembered for being anything less than perfect, I didn't want to be remembered at all. The stars all knew my secrets, so I wanted to be beautiful enough for them to carry on my legacy and lock up what I wanted to be locked up. It was taking me all my power to keep the secret of what I drove that Ally girl to do. It was taking all my power to not cry about Oliver after ruining everything we had ever had. It was taking all my power to not tell anyone the true story of what happened to my mum. Just breathing was taking up all my power because I couldn't slip up.

I needed to be perfect.

If I made one mistake everything would slowly unravel itself until it all fell apart. It would be like pulling the bottom card from a castle of cards. Of course one of the main reasons I hadn't tried to stop these letters was because of the safety net of having some scheduled attention, but there was a much darker reason too. If I had told anyone about these letters, I might be dead, or worse, alive and ruined. So I just had to take a swig of the poison and get it over with.

Anyway, all humans are only animals that learned how to hurt themselves without bleeding.

My thoughts had damaged me beyond repair and I still had a week left of just me and my thoughts. I was just glad I didn't act on all my scary thoughts. I couldn't show them to the world. I had managed to survive sixteen years in my head, but the world wouldn't have lasted a day.

***

I was sat at the bus stop, waiting to go to school and staring at a puddle that never seemed to leave the ground because it's England, and God liked to cry my pain for me. A few people were gathered around waiting too, some were looking at me but I was too lazy to care, and it wasn't like I could have responded without being murdered. So I just sat and looked at the puddle, wishing it were bigger so I could have jumped in it. I'd always loved of water, the idea of not being forced to breathe seemed calming. Just being asleep under the water.