Breathe Into Me

6.

AXEL - 12:30am

Her ashen voice thrashes in my head like thunderous waves crashing against an impenetrable storm.

"Axel! Axel, please help me! I don't feel good."

Her words are severed by the thick arms of fire distancing us apart. I try to reach for her; the catastrophic abyss flashes between a mirage of red, orange and yellow to black, inescapable fumes.

The walls of the fire incinerate and the helpless pleas of Rye grow weaker and weaker....until I'm engulfed in my own inferno.

"Rye!!" I keep belching until everything deafens and blinds my senses.

"Rye!!!"

Once more, I'm drowned in a colossal of my own sweat. My breathing is haggard and it rips my chest apart, like smoke fumes.

The smoke doesn't die down. It sets me alight, burning and hollering until I crash rock bottom. 

The tumult beseeches my skin and inhabits my insides; I clutch ahold of my knees, and hug them to my chest.

Chills dance along the fiery walls of my spine; I suffocate in the air, imprisoned and helpless. As in my nightmare, I gasp for oxygen, gnawing onto the fading sense of hope.

I cry bitterly on my side on bed of rock.

Human expression is a beast. It messes and perfectly deceives the mind to what is really happening.

Whilst people think you're a stone cold bastard on the outside, inside, you're just a ruined teenage boy, carrying the ghost of his sister on his shoulders.

I can't accept it. Otherwise, her memory will wilt away.

I can't afford to lose the one thing I have left of her.

Because if I can't be close to her, I'll settle with the ghost of her

My hand fiddles around the blue loom band she created for my fifteenth birthday.

I squeeze the bracelet into my chest - at least I have some form of her chained to my heart.

The tears are warm and painful as they swim down my face.

"I miss you sis. I-I'm so sorry...." the solemn walls are stone bullets in my throat. They amplify my sobs.

As my body aches with lethargy, I let it engulf me. I'm far too powerless to combat against it.

Sometimes, when fabricating yourself is a daily routine, you're oblivious to the fact it's tugging pieces of you apart in the process. And it keeps tugging at you until there's nothing left but a black heart, pitied by emptiness.

Day by day, the fight becomes harder to push through.

But I do it anyway, for little Rye.

Even if that entails late night panic attacks and recurring PTSD.

I've been scarred by it for the past year, I'm immune to it.

With a heavy heart, and a crippled soul, I fall into a black, dreamless abacus.

*******

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

Fuuuuucckkk. Can I pretend for one day I don't exist?

My alarm lock sirens into my ear - it infiltrates my mind and angrily hisses against my skull. I can hear its little voice mocking me.

Although you're having a bad day Axel, I'm going to be a piece of shit and make your day a living hell.