Perspectives

13. Auburn

I ran away from there.  As fast as I could I ran away from there.  I don't even know why I did, but I ran.  As far as I could before the cloud cover ended.  I turned around to look back from where I had come.  The rain fell down harshly onto the smooth, pavement and trees and houses.  If I could cry, now would be a good time to do so.  Why did I run from there? Why did  run away? I was scared.  Scared of what? What was I scared of?  I had run, but was running really the right choice?  I knew what I was going to say to Hero.  I knew how I was going to explain what I was.  Explain what she was. 

Why had I run from the girl? She was the one that was going to help everything so much.  I needed to not be afraid.  I needed to face the future.  My future.  The future of the world.  I'd go back tomorrow.  I had to.  I had to face any fears I had of seeing that girl because that girl was going to save me.  That girl was going to save the world.  Maybe someday she would see that in herself.  

I stopped walking outside the window of a boy named Kristian when I was millions of miles from Hero's home.  Kristian was sitting in front of his mirror.  

Eyes stained with tears.  

Clothes stained with wrinkles.  

Hair stained with rain-water.  

Face stained with pain.  

Heart stained with truth.  

Life stained with death.  

He wanted to be gone from here and I had never been more sure of anything.  Through his window, I looked around the room and felt all of Kristian's painful memories.  

There were pieces of crumpled paper in every corner.  Suddenly, I felt his painful memory.  Write down on a paper exactly how much you love her exactly how you feel.  Exactly what you want.  Exactly what everyone wants from you.  Draw.  Draw her name in hearts.  Remember how she hurt you.  Remember what she did to your heart.  Remember how she made you feel.  Remember when she was everything.  Remember when you saw her in everything you looked at.  Then remember that she hurt you.  Crumple the papers and throw them to the corners of your room so you never open them again.  Because you already know what you wrote on them.  You already know what was in them.  You didn't want to remember... Please don't make me remember.

There were gray scars up his wrists.  I felt his memory and shuttered.  When you try to be the best and you can't be.  When everyone wants you do be something that you aren't.  Something that you can't be.  When you look in the mirror and cry because your standards for yourself are too high.  You can't live up to them and you just want to punish yourself for making everyone disappointed.  Including yourself.  So you pick up the razor blade and slide it deeply into the tender skin of your wrist.  The part that makes you bleed more.  Then came the blood that poured from your wrist.  What made you hurt a lot.  Don't remember that.  Please don't remember...

There was an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the desk next to an empty bottle of alcohol.  Kristian had been sitting there, staring at the mirror.  Looking into his pale green eyes waiting.  Waiting to die.  Forget that you lived.  Forget that you were.  Remember the people who told you that you were important.  Remember the beautiful people who told you that you mattered.  But in a moment, you remember nothing.  All you think about is the way your mother's hand felt against your skin.  The way your skin slowly turned purple and black as her punch faded into a scar that wouldn't go for a long time.  All you can think about is the way her and her husband's voices sounded clashing against eachother in their unforgiving battle for dominance.  All you can think about is how beautiful she looked and how sweet and soft her voice sounded, even when she said that it wasn't going to work out.  You can only remember the way she sounded when she told you not to ever talk to her again.  You think about how it felt when your brother beat you.  All you think about is death.  One pill. Two pills. A thousand pills.  What's the difference, really? All you want is to be gone.  Away from life.  Away from here.  Please.  Help me remember the good things before I am gone altogether... Now I am gone.  Away from the world that allowed me to be beaten slowly.  I was beaten.  I tried to win, but I lost.  Now I am gone.  Please help me remember...

I lifted the window and climbed inside the little boy's room.  Poor kid, I thought, he was only thirteen.  That was Hero's age.  Every time I see this happen, I wish with everything in me.  I wish with everything in the world that I can stop them.  Unfortunately, I know that I can't do that.  It is a rule of nature that I can't help this.  I can't do anything about it.  I can't stop them.  I walked over to Kristian's unconsious body... Unconsious wasn't the right word.  I walked to kristian's poor dead body.  His vulnerable skinny body was folded akwardly in his chair.  and his small head was rested on his desk.  I sat down on a stool that sat sat next to the chair he was in.  I pulled his body so he was lying in my lap.  I began stroking his beautiful, soaked, black, scene hair.  His head was rested gently in my hands as I brushed his cool cheek with my thumb.  

I looked up and into Kristian's broken mirror, shattered with a punch shortly before he took his pills.  In his mirror, I saw myself.  My dark, wet, black hair and pale, white skin.  Moss green eyes framed with thick eyelashes.  Light pink lips with a soft shine.  Jet black tattoos to contrast with my porcelain skin.  Wearing a stolen outfit because I had none of my own.  With a dead boy laid across my lap, vulnerable, and non-moving.  With his cold, pale skin clear and beautiful and his dyed-black scene hair wet and messy crowding his face.  With eyelids protecting his light green eyes.  Eyelids that wouldn't open again to reveal who he once was.  With dark lips that showed no emothion and wouldn't show one anymore.  Lips that had shown happiness, real and fake, sadness, deep and shallow, pain, love, truth, lies, life, and now, death.  His thin, wirey frame was clad in a pair of tight , black jeans and a dark T-shirt.  This boy, vulnerable and dead, rested in my hands and showed so much.  He showed love, life, lost love and lost life.  He showed beauty and majesty and a heart and a soul and a beautiful life.  He was beautiful and he was dead and there was nothing I could do about it.

I rested the boy's head on my lap and lifted one of my hands.  It shook while it sat in the air, before gently resting my pale hand on the glass wreckage.  I noticed some fresh blood in the cracks from te break.  I stroked one crack all the way to the bottom of the mirror where I lifted my hand and took his, still closed, fist.  His knuckles were cut, swolen, and bloody.  i stroked a finger across his knuckles and closed my eyes.  If I could cry, now would definitely be a time that I would cry.  I took his other, still closed fist in my hand.  I opened it and took out a missing shard of glass from the mirror and a piece of folded paper.  I set the shard and the paper on his desk and gently kissed his hand that was bloody, now, from his tight grip on the glass.  

Upon setting his hand back onto my lap, I put the paper back into his hand.  I did not read it.  I could know what was on it if I wanted to, but it was not my business.  I put it back in his hand but left the piece of the glass on the table.  He might have been dead, but I wasn't going to let anything hurt him anymore.  I picked up his limp head and held it in my hands.  Before doing anything, I held it still and looked at it.  I looked at everything that could be read from his beautiful face.  I kissed his lips gently and placed his head back onto his desk and moved his body from my lap onto his chair.  I took off my thin, stolen, jacket and placed it around his shoulders, to keep his dead body warm.  I stole a thicker jacket from his backpack and put it on before I bent over his body and whispered my thanks into his ear and kissing his cheek softly.  Turning, I walked to the window and re-opened it. I turned around to look one more time at him before sighing and climbing out the window and running off into the cold night.