Rising Dust

Special Thanks to Mr. Bathtub Inventor

A/N @FlyingShadow and I decided to co-write this...as said in the chapter deleted before this. Sorry, guys. I (being Trinity) had gone ahead and written a chapter out of boredom when my partner had already made one, and gotten a bunch of ideas. She was going to publish it but forgot, giving me the time to make one up. So, here is hers.

I couldn't stop the tears. Rushing like a waterfall, they left odd, black streaks of makeup on my cheeks. It was over. My life was over. Yes, this wasn't my first breakup; in ways, it's a whole lot different from a breakup. I found myself comparing it to a hit and run. He touched my heart, broke it, and ran. I just couldn't keep up.

I ripped a handful of tissue paper out of its little cardboard box, and blew my nose, hard. I'd been doing this all day, and my sinus' began to hurt, giving me the headache-from-hell. Then my phone made that familiar ding, and I stopped mid-blow. It couldn't be him...could it? Maybe he was apologizing. Maybe he had a change of heart, and wanted me back. But, no. That would be too good to be true.

This isn't a fairytale, Kerri.

Ding, it went again.

I didn't want to look, but I had to. If it was him then, I don't know what I'd do. Ruffling my sheets, I crawled over to my nightstand and picked it up. My heart sank. It was my best friend, and the love of my life's new girlfriend. I was filled with rage yet again, and tossed my phone across the room. It hit the wall, shattered and fell to the floor, which made me even angrier.

I sat there stuffing sheets into my mouth to muffle my cries for hours until I just cried myself to sleep. My last thought, strangely, was of a boy with scruffy brown hair. His face was blurred, but I knew he was laughing, and I chuckled along with him.

>>-->

It smelt like spring, and I love the smell of spring; flowers, with a sprinkle of rain. Sweet, and metallic. I remember, when I was little, how I would crawl out my window early in the mourning onto the roof. It was my secret hide-out-unfortunately, everyone on our street knew about it-and I would sit out there for hours just watching the world shift and stumble. People laughing, garage doors opening and closing...but if you got out there early enough, it would be totally quiet-nothing but the gentle rustle of trees, and the occasional lonely song of a bird. I long for that; an overwhelming nostalgia, but theres no roof to crawl out onto in my apartment.

My eyelids felt heavy and I had this nauseating feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I had just spun around in circles a million times. My pillow case was soaked in tears, with casual blotches of make-up, and I concluded that it looked like a giant, melting, colourful marshmallow as shuffled into the washroom.

I looked in the mirror and almost gagged. My face was all puffy from crying, my make-up was...everywhere-I mean, my face was covered in a disarray of eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick-and the hair on top of my head looked like something could live quite comfortably in there.

I can't go out like this. I can't live like this.

So I stripped down and hopped in the bath, turning the dial all the way up to hot. Steam rose from the spout and I watched as the artificial me melted into the water, stretching out in ugly shades of skin and black, like a liquid cloud. My limbs ached, and for the first time since first grade I was grateful for whoever invented the bathtub.