Beautiful Mystery (Owl City)

Chapter 8

[A/N: You know, it always amazes me when I log on here and see work that I'm not too proud of getting such a huge amount of praise and recognition. Thanks for sticking with me, guys, it means the world. <3

Also my over-use of dialogue irritates me greatly. -.-

I feel like I should put a warning about self harm, in case it's triggering to anyone or you would just prefer to not read about it. sorry that gives a lot away, but I feel like it's necessary.]

Brielle's POV:

I wasn't even ten feet away from the shop when I felt my phone vibrate. I stopped long enough to fish it out of my bag and check the caller ID. Raina. What could she possibly want?

"Hello?" I answered as I continued down the sidewalk.

"What was that?!" she practically screamed, causing me to pull the phone away from my ear for a second.

"What was what?" I asked., though I knew perfectly well what she was talking about.

"What was that?" she mocked, and I couldn't help but laugh a little. "Why'd you just leave? It didn't look like anything went wrong!" I sighed.

"I don't know," I replied, because, really, I didn't. "I panicked, I guess? I dunno."

"Panicked? Why? Everything was going fine!"

I sighed, because she was right. Everything had been going fine, a lot better than I had expected it to, actually, but I couldn't exactly place what had happened. One second we were talking, rambling away as if we'd known each other forever, and the next second a feeling of absolute fear and embarrassment consumed me, and I couldn't leave the shop fast enough.

"Hello?" I was snapped out of my thoughts by Raina practically yelling on the other end of the phone.

"I dunno, Raina," I answered again with another sigh. "I really don't. It was just a freak thing. Hopefully he calls again and I can have another chance, but for now, I dunno."

We continued the conversation normally, with her asking a few more times why I had suddenly just picked up and left, until I couldn't take it anymore and hung up first, only to realize I was standing at the front steps to the apartment building. I walked through the door and trudged up the however-many flights of stairs there were, simply because I couldn't be bothered to wait for the elevator. It was when I was about halfway up that my phone rang again. I held it up to look at the caller ID, and groaned out loud.

"Yes, Kirk?" I answered as I held the phone to my ear, trying my best to sound happy and not at all like I would rather throw myself off of a bridge than have this conversation.

"Brielle, I wanted to talk to you about what happened on Friday," he said, not bothering to say hello, or something along the lines of, hey, sorry, to bother you on your day off.

"What about it?" I asked, though I knew damn well what he was going to say.

"What about it?" he mocked. His childish attitude amused me, and made me want to scream at the same time. "About how you started a fight, and -from what I could see- there was no good reason for you to start it."

"That's what you think," I muttered as I approached the door to my apartment.

"What was that?" asked Kirk, as if he was daring me to say it again.

"I said, that's what you think," I replied daringly, deciding that if he wasn't going to be civil, neither would I. I nestled the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I fished my key out of my bag and entered the apartment. There was a moment of silence, then I heard Kirk sigh.

"I don't know exactly what happened," he admitted. "All I know is that I walked in on a fight, and everyone's saying you started it." I took a deep breath and tried as hard as I could to keep my cool and not scream at him through the phone.

"There was a fight, yeah, but I didn't start it," was all I had to say. There was another pause and another sigh.

"Look, whatever, I just want to let you know I'm not going to tolerate fighting in my place," he said finally. "And I'm going to need you to stay a little late tomorrow so I can talk to you about this in person."  

I felt my stomach drop as he said that. Anything, anything was better than having a "talk" with Kirk.

"No, no please," I said quickly, fumbling over my words. "Please, I wont start any more fights or complain, or anything anymore, please..."

"You heard me, Brielle," he replied menacingly. "You always go on about how you need this job and how you need this money, and if you want to keep them both, you stay late for work. Tomorrow." Before I could protest, there was a click, and silence filled my ears.

"No," I whispered to myself, the familiar feeling of dread beginning to consume me. "No, no, no!" My voice rose each time I repeated the word. I couldn't help it. I would rather do anything than stay late and "talk" to Kirk. We both knew damn well he didn't want to talk.

Before I was able to stop myself, an almost unhuman cry of anger emerged from somewhere deep inside me I lost control of my actions. I hurled my phone against the back of the couch, picked up a pillow from my bed and threw it across the room. I screamed again.

Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic. The bruises from the last time Kirk had wanted to "talk" had just faded. Great. I wish I didn't need this job so badly. Fuck, I wish other jobs paid even a fraction of what this job did, because if that were the case I'd be out.

I realized tears were streaming down my cheeks. I let myself cry, choked sobs escaping me one right after another. I tossed around the idea of what I was about to do, debating on whether or not it was anywhere near worth it. Then I realized at that point, I couldn't care less. I climbed onto my bed and sat cross-legged before reaching under and feeling around the underneath of the mattress, until I felt what I was looking for. A small blade taped to the bottom of the mattress, since Raina had forced me to hand the rest of my blades over.

As I dragged the blade across my forearm several times, the feelings of dread, anger, depression, everything crashed over me at once, but I also felt at ease, like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.

I allowed myself one dazed smile before going to the bathroom to rinse my arm.

[okay yes wow this is short and sucks and is sad and self harm is so overused in fanfiction anymore like what am I doing but idk. next update will be better and hopefully on time.

Question for you guys:

You can only listen to one album for the rest of your life, which one do you choose?

Goodbye, internet.

-Fistbump-]