The Parasite | Eminem

33

A.N. Bro, the water works be coming... Idk how to feel-

He looked at me the way Leah looked at me that night.
Eyes wider than ever, witnessing something beyond human morality.
His skin's gone pale, and in this moment I can swear he's probably more sober than he's ever been.
I felt like my stomach would tear me apart.
I felt the world collapse around me.
I felt my lone suffering come crashing apart.
The gig is up.
This is where I loose the one person I love.

"You... how-" he begins, face continuing to be one of fixed terror and disbelief.
This is the most painful moment of my life.
There are plenty of ways to die that don't involve death.
This is one of those ways.
This is my death.

The door opens, someone walks in to witness my death without even knowing it.
Ear piece and clip board, the stagehand is absorbed in her own world.
"Six minutes, Slim Shady"

She doesn't care to look at us.
We sit on the floor.
I tremble.
He's completely still.

"Thanks- Fucking thanks! You could have told me at any other goddamn time and it had to be now" suddenly he's frustrated.
He's angry at me now.
I've told him something horrible in a moment where he doesn't even get the time to process it.
He pulls himself up, tearing off the orange jumper and heading over to the clothing rack.
"I want you to stay here." He tells me in a hardened voice.
He has no more emotion in him except anger.
He doesn't know what he'll do next, or what will happen next, but he's prioritizing the crowd of thousands waiting for him.

I fish the Marlboro box out of my pocket, remaining on the floor as he pulls a red shirt over his wife beater.
I search for some emotion other than rage in his face.
There's nothing.
This is the moment where Marshall has come to see me as who I really am.
It doesn't matter what other horrible things I've done.
This tops it all.
This is that page turning moment.

He rushed over to the door, grabbing the handle before he pauses.
His time is slowly catching up to him, but he stops to turn back and look at me as I slip the cigarette between my lips.
His face betrays his words, jaw clenched and eyebrows knit together in anger, he tells me, "It's ok, it's gonna be ok"

Maybe it's to keep me from going all melodramatic and frenzied on him, or to keep him from freaking out to hard, but he tries to reassure both of us before he opens the door and leaves me alone.

I sit in the bleak dressing room, lighting up the cigarette.
The nicotine hits my system and it's the one semblance of normalcy in this moment.
The smoke fills my lungs, bringing me one inhale closer to my true physical death.

Everything bad you can imagine is happening somewhere else, or happened here, a hundred years ago.
But for once, everything bad you can imagine is happening right here, right now, in my head, in this room.
I wait.
Three minutes...
Thirty minutes...
I move to the couch, playing with a second unlit cigarette in my hand.
Fifty minutes...
An hour...

Eventually I come to hope that Marshall has abandoned me here.
He goes back to the hotel room, or the tour bus, and when I go to him, he doesn't let me him.
That would be less painful than seeing him again and having to tell him what I've done...
I still don't feel guilty, but I don't want to loose him.
If I don't have him, then I've got no one else I love.

"Hey..." I hear, prompting me to lift my head and look at the face I hoped I wouldn't have to look at again tonight.

I stare at his disillusioned expression.
No word could describe him better than that word.
Disillusioned.
Quote, "disappointed in someone or something that one discovers to be less good than one had believed."
Yeah.
That's him.
And then there's me.
Bleak and void.
Still not feeling guilty in the slightest.