Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT FOUR - PART ONE

Welcome back, here we go with the new Act. Cheers!

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He stupidly thought things were looking up and then things broke. They broke apart and shatter at his feet, but he kept fighting. Bradley kept fighting because that's the only thing he knew how to do. That's the very thing they've taught him.

Never give up. Never give in, just keep going. And then stars align and you get your big prize for not breaking down and crying like a little child even though that was everything you wanted in that very moment.

Do not let yourself be discouraged. Things aren't as bad as you think they are, tomorrow everything will seem lighter, the light of a new day did that to a shitty situation, but what if all of that was bullshit? What is a new day just brought more agony, what if keep going was the wrong approach, because sometimes you got to stop and fix what is broken, for keep going can turn into running away without you even noticing it. What if no one has a clue and most shit people tell you to encourage you are lines from movies they've watched once without understanding the plot or books written by people, who just think with such complexity no one really understands their meaning without knowing them by heart.

What if the sky wasn't just blue? What if the teacher was right and there was meaning behind every word? Maybe the teachers were wrong, and the author just meant that the sky was fucking blue. What if the author wasn't even aware of the deep meaning other people found in their word decades or centuries later?

What if everyone dies and nothing has any meaning?

Bradley was fighting all his life already. He was fighting to go on. Rushing from one chaos into the next because people kept telling him that his mother would have wanted him to go on, but for him going on felt so much like running away. Like rushing through his life. Like sitting in a train that never quiet stopped, and never gave him the opportunity to get out and look around. He couldn't bear it any longer.

He was running so fast, he never quiet took the moment to stop and allow himself to grief, to miss, to be so unchangingly sad.

And then things break, and you keep fighting, because that's all you ever knew and no one sees how much it cost you to lose, how much energy you wasted by fighting on while the only way all this could have ever gone down was in a bone wrecking defeat.

If he's being honest, nothing is good as of lately, no matter how often he claims everything is well when he's questioned. Nothing feels the same. Nothing looks the same. It's as if the world has lost it's colour a bit.

Sitting down and getting comfortable in the plush red chair, Bradley glanced at the screen for a moment, before he adjusted the bag of popcorn in his lap. He made a tradition out of it, visiting the cinema as often as possible on the English movie nights. Not that he was opposed to seeing Japanese movies, but the language barrier still had him struggle, even though the real reason why he came to the English movie nights was the familiar feeling of being surrounded by his mother tongue in a civil environment. For about two hours, he could pretend to be back at home. He could pretend all was well when nothing was well for quite some time already.

Waiting for the film to start, Bradley threw some popcorn into his mouth and chewed for a moment, before remembering that he hadn't turned his phone on silent just yet. Holding the popcorn in one hand, while trying to pull his phone from the pocket of his knee-lengthened shorts, Bradley didn't realise that that the person walking up the stairs didn't walk past him but stopped right by his row, until she addressed him in a sweet voice.

"I'm sorry, is this seat taken?" She wondered, which had Bradley glance up briefly at her, not longer than a few seconds as he finally managed to pull his phone out of his pocket, which had him look down, only to them glance back up at the woman, as if he had seen a ghost. The woman was tall, with a sporty body and long blond hair. For a moment he thought her to be someone very familiar. Only to then swallow, as he tried to overplay his widened eyes, which the woman took as a compliment for her beauty, rather than Bradley mistaking her for a moment for Grace.