Degenerate - [A Smillan Fanfiction]

Karen sat clutching her head in her hands. Smashed bottles and cigarette stubs littered the floor, decorating her small flat with the contents of her broken mind. She sat with her feet flat to the floor, blood from the glass staining her legs and hands. Her hair was scruffy and her makeup had run. Normally, she would be mortified to be in this state, but over the last few months, it mattered less and less. Now, Karen barely cared at all.

Six months. 188 days to be exact. 188 days since his idiotic face had left her life taking its goofy grin with it. Yet wherever she looked she could still see him, in tics and traits of others, in faces of strangers, cast and crew. She saw him everywhere, always out of reach. It was driving her mad, insane, these delusional fantasies that played in her mind, that he'd pop up out of the blue and want her back.

"He never wanted you anyway," a voice inside hissed. She had fought it for so long, she knew it was wrong, vicious and snarling but factually wrong. In the beginning, they had been strong, unbreakable, inseparable. The two parts of a whole that had fused together. But it had shattered like the glass bottles Karen now sought comfort in. And now, the mere mention of him would have her in floods of tears.

Since he left, nothing had been the same. The nights simply grew darker and longer with the arrival of the winter months, but there was no warm body to curl up next to and watch trashy tv with. No winter strolls or hot chocolates in the snowfall. The nights simply got shorter, colder and lonelier. Karen rarely did anything of much value anymore; falling into a somewhat reclusive cycle of sleeping and drinking, repeated over and over again. On occasion, she would light cigarettes and do nothing but chainsmoke for a couple of hours at a time. Though the acridity spread throughout her mouth and scratched her throat, it was becoming somewhat of a habit. She knew there was an abnormality to her behaviour but she saw little interest in anything else. Destruction was  her only motivation.

There was a sudden knock at the door. Karen jolted, shivering with fear, her face tear-stained and damp with sweat. She made no effort into sorting her appearance, nor answering the door. As far as she was concerned, nothing and no one could help her situation. The answer lay at the bottom of a bottle and her only apparent purpose was to find it.

The knocking became persistent, louder and more urgent but never accompanied by a voice. It never ceased, despite the obscenities Karen threw in the general direction of the doorway. Finally, she shakily rose to her feet, staggering to the door. Glass shards cut her heels and she cursed loudly, bloodied footprints appearing as she walked. She twisted the knob and yanked the door back, only to be met with the puppy dog eyes peering back at her. Cold, wet, but very much present, Matt stood at her door.

Karen fell to her knees and wept. Tears streamed from her face as she sank to his feet, months of anger, sorrow, panic and fear cascading out of her fragile frame, each sob rocking her more and more vigorously. She felt full, empty and cleansed, each in the same agonising breath.

*-*-*

Matt had stood at the door with such a hopeful expression, giving his face a childlike appearance. He'd been knocking on the door for a while; long enough for a little doubt to have crept into the edges of his mind. He shrugged it off: maybe she simply hadn't heard him. He hadn't known what he was expecting, though it was certainly not what he was greeted with.

If it weren't for her unmistakably brown eyes and the way they widened with realisation as she opened the door, Matt would have barely been able to guess that Karen was stood before him. Her thick eye makeup had smudged and grey lines ran down her face as it mixed with the tears. Her hair was disheveled, parts of it obscuring her face. She couldn't look him in the eye as she raised pale hands to her face to hide the fresh tears welling up. Matt's face fell. She no longer looked like the bright, innocent Kaz that he knew: his Kaz. He swallowed, his breath catching in his throat at the sight of her like this; he hadn't seen her in so long and even though he knew that change over time was inevitable, he never expected her to have changed such a great deal. In his mind, he had half expected the Kaz that opened the door to be identical to the one he had left, as if time behind the door of her flat stopped in the six months he hadn't been present.

He tentatively walked forward and shut the door behind him. He reached out to touch her face, but she flinched at the feeling, tears still sliding across her cheeks. Matt bent down and scooped her up with almost no effort at all. She was excruciatingly thin and weak. It killed him to see her in this state. He had done this, he alone had left her, broken her, in favour of a a career abroad. Suddenly, it didn't matter anymore. From now on, fixing Kaz would be his only goal.

He held her close to him, feeling every fibre in contact and relishing the feeling. He'd missed the warm body next to his own. Slowly he rose to full height and holding her tight, stepped over the disarray and debris towards her bedroom.

"Come along, Pond," he whispered.