Love Is Ǝvil

46 I Got Shot In the Heart

Marshall leaned against the door of his bedroom. Alone. The room was empty and dark, only some lights from outside the windows gave the shadows contours. Pulling the gaze toward itself his big bed stood in the middle of the room like a king commanding his court. The center of attention, also a phrase to describe his ass perfectly. Even in his fantasies his ass couldn't hold out more than five minutes before it had to take over everything. Was this normal? The night lead you to believe the color of the sheets was strong and bright, green like a meadow and just as merry and peaceful. Only an illusion. His bed was cause for nightmares, all beds were. Hard to fall asleep in and always pushing for the opposite, whispering how good another body would feel pressed against his. Not wrong, but also not helpful.

He frowned as his eyes examined the scene. The other pieces of furniture like his nightstands and the dresser melted into the background. Was this right? Perhaps, having your bed be the center gave the wrong signal. An outward manifestation of ... his thing?

He should call it what it was: addiction. His therapist might be cautious to diagnose him, but he could feel it in his bones. Calling Ryan and Worick tonight, of course with the understanding of sex later, that was him running away from reality, hiding from his problems and his feelings. Like he had done with drugs before. He was always trying to escape his life for one reason or another. First he had been too poor for it to be much of a life, nothing he could do against the abuse that accentuated his days, so finding anything that felt nice was a blessing. Then he had been finally rich enough to afford those distractions and everything that came with fame he hadn't been able to handle. Too much stress, too much pressure, too much anxiety, just too much of everything and he only wanted things quiet. And when disaster had struck ... All of a sudden there was a world he didn't want to live in and he couldn't process that he had to.

Wasn't it obvious, that he was this way? Anything that was good he found a way to abuse.

Marshall turned on the lights and the picture didn't change. Still, his bed was the center, nothing else seemed to matter and this was by design. It had taken him hours to position the bed correctly, with measurements taken down to a tenth of an inch and papers of math and diagrams and wrong calculations to find the acceptable combination between the physical center versus the optical center of the room. It shouldn't matter this much. It shouldn't be this important.

Growling to himself, he took off his hoodie and threw it into a corner. Things needed to change. Immediately. He pulled the pillows from his bed and threw them into the same corner, the comforter followed as did the sheets. Then he hauled up the mattress out of the frame and put it against the door, out of his way. The two nightstands followed suit, next to the door and out of the way. When all obstacles were cleared up, he pushed against the bed frame. The dark, sturdy wood wasn't lightly to move, but he pushed with all his muscles and his weight against it, switching between the edges. Steadily the bed crept across the carpet. He shoved the piece of furniture into the darkest corner, the one without any windows. Finally, the frame was snuggly hugged by the walls.

Slightly breathless, he looked at his achievement. Standing in the corner, the bed seemed smaller than before, only an optical illusion. At the same time, the room looked bigger, emptier ... missing. Perhaps that was for the best. His life shouldn't be ruled by a bed or what it stood for, sex and sleeplessness.

But he wasn't finished yet.

The mattress went back into the frame with new and bland looking sheets: gray. The comforter received the same treatment, a gray cover although it had some black patterns on it. That's the dullest he found in his closet at short notice, tomorrow he'd need to buy new ones. Only one of the pillows went back on the bed, the one he slept on, but all the others needed to leave.